The Family Men by Catherine Harris

Author:Catherine Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

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The media conference is called for 3 pm the following day. After the statement, a pack of journalists lunge at him with microphones, their questions thrust right up into his face. Laurie tells them to back off but doesn’t do anything to make them. Harry turns pink from all the fuss. People think he is shy around strangers, but that isn’t it. From the glare of their lights, he knows them too well – like his dad, they have the same haunted eyes as junkies.

How he loathes them. Question after question: “Why has he done it?” “What is the matter?” “What is it all about?” He sticks to the script, reads his prepared statement, then gives one-word answers. “Yes.” “Sometimes.” “Maybe.” Though the truth is he doesn’t know. Not really. All he is sure of is that he has to do something; it is either this or something much worse.

He can see now why those kids snap. The ones who blow up their schools or prang their cars into the houses of their ex-girlfriends. Because so many people expect so much yet so little is offered in return.

He doesn’t mean money, it isn’t about material things. It’s just that some people are forever being written up, while for others the umpire is always looking the other way. Everyone banging on about fairness and accountability when the truth is as long as you are scoring, nobody really cares what else you do. At times Harry feels that the only way to move forward is to become wholly unacceptable himself, to push the envelope until the situation is made clear.

His father keeps saying you’d better not be doing this on account of me – such avid protestations – pundits speculating that he is exactly the reason, not because of the drinking, they don’t know about that yet (his most recent tumble off the wagon), but manipulating his offspring with his own failings – famously on record as collecting the most Brownlow votes in a career but never winning a premiership – unable to let his children enjoy their moment of glory, knowing that securing the flag will trigger an audit of the family’s past, thrusting him back into the limelight, front and centre, Harry having resigned to avoid the intense media attention.

But Harry maintains his father’s history has nothing to do with it. Not that he’s read all the clippings, pored over the scrapbooks (the old man’s scrapes and successes). He isn’t about to either. He doesn’t need to. He already knows what they’ll say.

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