The impossibility of the situation makes her stumble, and she steadies herself with a hand against the wall. Then she opens the door.
In front of her is a man in his late forties who looks like her brother Louis at that age. He has the same bright blue eyes. The same slightly thinning salt-and-pepper hair. The same stoop. The same chin and nose. He is the same height.
How is it possible to be meeting for the first time a man who is so clearly her kin? It is not, she understands now, she and her child’s father who have been mocked by fate, which is what she has thought all these years. It is her and her son. Fate has kept them apart. No –shehas kept them apart.
All this goes through her mind in the half-second it takes George – Desmond – to smile and show straight teeth just like Louis’s.
‘Adelaide?’ he says, and the word feels like a stab in her heart. She is not Mum; not even Mother. She will never be.
‘Desmond,’ she says.
Should she offer a hug? A kiss on the cheek? What is one meant to do in this circumstance?
‘I don’t know whether or not to hug you,’ he says, his accent broad, as if he grew up in the bush. Maybe he did.
‘I was just wondering the same thing.’ She smiles and opens her arms.
He hugs her, and she smells her son for the first time. When he was born, they took him away before she had the chance. His scent is a mixture of soap and aftershave, although she can’t place either, and of Fabulon. He has ironed his shirt. Or someone has done it for him.
Seconds pass; maybe it’s longer. She really can’t tell.
Then she lets him go and feels as though she is falling through space.
‘Come in,’ she says, and she stands back for him then closes the door, gesturing for him to walk toward the sitting room.
As she follows she sees that he even walks like Louis, with a slight bow to his legs.
‘You look exactly like my brother,’ she says, because why not say it? She shouldn’t hold things back from this stranger-son.
‘Really?’ Desmond turns and smiles. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Louis.’
They sit, her on a chair, him on the sofa.
He nods. ‘Louis, eh?’ More nodding. ‘And what was mine?’ His eyes seem to go an even brighter blue as he looks into hers.
‘Yes, I suppose you’ve wondered,’ she says, although his name feels like the last part of the secret she is keeping to herself. Letting it go may mean … what? That the secret is uncontained?It already is. There is nothing more to lose now. She lost this boy years ago.
‘George,’ she says. ‘George Louis.’
‘Righto,’ he says and shrugs. ‘Could be worse.’
‘Ask me anything you want to know,’ she says. It would be such a relief to tell him. To tellsomeone. But especially him.
‘My father,’ he says. ‘Were you …’ He makes a face. ‘Were you together? Did you have other children?’
Adelaide frowns, not sure she understands. Has he been worried all this time that he has siblings he doesn’t know about? It didn’t occur to her that he might have been.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Not together. It was …’
Oh. Here’s where she has to stop. Here’s where it’s going to hurt her. Here’s where he may judge her and walk out of her life. So maybe she does have something to lose, after all.
‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t mind. I just want to know.’
He smiles kindly and she believes him.
‘It was an affair,’ she says. ‘I’m not – I wasn’t – proud of it. We shouldn’t have done it. Except …’ She breathes. ‘You exist because of it. I can’t regret that.’