It’s ten before he gets into the office.

Judge looks pointedly at his watch. ‘Where you been? It’s nearly lunchtime.’

‘Things to do at home. Is there a problem?’

‘Haven’t seen you for twenty-four hours. Where were you yesterday?’

‘Client meeting at Cleveland.’

‘All afternoon?’

‘Took longer than I expected. Traffic was stopped.’

‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

‘Flat battery.’ Chris scowls. ‘What is this, the third degree?’

‘I was waiting for you to take me home. I had to ring Karen.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘Just as well I’m back in the office, eh? This place could go to crap. Bloody Tabitha goes off sick and you disappear.’

‘Just one afternoon, Judge. I’m here now and so is Tabi.’

‘Yeah, I see that … both of you.’

Tabi is breezy. No hint of any difference in their relationship, no sly glances or suggestive looks. She carries on as she always has and Chris is grateful. He wishes he could give her a raise. He wishes he was in love with her.

Diane is tight-lipped that evening, but it might otherwise be a normal night. Chris is torn between wanting to apologise and the need to explain why it happened. But he has already – so many times, and in so many ways there’s nothing more to say. He tries to be useful: chills some wine, sets the table, puts out glasses.

At dinner (neither withheld nor poisoned) Diane swallows a large mouthful of wine and replaces the glass precisely on the coaster. ‘How long have you been having your … affair?’

Chris pushes his fork into a wedge of perfectly cooked salmon. ‘It only happened once. It won’t happen again.’

‘Is she the reason you went to Coolum?’ Diane directs the question at his chest.

Chris understands how difficult it is to meet the gaze of someone who has betrayed you. He wonders, now, if he’s betraying Roberta.

‘No. I met her there by accident.’

‘You recognised her from school after all those years?’

‘Not from school. I knew her in England, back when I was working there.’

Diane downs more wine. ‘You never told me.’

Chris pokes with fierce concentration at a French bean. ‘No reason to. Besides, you’ve never talked about who was before me.’

‘What makes you think there was anybody?’ She drains her glass.

‘You … you weren’t a virgin when you came to London. There must have been someone.’

She reaches for the bottle and refills her glass. Already she’s had more than usual. ‘No-one who mattered.’

‘I find it hard to believe that you would lose your virginity to someone who didn’t matter. Do you mind me asking who?’

She stares into her wine and huffs carelessly. ‘I don’t mind. His name was Adrian Locke. A mistake.’ She makes moue. ‘A big mistake.’

‘An important one, by the sound of it.’

She pushes her wineglass backwards and forwards across the table. ‘I suppose so. He made me wise to men.’

‘Oh?’ Chris tries to catch her eye but she won’t let him. ‘How so?’

‘Made me realise I didn’t want another one like him, I wanted one like you.’ She snorts. ‘You were everything he wasn’t. Until lately, anyhow.’

‘He burned you,’ Chris says. ‘Badly.’

Diane straightens. ‘It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about me and him. It’s about you and her.’

‘There is no me and her. It’s over.’

Chris stops by the bureau in the hallway, arrested by a flurry of framed photos newly arranged on the top. There’s a picture of Phoebe aged five, gussied up in a floaty blouse of Diane’s, her high heels and a broad-brimmed hat that reaches her bum. She looks sweetly ridiculous but her expression is that of a queen. There’s one of Archie with his tongue stuck out, a photo of Diane and himself (in tails!) at a Government House do, and another of Ben, Liam and himself horsing around with a hose. Family photos – all of them. A reminder, perhaps, for straying eyes. There’s even one of his mother. Young and spirited-looking. How old was she? he wonders. Who took the picture, and where? What was she thinking? He feels again the long-familiar surge of frustration at the meagre diet of information he was fed on. His mother is a stranger, a woman in outline. He’s wasted so much time looking for his father when all along the biggest gap was Alice.

Ben has pine-barked the garden and the wind has scattered loose pieces over the path to the front door. Chris stands beside the car waiting for his heart to steady, listening to a droning lawnmower churn up the air.

When Ben opens the door, hope leaps to his eyes. ‘Come in,’ he says, sweeping Chris along with his arm. ‘Good to see you, lad.’

‘Sorry I haven’t been around. Things are arse-up at the office since Judge came back.’

‘You’re here now – that’s all that matters. Coffee?’

‘No, thanks.’ He perches on a chair watching Ben fuss over coffee. So much palaver for instant. A carefully measured teaspoon of freeze-dried, one and a half of sugar and a precise dollop of milk. He beats the mixture vigorously, banging the spoon against the china mug and emitting a wheezy, whistling sound that Chris hasn’t heard before. He tips water – hot, not boiling – over the mix, stirs again and puts the spoon in the sink. An eerie stillness settles. It’s nearly a year since Jo died and her absence fills the silence more than her ghostly presence might. Chris tries to picture her at the sink or the stove or bending her head to a cross-stitch, but the images are hard won. They belong to a different life and a different Jo from the one he found in her diary. Questions leap to mind, the same endless loop that’s run in his head for five months.

Ben puts out glasses of water and a tin of biscuits – an old tea caddy with a bent lid and the faded smile of a young housewife. Chris knows if he looks closely he’ll still be able to see the B and the two small Ls of a Bushells tea label. He rubs his finger over an old nick in the table.

‘I might sound like a stuck record, but there are still things I need to know.’

‘Of course. Just ask.’

‘Adopting me … What was it like, adopting your own son?’

‘Awful, terrible. Wonderful. I’ve never been so resentful or so relieved.’ Ben leans against the sink.

‘Resentful?’

‘You were my son but I couldn’t prove it. I had no legal claim over you, no say in your future. As next of kin Jo held all the cards and her condition for adoption was that no-one, including you, ever be told.’

Chris gazes at his glass of water. ‘Was anyone else told?’

‘Only my parents.’ Ben takes a cautious sip of coffee.

A small pulse begins in Chris’s neck. Gran and Grandpa. They knew. All that time, they knew. He can see their faces; kind and creased, and a barrage of memories pours back: holidays on their farm in the Mary Valley; weekends, birthdays, school vacations and the promise Gran extracted from him never to tell about Liam. All that time, and they never said a word.

‘What about Gregor and Mary?’

‘Jo’s and Alice’s parents? God, no. They were mortified enough by Alice’s pregnancy, let alone knowing I was responsible.’

‘What about Gregor’s cousin, the one Alice lived with in Melbourne?’

Ben shakes his head. ‘No. Alice told no-one.’ A fleeting smile crosses his face. ‘No-one could drag out of her what she didn’t want known.’

‘See – that’s what you never told me – what she was like. I know nothing about my mother. I don’t even know when she was born. Do you have her birth certificate?’

Ben shakes his head.

‘Wh-when was she born? When was her birthday?’

Ben gnaws his lip. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I don’t know.’

Chris screws up his face. ‘You had a month-long affair with a woman you claim to love but don’t even know her birthday? Do you know when she died?’

‘Yes. Of course. I’ll never … never forget it.’

‘Do you have her death certificate?’

Ben spreads his hands on the table and Chris recognises with disconcerting fascination his own gesture. ‘I don’t, Chris. I’m sorry.’

‘What date was it? What day of the week?’

Ben says nothing.

Chris pushes himself from the table. ‘For God’s sake, Ben! What do you know? Ah, stuff it. I’ll get her death certificate from the records.’

‘No, no. You don’t have to. She – it was the thirteenth of October, Thursday the thirteenth. Chris, I … I only knew her for that one month, I only knew … what lovers know.’

‘Her favourite colour?’ Chris says, not expecting an answer.

‘Green. Emerald green.’

He knows. He knows a truckload more than he’s saying.

‘What about my adoption certificate? You must surely have that.’

‘Yes, but don’t you have a copy? You’d have needed it for a passport.’

‘Only my birth certificate. It was reissued with the name change. You should know that.’

‘I’ll get it.’ Ben disappears down the hall. He returns a few minutes later with a sheet of heavy paper, creased and handwritten in careful script.

No. 57138

NAME

Christopher John Ward.

DATE OF BIRTH, NATIVE PLACE, RELIGION

19^th June, 1949.

Melbourne.

Church of England.

DATE OF COMMITMENT

14th November, 1949.

CAUSE OF COMMITMENT

No means.

PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CHILD

Has been paid for under Sec/3’.

Paid for? How much for a five-month-old baby? Chris gulps water. ‘Gregor’s cousin in Melbourne – what was her name?’

Ben shakes his head. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘You said Ellie Something-or-other.’

‘Did I?’ He rolls his shoulders, as if something’s stuck to his back.

‘You know you did. What was her name?’

Ben says nothing.

‘You owe me the truth, damn it.’

‘Maybe, but I don’t remember.’

‘Oh, you remember, all right. But you’re going to make me search – all over again. I will, you know. Why don’t you just tell me? Why are you making me do it the hard way?’

‘I’m trying to stop you from wasting your time.’

‘You could have stopped me wasting my time looking for Jack Ward. But my mother was real, and I won’t stop looking until I’ve found out what you don’t want me to know.’

He upends Jo’s boxes and scours her diaries for clues to his grandfather’s cousin’s identity, and any references to his mother. So far, all he’s found is a copy of her birth certificate which told him she was born in Brisbane on 11 January 1928. Jo’s diaries reveal nothing – four of them spanning seventeen years and no reference to Alice’s life in Melbourne or the cousin she lived with. He drops the books back in the box, removes his glasses and grinds his fingers into his eyes.

The facts of Alice Mary Johansson’s life are few. Date of birth, date of death, her passion for clothing design and a child by her sister’s husband. He could apply for a copy of her death certificate but it wouldn’t tell him what he most wants to know – about the person who was his mother.

He pulls out the phone book. The last time he trawled the Melbourne phone directory he’d been looking for his father, Jack Ward, a man who didn’t exist. But Ellie Something-or-other had existed.

There are sixteen Johanssons in the Melbourne area and over the next week Chris manages to contact them all, but none have heard of Ellie, Alice Mary or her parents, Gregor and Mary Johansson. He’s grateful Ellie’s name wasn’t Smith.

It wasn’t Johansson, either.

Oh, shit.

Of course not! Ellie was married – idiot. Chris applies for a copy of a marriage certificate for E. Johansson from Victoria’s Births, Deaths and Marriages, but is advised no such document exists.

Naturally. The Johanssons were from Queensland.

God almighty – what is wrong with him?

An application to Births, Deaths and Marriages Queensland reveals that on the twenty-first day of May, 1931, one Elspeth Anna Johansson married Bruce Harvey Ashe of Richmond, Victoria. Ellie – surely short for Elspeth – appeared to have moved with Mr Ashe to Melbourne. Back to the Melbourne White Pages.

Andrew Ashe, of Mitcham, the first of fourteen Ashes in the phone book, had a mother named Elspeth – maiden name Johansson – and a hazy recollection of the name Alice Johansson. Chris would be better off talking to his older sister, Julie. Would he like her number?

Chris scoots into the kitchen and grabs the whisky bottle. Five weeks. Five bloody weeks Ben could have saved him by providing one little word – Ashe.

T-shirts, jeans, underpants, socks, razor. He buckles up the knapsack.

Throw in a packet of biscuits and we can go anywhere.

Diane hovers in the doorway. Despite her height she looks like a doubtful teenager. A year ago her expression would have been one of tolerant indulgence, now it’s undisguised anxiety. ‘How long will you be gone?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘Let’s hope you find out what you want to know so you can put this matter to rest.’

‘I don’t want to put “this matter” to rest. I want to give it life.’

‘I wish you’d let me come with you. I don’t like to think of you alone … unless—’

‘Unless what?’

‘You’re taking her?’

‘Who?’

‘Roberta.’

‘No, Diane. I’m not taking Roberta.’ He sighs. ‘I told you – it happened only once and it’s over.’

Over, perhaps, but not without suspicions. He and Tabi had been working in the office alone during the lunch break a week before, checking over a specification. When they finished, Tabi touched her fingers to her lips and pressed them to Chris’s forehead. ‘What a team we are, Mr B.’

Chris looked up and smiled, then his eyes slid past her to the figure standing in the doorway who was definitely not smiling. That afternoon, Judge asked Chris to stop at the Regatta for a beer on the way home, something they did occasionally to wind down, but Judge didn’t look like he wanted to wind down. They sat in the beer garden at a rickety aluminium table which the waitress swiped with a cloth the colour of wet cement. Judge worked at this ball. Chris knew he didn’t need it any longer but recognised it was probably his version of Fletcher.

Except the stupid thing has no head.

‘How are things with Ben?’ Judge asked, taking a mouthful of beer and wiping foam from his lips.

‘Fairly crappy.’

‘Diane?’

‘Could be better.’

‘You gettin’ on all right with the staff?’

‘Yes, Judge. What’s your point?’

‘I’m wondering where you been putting it.’

Chris stared at him.

‘You’re fuckin’ Tabitha.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I’m not lying.’

‘Listen, I might sound stupid but I’m not. Your life’s a mess. So’s mine. Sort it. Don’t bring it to work an’ don’t fuck the staff.’

‘Finish your beer, Judge, I have to get home. I’m going to Melbourne in the morning.’

‘I know where you’re going and I know where you’ll finish up if you don’t sort yourself out.’