Leah Giarratano - Voodoo Doll

Carrie had been at his mum's funeral last month, Isobel holding onto her tearfully before they left. Isobel and Carrie had also done a tour of duty together, during individual and family therapy sessions.

He'd left the bill for the treatment to Veterans' Affairs.

Not that money was an issue now really. He could be retired today if he felt like it. He'd never have believed the house in Mosman would have sold for so much.

But taking the winter off to holiday in the Top End would do fine. He smiled lazily, watching Charlie scratch an itch on her pink zinc-covered nose, the action sticking sand to her face. She scratched again, and more sand smudged into the pink cream.

She'd start school next year, they'd decided. And he'd go back to the insurance company. As much time as you need, the partners had insisted, sending a monthly bouquet of flowers out to him at the hospital. He'd given them to the nurses before the other guys had seen them.

Isobel told him that his work colleagues had telephoned her and offered their support, expressing their shock when they'd learned he'd served the country in Rwanda. Great, he'd thought more than once since then; they were the type of guys who'd want war stories every lunchtime, but wouldn't eat with him again if he told them the real deal.

Charlie stood from her sandcastles and moved around to the left side of his chair; she carried her bucket with her everywhere. Her nose was now completely covered in pink sand, and she swiped a tentative finger at it every couple of moments, gluing on some more.

'Um, do you want to go for a swim, Daddy?' she said. 'I'm hot.'

'Yep. Me too,' he smiled at her. 'But maybe you should go and show your mum your face before we go swimming. You've gotta do something about your nose.'

She gave him a look of quiet indignation, then half-dragged and half-rolled herself across his stomach, the most direct route to her mother.

'Mummy,' she said, standing proudly, pot-bellied in her yellow bikini, her bucket by her side, 'Could you please fix my nose? I'm not decent.'