No word from Melody. I send her a quick text saying we’re on our way back from camping and asking if she found the festival.

My father’s navigating the snowy path when his phone tweets like a bird from inside the glove box.

‘Sky, can you pass it to me?’ He checks quickly. ‘That’s them confirming. Great.’

‘Who?’

‘My parents,’ he says, passing back the phone.

‘What?’

‘Your grandparents.’

A smile spreads across my face. ‘You could have told me that sooner! Really, there’s two of them?’ Mum and Paula lost their parents before I was born, so this isn’t a subject I know a lot about.

‘Sorry, I’m not doing a very good job, am I?’ He places his hand on my shoulder. ‘I was so nervous to meet you, to be honest, it just slipped my mind. We’ve been texting and they’re desperate to fly out here. I told them they have to wait so we can have a little time together first. But they’re planning to come next week.’

I’m still struggling to take in the fact I have grandparents. ‘What are their names? They want to see me? They’re flying here?’ I pelt him with questions. ‘Did they know about me before? Where do they live? Wait, do you have brothers and sisters?’

‘Only child. They are Miriam and Mike, from Chicago,’ he says. ‘You know, when I left Australia, dropped out, left Eli …’

Cheated on my mum with her best friend, and left me too, I don’t say.

‘… I joined a fishing fleet in Alaska, just to clear my head. Then I went back to Chicago. I didn’t know what to do. My father is a partner in a big law firm and I tried to fit into that life. But I was lost.’ He pauses and stares at the road.

I notice his hands on the wheel, fingernails bitten down just like mine. In fact, his hands look like mine, long and knobbly, and I stretch out my fingers to compare.

I’m about to comment when he continues. ‘My parents knew about your mum and gave me the funds so I could support her. I sent a cheque, but it was never deposited and then her phone number stopped working and she moved without leaving a new address. I tried to find her. Anyway,’ he takes a breath, ‘they’ve always wondered about you, and because I’m an only child, they don’t have any other grandchildren and—’

‘You’re a lawyer?’ Finally I know what he does.