He gives her a funny look. ‘Isn’t that what you’ve come to discuss?’
She feels exposed. ‘How did you –’
He inclines his head and she knows what he means by it: he knows her. There are some things that don’t need to be said.
And, today, some that do.
‘You haven’t been yourself,’ Louis says gently as he pours them both a drink.
‘I’m not sure who that is any more,’ Adelaide says and takes the offered glass.
‘Well … exactly.’ He raises his glass in a toast and she responds in kind.
‘Life in Sydney not quite suiting you?’ he says.
Adelaide takes a sip and feels the fire of it running down her throat. ‘You could say that.’
‘Whatever you want to tell me, just say it. Nothing shocks me.’
He cradles the glass in his hands and sits back in his armchair. It’s the one he always sits in. The same one their father loved, re-upholstered by Prue.
Their father never knew about her pregnancy, or if he did, he didn’t let on.
Their mother wouldn’t speak of it again after instructing Adelaide to never tell Louis – or anyone. The shame it would bring on them, she said. The scandal.
Adelaide spent years trying to work out if the scandal would ever have materialised, but that’s a treacherous path to take and it’s led her to many a sleepless night. So much time spent wondering and worrying, and it got her nowhere.
She takes another fortifying sip. ‘How did you know I wanted to tell you something?’
That incline of the head again.
She nods. Takes a big breath. Another sip. Another breath.
‘I had a baby,’ she says and dares herself to look at him.
He looks so calm. So unsurprised. ‘I know,’ he says.
Now she’s the one who is shocked. ‘How?’
‘Mother told me.’
Adelaide gasps. The woman who made her swear to never tell managed to tell it herself. The hypocrisy of it. The sadness.
‘You were overseas,’ Louis goes on. ‘It wasn’t long before she died. I said something about how I wondered if you’d regretted never having children. She told me you had a child. I thought …’ His eyes drift to the family photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘I thought she might have been imagining things. But she gave dates. A location. The timing matched with when you went away. To the country.’
‘You didn’t say anything to me!’
Not that she can lay blame in this regard, having kept her own secrets for so long.
‘I thought you were the one who didn’t want anyone to know.’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘No, but …’ He pauses. ‘We were close enough that I thought you’d have told me if you wanted to.’
‘She told me not to!’ Adelaide is fired up now, or maybe the whisky has emboldened her.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.’ He puts his glass down and sits forward. ‘I’m sorry you were alone in this.’