on a bike with no brakes?’
‘I guess so,’ Marc said and Ellie saw a faint smile in response. ‘Only in this case we didn’t break our legs. A war started in my country. A big one. There were many, many people killed and more hurt. And your grandma was ill here. So your mum and I had to part.’
‘You didn’t write to me.’
‘No,’ Marc said softly and Ellie thought, Here it comes.
But it didn’t.
‘I didn’t write,’ Marc continued. ‘And I’m very, very sorry.’
And, just like that, he’d let her off the hook. Of all the things he could have said, the anger, the blame...
He could be telling Felix it was his mother’s fault, his mother’s deception. Instead of which, he was simply apologising.
‘When I left I didn’t know your mother was pregnant,’ Marc said. ‘And when she told me, I was in the middle of a war zone, helping people survive. But I should have come back for you and I’m very sorry I didn’t.’
All the questions Felix had been firing at her had been becoming increasingly belligerent. Increasingly angry.
She’d known that she’d have to face that anger some time. Now, Marc had taken it all on himself. He’d let her off the hook.
She’d been staring into her water glass sightlessly, numbly. Now she looked up and met his gaze.
Not quite. She wasn’t off the hook. There were still questions she had to answer. Accusations to face.
But not from her son. For that, at least, she was so grateful she could weep.
‘So, the wheelchair,’ Marc said, and she thought, He hasn’t asked it until now. That was a gift in itself. For most people it was the obvious focus, and now he asked. ‘What’s the matter with your leg?’ And it was a simple follow-up on the preceding conversation. ‘That was the bike, huh? Bad break?’
Felix hated the questions. The sympathy. The constant probing from a small community. ‘How are the feet? Does it hurt? Oh, you poor little boy...’
Felix routinely reacted either by pretending he hadn’t heard or by an angry brush-off. Now, though, for some reason he faced the question head-on.
‘I was born with club feet,’ he told Marc. ‘Talipes equinovarus. You know about it?’
‘I do,’ Marc told him. ‘Rotten luck. Both feet?’
‘Yeah, but the left’s worse than the right. I had to have operations and wear braces for years and now the right one’s almost normal. But my left leg won’t stay in position and it’s been shorter than the right one. Then I broke it and the surgeon in Sydney said let’s go for it and see if we can get a really good cure for the foot as well as for my leg. So it was a big operation and I’m in a wheelchair for another two weeks and then braces again for a bit. But Mum reckons it should be the last thing. Won’t it, Mum?’
‘We hope so.’ Ellie was having trouble getting her voice to work. Somehow she had to make things normal.
As if they could ever be normal again.
She had to try, but she had a moment’s grace. It was well past Felix’s bedtime. ‘You have school in the morning,’ she managed. ‘Bed.’
‘You weren’t at school today?’ Marc asked.
‘The doctor who did my leg had a clinic at Wollongong,’ Felix told him. ‘Mum and I drove down early and got the first appointment. We only just got back when the accident happened.’
‘Which is why you need to go to bed now,’ Ellie said, struggling to sound firm.
‘But you’ll stay?’ Felix looked anxiously at Marc. ‘You’ll be here when I get home from school tomorrow?’
‘I’m booked into the motel.’
‘So you will be here.’
Marc met her gaze and held it. Questions were asked in that look. Questions she had no hope of answering.
But obviously Marc was more in charge of the situation than she was. He knew what he was here for, even if she didn’t.
‘Yes, Felix, I will.’
‘Cool,’ Felix told him. ‘I might bring my mate to meet you. He’s always ragging me about not having a dad. You want to meet him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Cool,’ Felix said again and yawned.
‘You did a great job today, by the way,’ Marc told him and Ellie found herself flushing. You compliment my kid, you compliment me. It shouldn’t happen like that but it did. And then Marc added, ‘Both of you.’
‘You didn’t do too badly yourself,’ Ellie muttered. She could feel herself blushing but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. ‘Are you heading back to the motel now?’
‘In a while,’ Marc told her. ‘You and I need to talk.’
‘Felix and I usually read. His leg often aches and reading helps him sleep.’
‘Would you mind if I read to my son tonight?’
And what was she to say to that?
My son.
Her world had changed.
* * *
Felix was obviously exhausted, too tired to ask any more questions but, under instructions, Marc sat on his bed and read. This wasn’t a storybook, though. What he and Ellie were obviously halfway through was a manual on the inner workings of the Baby Austin—a British car built between nineteen-twenty-two and nineteen-thirty-nine.
The back axles of spiral bevel type with ratios between 4.4.1 and 4.6.1 5.6:1. A short torque tube runs forward from the differential housing to a bearing and bracket on the rear axle cross member...
It was enough to put anyone to sleep, Marc thought, but as he read Felix snuggled down in his bedclothes and his eyes turned dreamy.
‘One day I’m going to find one and do her up,’ he whispered. ‘Do you know anything about cars?’
‘A bit. I don’t know much about short torque tubes.’
‘But you could find out about them with me,’ Felix whispered. ‘Wouldn’t that be cool?’
And then his eyes closed and he was asleep.
For a few moments Marc didn’t move. He sat looking down at the sleeping child.
He had a son.
A kid who coped with club feet with courage. A kid who guarded doors with crutches. A kid who wanted to introduce his dad to his mate and who needed help with something called short torque
