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She was doing 145. She pulled up near the guardrail of
the overpass.
    ‘We couldn’t see the dam. It was so dark, we couldn’t see anything.’
    Moules and his cousin arrived in another car, and ran into the paddock.
    ‘We were trying to find out where the car had gone in,’ said Gambino. She began to
sob. ‘The wire was down. It was spread across the paddock. Rob asked Stephen for
a cigarette. Stephen said, “What? Where are your kids? Get out of my face before
I kill you. Where are your kids ?” Rob didn’t know. He kept going like that .’ She
mimicked a flat-handed pointing gesture. ‘I said to him, “What happened?” And he
said, “I blacked out.” He tried to comfort me, but I pushed him away.’
    Farquharson between his guards was weeping soundlessly, without shame, his mouth
gaping, his eyes locked on hers. A great knotted current of agony surged back and
forth between the dock and the witness stand: a flood of terrible compassion. Something
was happening to Gambino’s voice. It dissolved, it thickened, it throbbed and took
on colour; it rose and fell in octaves, like a chant.
    ‘It was dark. It was so dark . I was running up and down the paddock, trying to ring
000, but I was so hysterical I couldn’t press the numbers properly. Stephen was in
the water. I remember sitting in the front seat of his parents’ car. Rob was standing
in front of the car with his arms crossed. He was soaking wet. He was like a person,
but there was no movement. He wasn’t doing anything. He was like in a trance.’
    There was a helicopter over the dam. A paramedic walked up to her. She asked him,
‘How long has it been?’ ‘Forty minutes.’ ‘What are their chances?’ ‘Very slim.’
    One of her brothers arrived. He took her away to his house in Winchelsea and called
a doctor. It was a very long wait. Her socks were wet. At last the doctor came. He
drove them through fog to the Winchelsea hospital. She staggered through the doors
and someone came to her with the needle.
    …
    All Mr Morrissey wanted from Gambino, in cross-examination, was her assurance—which
she gave earnestly and without hesitation—that Farquharson had loved his children
very deeply. He was such a softie with them that the role of disciplinarian had fallen
to her. The football side of things was his forte. After the separation he grew much
closer to the boys. She had done everything in her power to foster this closeness.
He was proud of them, especially of Jai, who at ten was intelligent, mature, responsible,
a good sportsman, a very good big brother.
    ‘Everybody loved my kids,’ said Gambino, her voice thinning to a soft wail. ‘They
were so popular .’
    In the dreadful days after they died, asked Morrissey, had her family written Farquharson
a card? Had she and Rob spoken to each other on the telephone? Had they offered each
other words of comfort? Yes, she said, with an anguished gentleness, yes—they had.
    Gambino left the stand with a wad of wet tissues held to her cheek. As she stumbled
towards the exit, Farquharson’s head swung to follow her, and I caught the full blast
of his distress. His face was ravaged, beseeching: his teeth bared, his cheeks streaming.
The doors thumped shut behind her. Masonry, glass and timber could not muffle the
rending sobs and cries that echoed in the cold hall outside.
    The sleeve of Louise’s hoodie was black with tears. ‘Did she look at him on the way
out?’ she whispered. ‘Did she look at him?’
    ‘She turned her head a little bit,’ I said. ‘I think she looked at him.’
    Out on the street, seeing me wipe my eyes, the veteran journalist snapped at me,
‘ I was at the funeral .’
    Years later, when we befriended each other, I would see that she had been forcing
me back to the point, but now she made me feel like a sentimental amateur. I was
afraid of her, and it shocked me that she would not hold her fire, even for a moment,
in the face of what we had just witnessed: two broken