Eric's parents didn't know what he did up in Queensland. They were curious, they cared, but they didn't ask: they'd learned long ago that he'd tell them if he needed to - and more than likely he wouldn't tell them at all, and that nothing they asked of him would make any difference to that. That was their son, in all his impossibilities, and they loved him for it, because as far as they were concerned there just wasn't any choice about that.

They could see how much more relaxed he was after he came back form his regular trips to Queensland, though; and they could tell how excited he was beforehand. Other people, people who didn't know him so well, might not be able to tell. This was the child they'd raised, though, the man they'd made, and they could detect his every minor mood change and alteration in attitude. He was the only child they had. They took great interest in him, and watched him with great care.

He was an odd duck, though, as his mother was wont to say - but they loved him for that, too. They had their suspicions about his sexuality but they kept them to themselves, there were things parents didn't talk about even with each other, there were things parents recognised weren't important. They were adamant about that. Their son was happy, something in his life was making him happy, and whatever it was was all the way up in Queensland, and if that was the way it was then that was the way it was. If that was the way it had to be then that was the way it had to be.

And he was living in a house that made him happy, too. Eric rarely smiled but he talked sometimes and when he talked they knew he was happy. He'd told them all about his new housemates. They'd forgotten their names but they were at an age where they forgot things: they'd had Eric late in life, relatively speaking. They weren't so good at remembering specifics but they could remember how happy Eric had been when he'd moved into that house. That wasn't the kind of thing parents forgot, their son happy.

He hadn't always been happy. He was the kind of person who was capable of being greatly disappointed in the world. But it was a mistake to think that he was naturally disinclined to be happy. That was ridiculous, nobody wanted to be unhappy. And so much was making him happy now, in his understated way: Queensland, the new house, his music. Always his music. For all the sound-proofing they'd installed in the spare room where the boys practiced they could still hear his drumming thumping through the wall. If made them happy. It was like hearing their son's heartbeat on an ultrasound.

And he always stayed for dinner after practice. Sometimes Mal and Steve stayed, too. Eric's parents remembered their names: those names had been constants for so many years. And now the thumping of the drums stopped, and there were muffled voices, and then suddenly Eric was there, their son was there, popping his head around the kitchen door and saying in his matter-of-fact way: "That smells nice. I'm hungry."