One True Thing (14 page)

I guess Mum decided she had to come home after all. Harry is on the phone as always, but he's half-slumped in the lounge chair, his voice urgent and pleading. He glances up when I come in, waves distractedly, then tells whoever he's talking to that their position still stands. ‘No comment,' he says before hanging up.

No one says anything as I prop myself up against the doorjamb, too drained to speak. I'm not sure Mum knows I'm here as she talks to Christie about rearranging her schedule, but I'm in no hurry to change that.

‘You need to call a presser,' Sarah says, her head in her hands, like she's fighting to hold it together. Harry is nodding but doesn't contribute.

‘My answer is still no.'

Everyone in the room groans, their frustration almost physical.

‘We have to get ahead of it.' Sarah glances at Harry.

He shakes his head, sprawling dejectedly in the chair. ‘I don't know how many times I have to say it.'

‘We're already playing catch-up,' Christie says, her usual optimism nowhere in sight.

Mum sighs. ‘They'll write what they want to write.'

‘Doesn't mean we can't fight,' Sarah snaps.

Everyone stares at her, stunned by the blatant anger. Even for Sarah, it was pretty harsh.

‘Where's Dad?' I ask.

Mum looks shocked, then relieved. ‘Frankie! Where have you been? Everyone's been looking for you.'

I shrug. ‘You can't have looked too hard.'

Mum flinches. ‘There's a lot going on.' She adjusts her position, folds her arms across her chest.

‘Dad …?' I prompt.

‘We just got hold of him. He's driving back tomorrow. He hasn't seen the … latest.'

Everyone seems to be looking everywhere but at me or Mum, while Mum seems determined to drill a hole in my brain with her eyes alone.

‘Tell me what's going on,' I say, refusing to budge. ‘Tell me about the photos.'

Mum takes a deep breath. ‘The media have found
something about my past. It's not terrible but it's not good.'

I wait for her to continue, but Christie's phone rings. She hesitates, as though afraid to interrupt. ‘It's The Hatchet,' Christie says quietly.

Harry reaches across to take it but Mum intervenes, grabbing the phone from Christie. She covers the mouthpiece. ‘I need a few minutes here,' she tells me. ‘Bear with me, okay? Wait in your room. I'll be there in a minute.'

‘No rush,' I say, not bothering to keep the sneer out of my voice. ‘Whenever
you're
ready.'

‘Hail, Hail' is pounding through the stereo, loud enough that I can almost block out my thoughts. The TV news is muted in my bedroom. I've seen the same loop of photos of my mum and that man over and over, the same relentless ticker tape at the bottom of the screen.

It's almost twenty minutes later when Mum sticks her head in. I can barely stand to look at her.

‘Love Boat Captain' kicks in, mellow and smooth, filling the room like a warm bath. If I wasn't so angry, I would smile. When he was really little, Luke called Mum the Love Boat Captain, because, Luke informed us, she's all about love and guiding us to the clear, just like the song says.

Oh, the irony.

‘Hey.' She glances over her shoulder, then back at me. ‘This isn't how I imagined this conversation would go.' She smiles sadly at me.

‘Little late for that.'

Mum pushes a hand through her hair and shuts the door behind her. I turn off the music.

‘I guess I need to start with who he is.'

I nod, though a part of me doesn't want to know.

‘It's kind of a long story,' she says. ‘I wanted to sit down with you and Luke and your father.'

‘That's not going to happen, is it?'

She blinks, a trace of confusion there. ‘Did Dad say something?'

‘No,' I spit. ‘I mean, he's not here, is he?'

‘No …' Her voice trails off. ‘We can't wait for him. Not now.'

‘If he even wants to come back.'

Mum blanches, shocked. ‘He'll be here,' she says firmly. ‘As soon as he can.'

I snort my disgust. ‘Whatever that means.'

Mum stiffens. ‘You're not making this any easier.'

‘They're saying you're having an affair, Mum! Why
should
I make it easier?'

She flinches visibly, and I feel a twist in my chest. I want to hurt her, and then when I do it hurts
me
.

‘Just tell me what's going on.'

She sits at the end of my bed, bending to remove her shoes, placing them on the floor beneath her. She's gathering her thoughts. It's how she keeps her cool in The Zoo, and why she rarely screws up interviews. She'll fix her collar or straighten her cuff; it's a trick she's been using forever.

‘Mum!'

She sighs. ‘Okay, but there's a lot I don't know too. The things the media are saying … a lot of it – most of it – isn't true.'

‘What part don't you know exactly? The dude's name? Or if you're sleeping with him?'

Mum flinches. She presses her lips together. ‘No one's sleeping with anyone.'

‘Then who is he?'

‘It's not like that.' Mum says this with such a deep, heartfelt sadness that I suspect she's telling the truth. I remember Dad's voice last night when they were arguing. He meant it too. One of them is lying. I twist the quilt in my fingers.

Mum reaches for me but I pull away and fold my legs in tight, curling my whole body away from her.

‘His name is Colin.' Her voice cracks at his name. ‘That's what the orphanage named him.' She takes a deep breath, crosses her legs at the ankles and stares at her stockinged feet for a long moment. ‘He's my son.'

‘What?' I croak.

‘Colin is my son.' She looks up, waits.

I'd imagined a million different possibilities but not this. ‘What?' I say again.

‘It was before your dad. I was young.' She smiles gently now, blinking back tears. ‘About your age, actually.'

My age.
‘You gave him up?' I can't picture my mother – the woman who sat up with me during fevers, held my hand when I couldn't sleep, kissed me even when I was angry – giving up her
child
.

She clasps her hands in her lap, locking her fingers together. ‘There was a couple – a family – that couldn't have children, and they wanted a boy so much.' A tear slides down her face. She wipes it quickly. ‘I couldn't keep him. I was so young …'

‘What about his father?'

‘It didn't matter. It wouldn't work.' Mum flattens her skirt against her knees, smoothing out the creases. ‘We were both very young. I was stupid and naive. I thought I was helping them, helping the baby.' She draws in a ragged breath. ‘I can't tell you what it felt like,' she says, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘handing him over.'

‘But you did.'

She nods, swallows.

‘How
could
you?' I stare at my mother, this stranger. She's been lying to me my entire life. ‘You said he went to an orphanage.'

The pain on her face is so sharp I have to look away. ‘In Dublin.'

‘When you went to Ireland?'

‘The adoption fell through. The couple gave him back a few months later.'

I hug my legs tighter. ‘You didn't try to get him back?'

When she looks at me finally, her face blotchy and pallid, it takes a second to see the fury behind her expression. ‘I didn't know.'

‘They didn't notify you?' I ask, incredulous.

She doesn't respond immediately and I can see that she's carefully choosing her words. ‘
I
didn't know,' she says.

‘Gran?'

Mum hesitates. ‘Please. It's a lot, I understand. I should have told you years ago. I wish I had.'

‘Did Dad know?'

She sags against the wall, as if the weight of this secret has literally been lifted from her shoulders. She gives a small nod, then stiffens and wipes her eyes. ‘He wanted to tell you and Luke. I couldn't speak about it. I couldn't …
think
about it.' She looks up miserably. ‘He helped me through it, to move on. And then so much time passed.' A small sob escapes her. ‘For the longest time I couldn't even say his name.'

‘So everyone knows? Sarah, Harry … Christie?'

‘They do now. I wanted to tell you first – we've been looking for you.'

I shudder, thinking about where I was. ‘What about Luke?'

‘He's at your gran's.' Mum looks at her watch. ‘It's late now. I'll talk to him tomorrow. He doesn't really understand the worst of it. That's something, I suppose.'

It takes all my effort to keep my voice steady. ‘Do you want me to be there?' I'm angry and hurt and spinning. Everything – my entire world – is spinning. But Luke – he'll need me.

Mum's face crumples. She touches my cheek again, but this time I don't move. ‘No. I'll do it,' she says.

A thousand questions clamour to be answered, but where to start? I think about the photos. The public humiliation. The media.
Jake
.

The memory of us together in those moments before he told me the truth, that delicious terror of what might happen, the magic of feeling loved and then –

No. I have to separate them out, piece by piece – my family, the photos, the scandal. There's no room in this horror for Jake too. At least this bit, this small thing, can be fixed. I push Mum's hand away. ‘When will you go public?'

She smiles wanly. ‘I'm not.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I can't go public.'

‘That doesn't make sense. I mean, however you do it, you have to tell people he's not your –' I struggle to find the right word – ‘
lover
.' I pause, cringing at the crassness. ‘That he's your son.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘What? You have to! They're saying you're having an affair! Not just Seamus, but the newspapers too.'

Mum shakes her head. ‘Ridiculous, I know.'

‘No!' I say. ‘Not saying anything is ridiculous! You can fix this in one press conference and then it's gone.'

‘It will hardly be
gone
, Frankie.' She's frowning like it's perfectly clear what she's saying, even though it's the craziest thing I've heard. When she continues, it's barely above a whisper. ‘It's not my story to tell. It's up to Colin.'

Colin
. The other face in the photo, the one at the other end of this story – or at the beginning. I shake my head, not ready to deal with it. ‘What about Dad?'

‘I'm sorry, but that's between your dad and me. We both love you and we'll find a way to get through it.'

‘Bullshit!' I shout. ‘Bullshit you love us!' I stand up, unable to contain my frustration. ‘Not as much as you love your job! Everything you do is about bloody politics. Every. Single. Thing.'

She's standing beside me now, that perpetual calm evaporating. A part of me is triumphant I did that. The other part is terrified. I'm not sure which of the two pushes me to continue. ‘You don't deserve us. You don't deserve Dad. You're the most selfish person I've ever known and you deserve to be alone. It's what you want, anyway.'

I feel the sting of her palm against my cheek a full three seconds after impact. I count them, or I think I count them.

Mum stands there, examining her hand in a kind of horrified wonder. Two tears slide down her face. Then two more. Slowly, her body unfreezes as she raises that hand, gently this time, and presses it against my burning cheek. ‘Frankie?' Her voice is faint and broken.

I push her away.

She tries again, and I shove her this time, not hard, but enough that she doesn't try again. I barrel towards the door, pain and fury battling inside me. I open the door, willing her to leave.

She smooths her skirt across her knees, stands unsteadily, then walks out, her eyes not even trying to find mine.

The beach near Gran's is mostly empty. It's not quite school holidays yet and it's still a little mild for young families to spend too much time outside. The cool breeze has made a distinct shift to cold wind since I've been sitting on the sand waiting for Luke to finish his endless laps. It's kind of hard to create a lap on a beachfront but the McRae Council has conveniently placed some orange buoys in the water, marking out what looks a lot like the length of a pool, and it's enough guidance for an Olympian-in-the-making to carve out an hour or two each day in pursuit of that perfectly straight line.

I rub my arms, then stand up to jolt my body awake. The tingling feels good in that weird way.

I see Luke heading back to shore, and pick up his towel, shake it off and wrap him in it. His face is red from the effort, a smile cutting through. I take a second to help dry him off, and he lets me, even though only weeks ago he wouldn't have dreamt of it. That's how it goes, I guess. It's the little things we return to, the familiar things, even if it's just temporary.

‘Good swim?' I ask, giving his hair a last tug with the towel.

‘Pool's better.' He frowns, the glow of the swim already starting to fade.

It's been six days but I can still feel the sting of Mum's hand against my cheek. I didn't get out of bed all the next morning, ignored Mum's knocking until she fell silent. There was no way I was going to school. No way on earth. I was having breakfast, sometime after Mum left, when Dad walked in.

The TV was on, volume turned low. Dad watched from the doorway, almost in a trance. Wordlessly, we stared at the screen, maybe feeling the same thing, maybe feeling nothing at all. Numb shock still thickening my thoughts. The stream shifted to include file footage, stopping on the image of Dad scurrying into work, the old photo with the bad jacket, his face hidden as though in shame.

I saw his whole body transform before me. He squared his shoulders, pushed his glasses high on his nose and nodded, as though in answer to a question. Suddenly that lanky, thin frame seemed to fill the doorway.

The news moved on to something else, releasing us from its grip, and Dad turned to me as if I'd just walked in the room.

‘So you know about …' He cleared his throat. ‘The boy.'

‘Yeah. Some of it.'

‘Are you okay?'

I turned over my hands, palms up. ‘I don't know.'

He came forward and sat at the table beside me. ‘It's going to get rough,' he said. ‘Rougher than it is. I think you and your brother should disappear until things cool down.' He checked his watch. ‘I'll call your gran. She'll take you to the beach.'

‘What about you? Where will you go?'

He frowned as though I'd asked the world's dumbest question. ‘Why would I go anywhere?'

‘Because of what they're saying – how it looks.'

He blinked and wiped his glasses with a cloth. ‘When have I ever cared how something
looks
?'

‘She needs to tell them who he is. That he's not … what they think.'

‘I agree. She does.'

‘Then tell her!'

‘That's not the plan.'

‘You're just going to ignore it? She's ruining our family! Ruining everything!'

Dad's face flushed, fine lines edging his mouth. ‘We need to face this together. I understand this has been hard
for you. It will be for some time, I imagine. And I'm very sorry. But we don't quit in this family.'

I choked back the knot in my throat. ‘I can't believe you're taking her side!'

He stood up slowly, straightening with deliberate care. ‘There are no sides to this, Frankie. We're all in this together. I don't expect you to understand, but I hope you'll find a way to accept that.' He pushed his chair back into place. ‘Now go pack your stuff. I'll take care of Luke's.'

When Gran came to get us, Dad kissed me on the forehead and told me it would all work out, told me he'd call every day. And he has.

I haven't answered once.

Luke stands there, his teeth chattering, his lips blue.

‘Hungry?' I say.

We cross the road and I'm about to disappear into the cafe where Gran picks up her newspaper when Luke calls me further ahead. ‘This one,' he says, stopping outside a dirty shopfront with PCs painted on the glass.

I follow him inside. ‘They won't sell smoothies in a place like this,' I warn.

He ignores me and sits at a computer.

‘Seriously? You know what's out there, don't you? It's not good, the stuff they're saying.'

Despite Gran's efforts, it's impossible not to hear what's going on. Every time I leave the house I'm bombarded with images and overheard updates in every bayside street. Newspapers with photos of Mum and Colin greet my morning walk. I didn't even know his last name, I realised, until I saw it in the headlines in the window of the local milk bar. Leith. Colin Leith. And, to make it even more entertaining for everyone, apparently he's a petty criminal, which, Seamus Hale is quick to tell us, makes the story one of ‘national interest'. That's journalist-code meaning they can say what they like.

Jake's photos are the only ones of them together. There are still plenty of shots of Mum avoiding the media's questions, telling them that she has nothing to hide, trying to ‘redirect the conversation to policy, not politics'.
Getting back to the business of running Victoria.
I could puke every time I hear her trot out that tired, old line. She sounds like a robot.

There have been calls for her sacking by some of the more prominent bloggers – calls that even the most anti-Yummy Mummy media have largely rejected. The election is only a few weeks away. They'll get their chance then. But people want answers – about Mum and Colin's relationship, about Mum and Dad's marriage, about me and Luke.

It does seem to be slowly winding down, though. The debate continues, but without anything new to write it's
losing steam. Harry talks about the ‘two-week rule' – that even big stories die within a fortnight because there's always some new disaster or scandal to distract us. Today's front page is all about the apology to the forced-adoption kids – Mum's biggest win – with some of the reunions finally taking place. Her passion for this project suddenly makes a whole lot more sense to me.

None of this has slowed Seamus Hale. He's claiming he has hotel receipts proving Mum and Colin's ‘sleazy affair', which is ten kinds of gross and also, obviously, bullshit. But as Harry would say, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? And if I see another quote attributed to ‘sources close to the Premier' I'll scream. In fact, any reference to ‘Mummygate' – as the press has cheerfully nicknamed the destruction of my mother's career and my life – is likely to end in my head exploding. The irony of this nickname would be hilarious if I didn't feel sick every time I consider Mum's revelation.

‘I don't know if they'll have World of Minecraft online, Luke,' I say, after reading the instructions for how to buy internet time.

Luke takes control of the mouse, shaking me off. ‘I don't want to play Minecraft.'

I look at him and jokingly touch his forehead. ‘You're not dying, are you?'

He shakes his head grimly. ‘I want to see him. What he looks like.'

‘Who?'

‘Colin.'

My stomach drops. Maybe Luke isn't as oblivious as I thought. ‘You have seen him – on the telly.'

‘Not properly.' I take a seat beside Luke, preparing to protest.

‘He's my brother too,' he says.

And that's all it takes, because in all the craziness, all my anger and hurt, this is the one thing I hadn't registered. Colin is
our
half-brother,
our
blood. Family. ‘Fair enough.' I get up and pay for an hour, ordering us both hot chocolates.

I sit beside Luke. Even searching for ‘Colin Leith' offers an onslaught of images I don't want to see. Headlines and memes, spoofs and column inches dedicated to the destruction of the Mulvaney-Webb family. The election taking a back seat would have been a relief for me not long ago. And now? It's proof of the disaster at home.

‘There!' Luke says, stopping at a whole series of shots, my mother's humiliation captured on screen in flip-book animation.

That pained expression on Mum's face, the passion and hurt clear in her features, the young man turned away, dismissing her. There is something real and powerful happening between them, reflected in Mum's face, and
love
is the only word for it. I feel a rock forming hard in my chest.

The waiter comes over with our drinks and we both sit back as though caught doing something we shouldn't. When the waiter's gone, Luke and I return our attention to the photos, but I take charge of the mouse this time.

I pick one shot, opening the image to fill the screen. I study his profile, the shape of his jaw, the hard lines of his face. It's not a great shot, but I'm looking for something else here too, I realise. This version of the photo is full and seemingly untouched compared to the published ones I've seen on TV, most of them cropped or altered. There's more background, more black night behind them, and the lines of their faces are not as clear – the whites over-bright, and the edges a bit smudged. I take in the whole picture, the entrance of the Grand Marin, and the passing car in the background. The camel colour of Mum's coat, the shifting darkness in the space behind her, the imperfection in the corner of the screen –

I stop and zoom in. A heaviness in the pit of my belly.

There
.

‘Show me the other one,' Luke says, ‘where he's looking at the camera.'

I keep staring. Is it possible that I'd convinced myself Jake was lying? I must have, because it's like hearing his words all over again. The proof – the small, fine white line, a tiny imperfection that any normal person wouldn't even see if they weren't looking for it.

‘Frankie!'

I click through the series, one after another, after another. Each time I spy the same faint line, jagged and broken.

Unique, like a fingerprint.

‘You keep skipping it!' Luke cries.

I go back to the clearest shot of Colin, trying not to see the mark, willing it to disappear. But faint as it is, it's still there. A lightning bolt. Jake's lightning bolt.

‘He doesn't look like Mum,' Luke says sceptically.

I block out Jake's betrayal and focus on Colin. I blink back the tears that I refuse to shed. The blur fades, the picture sharpens.

‘It's hard to see,' I say slowly, ‘but it's there. The chin. The nose.' I stop, feel a skip of my heart.
My
nose. The one that looks different on Mum looks different on Colin too.

Luke grunts agreement. ‘Kind of reminds me of you.'

‘Yeah.' I let that idea sit a bit, feeling the weight of it. I scan the rest of his face. I wonder what his eyes look like. If they're the warm brown Mum has or Gran's hazel-green.

‘I wonder what he's like,' Luke whispers. ‘Do you think he likes swimming?'

‘I don't know, Luke. I mean, we don't know anything about him or if he knows about
us
. Or if he even wants to.'

I wait to see if that registers, but Luke seems too engrossed in the idea itself. He sits up, riveted to the picture of this big brother he never knew he had. I hadn't
given this the thought I should have. Colin didn't cause this or ask for it. He's innocent and stuck with this rancid mess as much as Luke and I are.

A strange heat flows through me – something that feels a lot like fear. And a little like hope too.