Long-Lost Son Read online

  ‘To be honest, though,’ Georgie said gently, ‘getting back to the issue of where you’re staying, we’re encouraging people to evacuate if they can. Resources are pretty stretched. I think the Golden Palm will be up and running in a couple of days. It’s not exactly five-star, but they only had minor damage and they’re working on getting one block of rooms back into a fit state for guests. There’s the Athina, too, but that’ll be full. They’ve just had a big wedding. You’re from Darwin?’

  ‘I don’t know where I’m from right now.’ Janey closed her eyes. ‘The moon?’

  The thought of finding a place to stay, tracking down Luke, presenting him with his son and saying something like, Do you want him? Alice said you didn’t, but she’s gone now, and I’m wondering if that might make you change your mind. After all, you are the only father he’s got…

  Exhausting.

  Too hard.

  She’d asked someone about Luke, but maybe no one had passed the message on. Or, no, with services in the whole region so strapped, he’d be working around the clock, playing the hero.

  He had a nice line in heroic behaviour. People loved the casual humour, the god-like reassurances and the warm fire in his amber-brown eyes, and immediately believed in him. She knew what he was like…or had known once…He wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to show off in all this chaos. Which was good, because she didn’t have the energy for their confrontation just yet.

  ‘Honey, we might take you back to play with Max, OK?’ she heard Georgie say. ‘Auntie Janey needs to rest for a while now.’

  He stood there looking at her for a moment, frowning, giving off that same sense that he was about to speak, that the words were just crammed in his mouth bursting to come out, but as usual he stayed silent.

  ‘Bye, sweetheart,’ she managed, then the sleepy fog stole over her brain again, and hours passed.

  The next time she woke up, her head had cleared, her stomach wanted food, her limbs were ready for a good stretch and altogether she felt about a hundred years better.

  Until she became aware of the quiet masculine presence in the chair beside her bed—dark hair, strong shoulders, genuine, implacable fatigue written all over him—and realised it was Luke.

  CHAPTER TWO

  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—’

  ‘Yes, spiritual healing, or something. I guess that fits. She’d begun to get heavily involved in that sort of thing in England before she disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Just went off the grid, Janey. Do you think I didn’t try every avenue I could think of to track her down when she took Frankie Jay?’ His whole face blazed, and she could see the way his tightly held fists made his forearms knot with muscle. ‘She did it deliberately, no matter what she might have told you. That would have been when she changed their names, not when she got to the rainforest place, Mundarri. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she changed them more than once. Poor kid, probably doesn’t know what he wants to be called. It wasn’t me. I wanted our marriage. To try and save it, for his sake. I wanted to be a good father. She sabotaged everything.’

  ‘Luke—’

  ‘I don’t use that word lightly, and the only reason I never spoke of it in those terms when I called you from London was that I thought if I sounded too harsh about her you wouldn’t tell me where she was.’

  ‘Why didn’t you try again when you came back to Australia? I didn’t even know you were back in the country until I found your contact details amongst Alice’s things. She must have kept track of you.’

  ‘While making damned sure I couldn’t trace her. I gave up, that was why I didn’t make contact with you or your parents when I got back. Maybe I shouldn’t have given up. But it was killing me. I didn’t get a senior fellowship in the US that I wanted, because of it. I was too distracted, trying to find my wife and child. The fellowship went to someone else, and deservedly so, because I hadn’t been giving a hundred per cent and I couldn’t fake it any more.’

  Luke Bresciano? Unable to fake it?

  Again, she let too much show on her face.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, OK? I did used to fake it sometimes, when we were interns.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  ‘OK, a lot. Never the actual medicine, but the bedside manner, the confidence, sure! It was a survival strategy. We all had them. Apparently you weren’t impressed with mine.’

  ‘Finish the story, Luke.’

  ‘I came home to Australia instead. I knew my son was at least safe, that Alice loved him. I decided that would have to be enough, the abstract knowing. I’m not the first parent to have lived through losing a child completely when a marriage breaks down—to have a son or daughter or a whole family just vanish out of your life, and your ex to go to incredibly extreme measures to deprive you of any contact. I joined a support group for a while, but some of the bitterness and desperation I saw in those other parents…No. For sheer survival I had to turn my back and start again.’

  ‘Oh, Luke…’ She slumped against the raised upper half of the hospital bed, her energy completely drained. Her hands were actually shaking, cold despite the tropical heat.

  He reached out and covered her clammy fingers with his warm palm. Instinctively, she closed her eyes. The contact felt good, far better than she would have expected. It oriented something in her universe, and she didn’t stop to think if that might be in any way dangerous.

  Couldn’t stop to think.

  Didn’t have any thought power left.

  ‘This is too exhausting for you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be talking about it now.’

  ‘We had to. How could we have put it off? What would we have said instead?’

  ‘Where is he? Will you let me see him?’

  ‘Let you see him?’ Her eyes flew open, she tried to sit up and saw stars.

  His voice seemed to come from a distance. ‘Your sister didn’t let me, for over five years. Who has legal custody of him now?’

  ‘I do, but it’s temporary.’

  ‘Your parents…?’

  ‘Mum’s not well. Dad’s struggling, taking care of her. Alice’s death has hit them hard. They couldn’t manage a child now. They want me to have him, but—’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Oh, I do, with all my heart, but I thought you should have a say in it, Luke.’ He was still holding her hand. Instinctively, she squeezed it. ‘That you should have him, if you want him. I—I do trust that your heart’s in the right place.’

  He’d never been bad, after all. Just because she hadn’t liked him, just because he’d made her spit chips every time they met, and she had thought him so arrogant and immature…She wouldn’t let personal feelings win out over the objective realities of right and wrong. He’d be a good father, if he wanted to be.

  ‘All the stuff that happened with you and Alice…’ she said, ‘a bad marriage can bring out the worst in people.’

  ‘We were never right for each other. We dazzled each other at first, but I wouldn’t want those stars in my eyes again.’

  ‘Luke, if you want Felixx…Frankie Jay…then he’s yours. He has to be. It’s the right thing. That’s why I came to Crocodile Creek.’

  Approaching the doctors’ house where he’d lived for almost five months, Luke saw the place as if he’d never seen it before.

  Because now, since Sunday night, his child had been here.

  He’d left Janey to rest, knowing there were still a million things to say but that she was too exhausted for either of them to do any more talking at this point. In any case, the urgency to see his son was suddenly shattering.

  It pulled him like a magnet, made him feel ill and dizzy. He couldn’t live a minute longer if he didn’t see his boy. A part of him still believed it would all turn out to be some nightmare mistake and the child wouldn’t be his at all.

  ‘He’s sleeping on a camp stretcher o
n the floor in Emily’s room,’ Charles had told him a few minutes ago. ‘Has been for the past two nights. I guess you really have been bedding down in the A and E department.’

  ‘Yes. When I’ve slept at all.’

  The whole town was in chaos. With the bus crash and cyclone barging in on their wedding reception three nights ago, Emily and Mike Poulos should have been miles away on their honeymoon by this time but instead they’d stayed to help. They’d had no choice in the matter, and it might be days longer before they could easily be spared and before regular commercial flights resumed.

  The short snatches of time that Emily and her new husband did manage to spend together, they spent over at the Athina Hotel, in a room that was too rain-damaged for real hotel guests, with its sodden carpet ripped up, but quite acceptable to a couple of battle-weary doctors who happened to be newly married and madly in love.

  Which meant that Emily’s room had been available for Max and Frankie Jay.

  I am not calling him by the name Alice used when she stole him away.

  ‘Although I’m not sure what he’d be doing right now,’ Charles had continued. ‘Eating, probably. He’s developed quite an appetite since we got hold of him.’

  And when Luke tiptoed up the steps and into the big communal kitchen with his heart thudding right up in his throat, there he was. His son. Eating an enormous hamburger with everything, half of which—fried egg, beetroot slice, grated carrot, pineapple ring and cheese—was sliding out the sides and back onto the plate.

  Frankie Jay had beetroot juice and burger bun crumbs smeared all over his face, and was tackling with serious attention the issue of how to get the fallen bits of hamburger filling back into his mouth. Via reinserting them into the bun? Or should he take a more direct route?

  Luke simply stood and watched, totally overwhelmed, seeing bits of himself, bits of Alice and Janey and four grandparents and finally just the new, unique being that wasn’t bits of anybody else but was just Frankie Jay. Dark hair, brown eyes, scratches and mosquito bites on his skin, freckles across his nose, wiry little limbs.

  Georgie saw him in the doorway first, and she must already have been briefed by Charles as she raised her eyebrows in a question that said, Shall I let him know you’re here?