Page 19 of Murder in the Family

Brian had trained to be a mining engineer, which would account for the family’s choice of the thriving mining town of Kalgoorlie as their new home.

But the hoped-for fresh start turned to tragedy: when Luke was eleven, Maureen Ryder succumbed to breast cancer only six months after the disease was first diagnosed. Brian Ryder died five years later from cirrhosis of the liver, probably brought on by heavy drinking. Luke seems to have been particularly close to his mother, and the only photo found in his wallet after he died was this image of her with Luke when he was a little boy.

Black-and-white PHOTO of Luke Ryder as a boy with a woman outside a one-storey house with net curtains at the windows, a hanging basket of rather withered flowers, and a milk caddy on the doorstep. There’s a concrete water tower in the background.

The woman has short wavy hair, a pleated skirt and a pale cardigan draped over her shoulders. Her arm is around a small boy in a short-sleeved white shirt and short trousers.

VOICEOVER – narrator

At 17, Luke was left all alone in the world, with no family nearby, and no prospects: the disruption to his schooling brought on by his mother’s illness had left him without any formal qualifications. All he was interested in was motorbikes, and when the family home was sold after his father’s death, he took the money, bought a Ducati, and ran.

Straight to Sydney. It was 1994 and the city was just getting into its stride.

Library FOOTAGE of Sydney at the time. Bars, beaches, bikinis, and surfing; lots of surfing.

Sydney and Kalgoorlie were like night and day. The country’s largest city was the fun capital of Australia, bright, colourful and buzzing – a melting pot of people from all over the world who’d brought their food, music, and culture with them. It had a lively and growing rave scene, a laidback easy-going approach to life, and – as Luke soon discovered – some of the best waves in the world.

Luke had never surfed before but he didn’t let that stop him. Within a few weeks he was spending as much time as he could on the beach.

Library FOOTAGE of surfers.

It was about this time he picked up the nickname ‘Easy’. Given his surname, you might have expected that would have happened a lot sooner, but life had never been exactly ‘easy’ for Luke in Kalgoorlie.

But now, things were different. He had a job at a local bar, he was fit, he was tanned, and he was meeting more girls in a single week than he’d done his whole time in Kalgoorlie. Life was good; life was ‘easy’.

And it might have carried on that way, if he’d stayed.

But he didn’t.

After a couple of years he was on the move again. First to Bali, then Cambodia and the Lebanon, and after that Greece, where he picked up bar work while island-hopping in 1999.

And that’s where he met Rupert Howard.

CUT TO: Rupert, same interior/set-up as before.

RUPERT HOWARD

It was the summer after my ‘A’ levels, and Dad had stumped up some cash for me to go interrailing in Europe for a couple of months. Itwas a Thing back then. Cheap and cheerful and it felt like an adventure even though you were rarely in any sort of real danger. You met a lot of random people, lived on bad carbs and never got enough sleep. I had my first shag, my first joint, and my first pass-out drunk hangover, so it was pretty memorable all round. I’d told Dad I’d go to Italy and look at ‘Art’—

(makes air quote marks)

–but somehow that never happened and I found myself in Greece, in Cephalonia to be precise. A tiny fishing village called Assos. And the first bar I walk into, there he is. Big smile, ‘Hello, mate, fancy a beer?’ and that was it. Friends.

For life.

(pause)

As it turned out.

MONTAGE of photos from that summer: Rupert and Luke at the bar, on a boat, drinking, smoking, laughing. There are girls in every picture, but never the same ones twice.

I went back to Eton in September to sit my Cambridge entrance and Luke stayed on in Assos. I don’t remember him saying what his plans were, but things were always a bit fluid where he was concerned. I didn’t hear from him and I didn’t expect to. He wasn’t the letter-writing type and you have to remember there was no Facebook back then. In fact, I doubt there was a single person in Assos who even had an internet connection.

The next time I saw him was in London three months later. New Year’s Day. The first day of a new millennium. That’s not a date you’re likely to forget. Though I’d hardly been celebrating – it was only a week or two before that my father had died.

I think if Luke had turned up at any other time I’d have been pretty cool with him. I mean, we’ve all had holiday friendships, haven’t we: they don’t tend to travel well. A bit like retsina.

But what with Dad dying and the weather being crap, and everyone else having a great time except me, seeing him was just a reminder that life wasn’t always that shitty.