It was too late. She was going to tell him whether he wanted to hear it or not. ‘He said he never meant it to happen. He would never have done it sober. They’d been on the sofa together, laughing, talking, such relief. Feeling so euphoric together.’

Emmet never wanted to hear the word euphoric again either.

‘And then they kissed.’

Emmet was suddenly nauseous. He wanted to know who kissed who first, but he didn’t want to know. His mother was talking about his father and Jeannie. His dad and Jeannie, together, on that sofa he had sat on in Melbourne. Or in the room he had slept in? His bed?

His mother was still talking. ‘He said they both regretted it in the morning. Said it would never happen again. He swore to me that it didn’t. I believed him.’

‘When did he find out about the baby?’

‘He didn’t tell me all the details. Just that she’d let him know. She’d moved from Melbourne. Was in a country town, with a couple who took her in. She’d fallen out with her own parents years before, apparently. The couple told her that every baby had a mother and a father, and that they both deserved to know about each other. They urged her to at least let Hugh know. And when the time was right, to make sure her baby knew who her father was too.’ She took a breath. ‘He told me she rang the pub one night.’

‘He got a call like that and he didn’t tell you about it? You didn’t notice anything?’

‘I tried to remember if he’d ever come home in a state of shock. If he did, I don’t remember it. I think he only told me in the end because he believed she had died.’

‘Did he know Jeannie was dead?’

‘I don’t know. He said after he had the call about Eliza being killed, they never spoke again.’

There was a long silence in the room.

He broke it. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘What do you mean? We do nothing, of course.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Eliza will go away and we go on as before.’

‘We can’t unknow this, Ma. We can’t forget the fact we’ve discovered I have a sister. Dad had a daughter. Has a daughter. You have a stepdaughter.’

‘She’s nothing to me.’

‘She was Dad’s daughter.’

Sheila said nothing.

‘Did he have other affairs?’

‘This wasn’t an affair.’

‘Did he have other one-night stands?’ It sounded cruel, that term, but he needed to use it.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so?’