Treading Water

Sixteen year-old Lucy Connelly is haunted by a suicide she witnesses while rowing on the Brisbane River. It compounds the despair she has battled since her parents’ ugly divorce ten years earlier. She doesn’t know that Paul Waldron - the older cousin of her best friend Beth - knows Luke, the boy who jumped, and feels he should have done more for him, although he has his hands full dealing with the dislocation in his own family. Pretty and popular at her exclusive private school, Lucy hides the shame of her dark thoughts. Beth tries to help, but Lucy’s problems need serious attention not forthcoming from her mother Sandy, struggling after the divorce, or her wealthy developer father David, busy with his new family. Unlikely refuge comes from old Ted who lives next door, and was a stretcher-bearer in WW1. Maybe he has one more casualty to carry to safety. Paul has glimpsed her despair, but is preoccupied with his own messy family: his dad Jack – the result of a wartime romance - moves the family back and forth between England and Australia, after discovering his own father, Bill Howard, is living in western Queensland. But young cousin Nick Howard bitterly resents these interlopers, and will exact his revenge. As well, Paul’s mother Helene’s untimely death still haunts the family. Treading Water traces in parallel the lives of Lucy and Paul slowly drawn together over fifteen years as they try to find their place of peace from turbulent childhoods