A Second Chance Bk. 01 Ch. 01

This story is set in Australia ... a country where prostitution is legal, people drive on the left and only cops and bad guys carry guns. I once carried a gun and now that I don't I feel safer than when I did.

This story is a work of fiction, the people don't exist although there are some small touches of reality. For example The Golden Apple certainly did exist and I was assured by the owner one night many years ago that the pizza story, minus a few of my embellishments, really did happen.

And sometimes there might be ghosts of my past briefly shimmering in parts of the story.

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I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw the two cars pull up outside my house. When your daughters arrive in convoy you just know that you're in for some serious ear-bashing ... and all you can do is try and weather the verbal storm.

I even had some idea of what the topic of conversation was going to be. Both of them had been hassling me for weeks and now they had joined forces and were about to unleash a combined assault on me because ... they were worried about me.

"Dad your social life is worse than mine." My younger daughter was polite. My older daughter wasn't so polite.

"Dad you need to get laid." Yeah, my older daughter was a plain speaker

Yes, my daughters were concerned about me and probably with good cause. I was 46, with three grown-up kids who had all left home.

I had been happily married until three years before when Wendy, my wife, had suddenly announced that she didn't want to be married anymore and had taken off with a wealthy plastic surgeon ... perhaps because she had seen her future in her mother's haggard face?

That had hit me like a ton of bricks and I lost interest in a lot of things ... like work. As a team leader in a very specialised and clandestine section that didn't exist within the Australian Federal Police I needed to be self-motivated and be able to lead and even inspire the people working under me. But for months after she left I struggled to even get out of bed.

It wasn't just her leaving that had robbed me of my motivation, my job was high-stress too and violent confrontations with armed criminals, terrorists and even mercenaries was far more common than most people would have believed.

In fact most of our work was done under a complete cloak of secrecy and even our own husbands and wives didn't know what we did. We faced danger almost every day and, when we were working in a team, everyone in the team relied on every other member of the team.

The stress of working in that environment was finally catching up with me too ... and that was bad for the team.

One team member who was not totally switched on could endanger the lives of every other team member so everyone in the unit needed to be on the top of their game and, when I wasn't, I was a potentially expensive liability.

In the end the unit's Chief Superintendent sat down with me to have a chat. While he was friendly and understanding the bottom line was that the unit was carrying me and things had to change or I would be moved out of the unit permanently.

Like any good leader, he had a simple plan with two options including one that might help me get back on my feet. I had a lot of paid leave in the bank and his suggestion was that I should take some of that and, when I felt that I was ready to come back.

I could spend a few months with one of drug interdiction units to bring me back to operational readiness and then transition back to my old job. It sounded like a good plan.

Of course I could always resign but resigning wasn't really an option for me because the property settlement with my ex was still pending and I knew that I would have to give her a large amount of the money stashed away in my superannuation account. And that would mean that my comfortable retirement mightn't be so comfortable after all.

So I took the realistic option and opted for taking some of my accrued leave; four to eight weeks of basically taking it easy ... but my ex had other ideas. A week into that leave my wife's lawyers started proceedings for the property settlement and they really wanted to take me to the cleaners.

Five minutes after the court documents were served on me I was a total wreck and I stayed that way till my lawyer sat down with me and outlined what he could do to bring things back to a more even split.

His advice sounded good but in the end the thought of fighting her in court over every dollar and cent just made me worse and I knew that if I wanted to recover then I didn't need all the added drama right then so instructed him to accept her terms.

He thought I was totally crazy and even the judge asked me if I had given serious consideration to what I was doing but letting her have everything she wanted and getting her out of my life took a big load off my shoulders.

My parents also thought that I had been totally crazy in giving in to her demands but my father knew that I had been carrying some mild PTSD for years since my days in the Diplomatic Protection Unit ... another more visible part of the Australian Federal Police and he convinced Mum to stop nagging me about it.

And once Wendy was out of my hair I started to recover. I began to feel good about myself. The nightmares that left me drenched in sweat and silently screaming every night began to fade ... and then one day I picked up the phone to arrange a return to work ... and then put it down again.

I couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. A week later my lawyer lodged the paperwork for an honourable discharge with a full pension payable because of PTSD acquired on the job. He was reasonable in his claim, unusually the Department was reasonable with their medical checks and assessment and within a few months I was paid out and my pension was in place.

A week after that my parents died within hours of each other and suddenly I had more money than I knew what to do with. Mum and Dad had worked hard all their lives and lived frugally while they invested their money wisely.

The result was that, as an only child, I inherited the lot ... over $5 million and I didn't have to share it with anyone.

By that stage my daughters were both living in Appledale up in New South Wales so I bought a house in the same town and moved to the country to enjoy retirement, learn to be a grandfather, and indulge in some of my passions ... including a turning a rusting early model VW into avery hotted up little monster.

And that was my past.

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"Dad! You're a fucking recluse ... sure you have a wonderful garden and you do amazing modelling with your trains, and that car of yours would turn heads if you ever took it out ... but for fuck's sake Dad ... GET A LIFE!" Daughter No.1 was getting angry and so the 'F' bomb was in play ... in a big way ... a sure sign that she was on the warpath and I should probably find some place to hide.

"Dad, she's right. The only time you go out is when you go shopping." Daughter No2 was less excitable, just as dry and laconic as her father, but every bit on point as her sister was.

I smiled at both of them. They were great kids and had grown up into responsible, focused adults and the only way I was going to get them off my case that day was to smile, nod, agree with them ... and then totally forget what they had said when they left.

And they knew it!

"Dad we've had enough. This time we have done what you always taught us to do," suddenly I wished that I had been an even shittier role model than what I had been and not taught them anything.

"We've taken control of the situation and called Uncle John and Aunt Cathy down in Canberra, they're expecting you Friday afternoon and you're staying for a week."

I groaned and held up my hands in surrender. "OK but who is going to look after the dogs? And in this heat the garden will need a lot of watering."

"Shut it old man ... you are going!" Shit! Why did I ever teach my daughters to be so damn assertive!

Four days later I was on my way to visit John and Cathy, even though they were probably the last people I wanted to visit.

I had known John Adams as far back as primary school. I had stood beside him when he married Cathy and he had stood beside me when I married Wendy, but I'm not sure what common ground I had ever shared with John.

His parents were moderately rich while mine poured a lot of their own sweat into every dollar they earned. After high school John went to university to become an Actuary while I was doing crazy things in the Army ... but somehow we got on well and my Wendy got on well with Cathy too.

Our kids knew each other and would often play together when they were smaller but we had drifted apart when the AFP moved me out of the Diplomatic Protection Unit and transferred me to the other side of the country. I don't think we had even exchanged Christmas cards in like ... forever.

And now I was going to visit them and regretting that I had given in so easily to my daughters. What did I have in common with this couple anymore? John was now head of a government think tank earning more money in a year than I had earned in three.

They now lived in a stunning architect designed home on the outskirts of Canberra while I lived in a modest little house in a Hicksville, Lower Buttfuck ... and they were still happily married while I was ... well, you know.

Fuck! Now I was dropping 'F' bombs but it was going sooo slowly, and the hill wasn't even steep. I reefed the gear stick back to a lower gear and slammed my foot to the floor to pass the truck in front of me.

The turbo-charged Porsche motor that I had shoe-horned into the engine bay screamed and catapulted my bug forward and the truck was gone at 120kph ... but the speed sign up ahead was suggesting that I should be down to 80. Ooops.

Off the throttle, a dab on the Brembo brakes and the car went through the curve at 110 with no problems at all ... and then back to 130kph on what Australians called 'a highway.'

Rebuilding a rust riddled wreck into a fully customised fire-breathing monster complete with side flares, Recaro seats, blueprinted engine, smaller chrome mags and black paint that you could see yourself in was what had been one of the things that had kept me sane after the divorce and move to a new town.

My daughters called it my mid-life crisis car and my ex had gone back to her lawyers in the hope that she could get the property settlement reopened so she could get the car too ... but all she got was a big bill from her lawyer and a big raspberry from me ... and I still had the car.

I loved winding it up on the open road and letting the little monster fly. It took me away from my fears, regrets and worries and suddenly I was 20 and bullet-proof again.