Mike would have been irritated to death if it had been any other woman badgering him like this. So why wasn’t he with Natalie?

Because you want to tell her, that’s why, supplied that inner voice that he’d been trying to ignore, but that would no longer stay silent. You want her to know what makes you tick. You want her to understand you.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he still felt compelled to say. ‘Okay, so you want to know about my parents. Not much I can tell you about my father. I never knew him. Never knew his name, either. My birth certificate says father unknown. I gather he was an American marine, here in Sydney on R and R.’

‘So your mother had an affair with a soldier and you were the result. That’s not so terrible, Mike.’

‘Look, let’s not whitewash anything here. Mum was a junkie,’ he told her harshly. ‘Had been since she was fifteen. Her parents kicked her out of home around that time. Mum used to pick up all sorts of men when she needed money for drugs. Obviously, that night she was too high to think of using protection. That’s how I came about.’

‘Oh. I see.’

Mike read quite a bit in those softly delivered words. None of it good. He’d known she’d be disgusted.

‘I told you it wasn’t a pretty story,’ he snapped.

‘It’s not an uncommon story, Mike. But it’s still a sad one. Sad for you and sad for your mum. Poor thing.’

‘Poor thing!’ He sat up abruptly and glared down at this woman who dared to have sympathy for his mother.

‘I was the one who was poor. Me and my poor little brother!’

‘Brother!’ Natalie sat up also, her hands lifting to push her hair back from her face. ‘You said during your interview that you didn’t have any brothers or sisters.’

‘Tony was my half-brother. Lord knows who his father was. Mum admitted she didn’t know. I reckon she only had us kids because we were good little money-spinners. Welfare pays single mums more for each child they have.’ His face twisted as he battled the tortured feelings that always welled up when he thought of his mother. ‘She was a hopeless mother. Nearly all of her money went on drugs. There was never much left for food, or clothes. Even worse, no money for medicine for Tony who was a sickly kid, right from the start.’

And there they were again, the memories of his boyhood, flooding back, bringing with them the dark demons that had haunted his dreams for years and that only went away when he was working, or having sex.

They’d been Mike’s two escapes for years. Work and sex.

But there was no escape for him this time.