‘Legally, yes, you are.’

‘Why not tell me now? It’s something terrible, isn’t it?’ She made herself ask the question. ‘Were you attacked by some man? Is that why you won’t tell me? I’m the result of a rape?’

Her mother hadn’t joked then. ‘I promise that wasn’t the case. I swear that it wasn’t.’

‘Then why wait until I’m eighteen?’

‘Because it’s complicated, sweetheart.’

‘I’m almost an adult. I can cope with complication. Can’t you tell me even one thing about him?’

‘One?’ Jeannie considered it. ‘All right. What do you want to know?’

Her mother’s answer shocked her. Where did she start? She wanted to know everything. His name. Where he was from. What he looked like. She finally settled on one. ‘Where did you meet him?’

Jeannie smiled. ‘Overseas, when I was travelling. And I described Australia in such a beguiling and magical way that he had to come and see it for himself.’

‘Where overseas?’

‘One question, not two.’

‘That’s not fair! You didn’t give me any detail at all. You didn’t say what country, or what city.’

‘I’m naughty, aren’t I? Incorrigible, really. That’s what Sister Teresa used to say. I asked her to spell it once. She threw a piece of chalk at me.’

Eliza sighed in exasperation. At sixteen, sighing was one of her favourite things to do. Her mother laughed, reached over and tweaked her cheeks.

‘You know the real reason why I haven’t told you the whole story before now, don’t you?’

‘Because you don’t know who my father is?’

‘Eliza!’ Her mother put her hand on her heart in mock outrage. ‘How dare you cast aspersions on my character? Don’t forget I was locked up in a Catholic boarding school for years. You’re lucky I didn’t run away the first time I saw a man, or you wouldn’t be here to bring me such joy and delight.’

‘So what is the real reason?’ She knew what her mother would say. She just wanted to hear it again.

‘Because I don’t want you to go looking for him. Because then I’d have to share you with him. And I’ve wanted you all to myself from the first moment I saw you.’

‘You share me with Maxie and Olivia.’

‘That’s different. That’s so they can spoil you senseless. Without singing my own praises too much, because, as you know, I place modesty as one of the highest human attributes, I played a blinder when it came to your godmothers. I might not have been able to deliver much to you in the way of loving grandparents, aunties and uncles, my darling, but I did my best in other ways.’

The year Eliza turned ten, her mother had told her sad news about her grandparents. They’d died two months before Eliza was born, in a car crash on the Hume Highway. It had been so tragic – three other people died in the four-vehicle pile-up caused by a truck driver falling asleep. Eliza clearly remembered the tears in her mother’s eyes.