Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family

LUKE looked exhausted and stressed.

He had bloodshot eyes, hair yelling for a brush, even a streak of dried mud along his jaw. He looked older. There were some lines around his eyes and mouth. Janey hadn’t seen him in, what, seven years? No, just under six, if you counted photographs.

Alice had sent one from London shortly after Felixx’s birth—a casual shot of both parents and the tiny bundle of baby snuggled between them. Alice had looked tired, but Luke had glowed—the archetypical proud father. Just three months later, their marriage had shattered. Janey still didn’t know the full story, and what she did know had come only from Alice.

So how did you even start in a situation like this?

With ‘hello’ apparently.

Luke said it first, his voice low and tired and husky. Despite the changes in his appearance, he was still the man she remembered, dark and ferociously good-looking, with those trust-me-I’m-a-hero amber-brown eyes and a confident mouth that had rarely bothered to bestow its charming smile on Janey. She’d seen it quirked in annoyance or outright anger far more often.

‘Hello, Luke,’ she answered him. ‘It’s good to see you.’

His smile was strained. Good to see each other? Maybe. And they both looked wrecked. He carried his fatigue well, but she had no illusions about the appearance she must present after two days of unconsciousness in a hospital bed—and she’d never been the pretty one of the two Stafford girls.

‘It’s been a while,’ Luke said.

‘Too long.’

His face changed. The strong jaw suddenly looked harder. No charm in evidence at all. ‘Don’t put that down to me, Janey. Just don’t. I contacted you and your parents over and over, asking you to put me in touch with Alice, and you insisted you didn’t know where she was.’

‘We didn’t, then. She didn’t contact us for a couple of years.’

‘But you do now?’

‘It’s complicated…’

‘Explain, Janey. Pretend I’m completely in the dark, no idea what’s been going on for the past five and a half years with my wife or my son. Just pretend, OK?’ His voice dripped with harsh sarcasm on those last three words.

Oh, lord, their dealings were getting badly strained already, and she had some shattering news to impart!

I won’t do this, she vowed. I won’t make it into a battle or a litany of accusations, no matter how I feel about Luke, or how much truth there might have been in what Alice said! Felixx has endured enough, he doesn’t need his two closest living relatives to be at war with each other.

It wouldn’t have been Alice’s approach, she knew. Alice had loved the high drama of family arguments and taking sides and emotional manipulation. You became drawn into it, inevitably, because—like Luke—she had so much charisma, so much life, so much self-belief. The world always seemed a more interesting and dramatic place when she was around.

Had loved.

Had had.

Had seemed.

Luke must have seen something in her face. ‘I’m sorry. Shall we start again?’ he said.

‘Let’s.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I can’t do the small talk. Not in a situation like this. There’s only one thing I want to know right now. The child. The boy. He’s around four years old, people are saying. They’ve been calling him Rowdy, but you’ve said his name is Felix. So he’s your son. I had this stupid hope for a while that—’ He broke off.

The look on his face was that of a man still under torture. It shocked her, because she’d never seen him like this before, wouldn’t have said he had the capacity to feel life’s darker emotions so deeply.

He was the sunshine type.

‘Luke…Dear God, I thought you knew,’ Janey blurted out. ‘He is Frankie Jay. He is yours. Of course he is.’

She watched him try to stand then sit back down as if his legs had given out from under him. He looked totally bewildered. ‘But—Felix?’

‘Alice changed his name, and I’ve grown used to it. She changed hers, too, and both their last names. Alanya and Felixx Star. Felixx’s has a double X, which is—’

Ridiculous.

She stopped. Why give this detail now? The double X. Her opinion of it. Her brain still wasn’t working quite right. ‘He’s small for his age,’ she went on. ‘He does look like he could be four.’

Luke put his head in his hands for a long moment, hiding his expression. She wanted to reach out and comfort him with her touch, but didn’t think she had the right or that he’d want her to. The nakedness of his reactions kept surprising her, although she couldn’t have put into words what she’d expected instead.

More of a performance?

‘When they found your ID in A and E on Saturday night, I didn’t know why you’d been on that bus,’ he said eventually. ‘If it was anything to do with me, if it was just one of those bizarre coincidences, or if Alice had put you up to it for some reason…Hell, I can’t call her Alanya! Where is she? Was this her idea? Why bring him here now, after all this time, when she did so much—must have moved heaven and earth—to make sure I could never find either of them?’

‘Never find them? She said you didn’t want him! Or her. That you couldn’t handle father-hood and wanted your bachelor days back. That you were the one who left.’

‘Which you instantly believed, of course.’ Suddenly, they were both gabbling, fast and furious.

‘Yes, because—’ She fought the swimming feeling in her head.

‘When was this?’ he demanded. ‘After my phone calls from London, or before?’

‘You’d said when we were working together—and you said it more than once—that you never wanted kids. And you certainly used to enjoy your freedom. Some men find they can’t deal with—’

‘No!’

‘Yes! When we were interns, those three months in the paediatric unit. We saw some heart-rending things.’

‘All right, I remember. I was twenty-six years old. That’s a young man’s response, Janey, pretty unthinking in some areas, far too black and white. I’ll never have to see a child of mine go through this, because I’m damned sure now that I’m never having kids. As for enjoying my freedom, that’s just how you would phrase it, isn’t it? The negative connotation. We all needed a bit of a release in those days. I changed. I loved Frankie Jay like—When was this? When did she say this? After my phone calls?’

‘After, when she came back to Australia.’

‘When you already knew how desperate I was to get in touch with her and see my son.’

‘It’s easy to say. Especially on the phone from half a world away. That you’re desperate to get in touch. It’s the expected reaction. Casts you in a heroic—’

He swore. ‘You thought it was just a performance? Hell, I knew you never thought all that highly of me marrying your sister, but…’ His lips had gone white. ‘We worked together. I saved your backside a couple of times, and you even returned the favour. There was a degree of respect between us. Professional respect, at least. I thought. But that’s what you think I’m capable of.’

‘I wasn’t accustomed to think my own sister was telling lies. I didn’t know what to think or believe or feel. You know what she was like, Luke. She drew us all in.’

‘Captivating,’ he said bitterly. ‘She weaves these beautiful, magical webs around her life. You want to be in her world because it looks so sparkling and wonderful. You believe every word she tells you. She casts spells. Wait a minute…’ His face changed, and Janey knew he’d belatedly registered her use of that tell-tale word ‘was’—the past tense.

‘She died,’ she told him simply. She swallowed. Luke didn’t need to see her in tears. She’d shed enough of those when she’d first heard the news. ‘A week ago. No, ten days. Oh, hell, nearly two weeks, I’m still in such a fog.’

She sketched in the medical facts for him, then continued, ‘She was living at Mundarri, it’s a retreat. A commune, some people would call it. And they didn’t realise how ill she was until it was too late. Charles Wetherby knew of the place when I told him. Up in the rainforest. I don’t know if—’