Floss and Norm lived in the centre of town, one street back from the Lawsons’. Floss was waiting for me on the porch, so Alex must have warned her. I ran across the lawn, throwing myself into her arms.
“Hello, love,” she said, hugging me tightly. “Let’s go inside and make some tea.”
I clung to her as we walked through the small front room into the tiny kitchen. “Alex is my father,” I blurted.
“I know, love,” she said, like it wasn’t all bad.
I surprised myself by crying. I thought I was all cried out. Floss passed me a big box of tissues and I grabbed a wad.
“Donna Blake was Alex’s mum. She was a good friend of mine. I’d known her for years but I hadn’t seen her since Alex was a boy,” she explained. “One day she turned up on my doorstep, all the way from Sydney with a tiny baby, just a few months old.”
“Where was Alex?”
“Working up north on a fishing boat. I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was a young man. It made sense for him to be out on his own,” she said, shrugging. “She said that the baby was her daughter, but something wasn’t right.”
“Why?”
“Donna had her demons,” she said gently. “She was a big drinker. I knew after just a few days that it had completely taken over her life. You were perfect in every way, certainly not the product of an alcoholic mother.”
“Alex left me with her?” I asked, horrified at his carelessness.
“No,” she replied emphatically. “Your mother relinquished custody to Alex when you were born. He was going it alone and struggling financially. He was offered a week of work and he had to take it, leaving you with Donna.” I scowled at the table, pretending to dab my eyes with the tissues to hide my disgust. Floss laid her hand on mine. “He was desperate, Charli. He had no idea she packed you up and brought you here. When the poor boy got home, you were gone. For nearly a month he had no idea where you were.”
“How did he find me?”
“I tracked him down.” She paused. “He arrived in town the very next day.”
“Why didn’t he set the record straight? Why didn’t he just tell people I was his?”
Floss sighed. “Donna was his mother. She’d created this huge fairy-tale about you, telling a million lies. Alex never knew his father, not even his name. He felt protective of his mum – even after what she’d done. So he went along with it, settling in as best he could on the pretence of being your brother. I took care of you during the day so Alex could work. Donna slipped deeper into drink. Alex was forever dragging her out of the pub, paying her debts, enduring her antics.”
“That’s so awful,” I gulped
“She was his mother, Charli,” Floss said tenderly. “He looked after her for years, hoping that she’d eventually conquer the drink.”
“But she never did,” I guessed.
Floss’s eyes were shiny with tears. “She went on a huge bender one day and just went to sleep. She had a massive stroke. She was just forty-one,” she said, sounding puzzled, like she still had trouble wrapping her head around it.
The hazy recollections of the woman who sang to me were of my grandmother. I’d remembered nursery rhymes and lullabies – not drunken tunes crooned at ten in the morning. How had I got it so wrong? Poor Alex never had a chance.
“Life got much better for the two of you after that. He scraped enough money together to buy the café. A year later he bought the house. He never intentionally lied to you, love. He’s been fighting for you since the day you were born. I hope you can see that.”
“What happened to my mother? Who is my mother?”
“I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask Alex.”
I groaned. It was all too hard.
Floss leaned over. “I’ve seen what that man has endured over the years, Charli. Anything less than total understanding from you will not be tolerated. Do you understand?”
“Would taking a few days out to get my head around it all be tolerable?” My voice was tiny, implying I was scared of her. Perhaps I was.