'Well,' she said in a voice which was frail, yet years younger than she looked. 'I'm not really dressed for visitors, but it's lovely to meet you. And please call me Daphne. You know, I've heard such a lot about you.'
'You have?'
'Of course. You're a very talented young man by the sounds of it. Philadelphia's told me how you like to rule the roost. Would you like a cup of tea?'
He somehow managed to nod while digesting that brief and unexpected character sketch. 'Thank you.'
She shuffled her way into the small kitchen and made for the kettle. 'I'm sorry to take so long to answer the door. I'm not as fast as I used to be.'
He looked at her, struggling with the walking stick to move around, wincing with the effort every few steps and trying unsuccessfully to mask the pain.
'Please,' he said, sidestepping her. 'I'm the one interrupting you; let me get it. Why don't you sit down?'
She looked up at him, surprised, as if his offer of help was the last thing she'd expected-just what had Philly told her?-before a smile illuminated her gaunt face. 'Thank you. I could do with a sit down even though that seems to be all I do these days.' She showed him where everything was and with a sigh eased herself into an armchair while he made the tea.
'I must thank you for sending Marjorie while Philadelphia was away,' she said when Damien placed their tea on the table and sat down opposite. 'She was a wonderful companion.'
For a moment he scrabbled to get his head around who she was talking about. Then he realised. The trip to the Gold Coast-the nurse he'd had Enid organise. 'It was no trouble,' he said, casting his mind over the unwashed breakfast dishes in the sink, the picked over lunch tray waiting on the bench. It was clear Daphne could do with a little help every day.
'How do you manage here, by yourself, during the day?'
'Oh, we get by. Philadelphia gets me organised in the mornings and fixes me a tray for lunch.' She sipped at her tea. 'If I have a good day I try to start dinner to help her when she comes home from work, though sometimes it doesn't quite work that way.'
He nodded blankly, his mind working overtime. What the hell was Philly thinking? This was no way to live, leaving her mother alone all day out here in the suburbs, while she worked at least twenty kilometres away in the city. And yet she'd turned down his offer of a house with carers and laid on help, and she'd turned it down flat. Did she think she was managing here any better than he could provide for them? If so, she was kidding herself.
Would her mother have found his offer so unattractive? Casting an eye around the simply decorated room, neat and tidy but long overdue for repainting and renovation at the very least, he doubted it.
But this wasn't just about Philly and her mother now. If she thought for a moment he would let her bring up his child in such circumstances, then she could think again.
'You must find things very difficult.'
'It's harder for Philadelphia. She's my only child now.' She looked up, the pain of loss in her eyes unmistakable. 'Did you know about … ?'
He nodded. 'Yes, I heard.' He could almost feel her loss reach out to encompass him, a thick, tangible thing. Or was it simply that his own loss was now so close to the surface that he could just about taste it?
Philly had done that. Had brought these feelings to the surface, feelings that were better off left to moulder deep down below.
He swallowed, as if that would bury these unwanted feelings deeper again. He knew loss just as surely as did the wasted woman sitting opposite him. Loss. Such a tiny word yet it was so big-larger and more encompassing than anything anyone could ever warn you about. And if you couldn't deal with it, tuck it away and bury it in the back of your mind, it could take over your life.
So he'd buried it. Deep down inside him, concealing the site under a ton of concrete will. Until today. He groaned inwardly.
Oh, hell, yes, he knew loss.
'That must have been terrible for you,' he said.
Her eyes misted, a silent affirmation. 'And of course that means that Philadelphia has to do it all, I'm afraid. She's stuck with me and she knows I want to stay at home as long as possible.'
'As long as possible?'
She put her cup down and sighed. 'I will have to move into a hospice in a few months the doctors say-there's nothing else for it. Philadelphia won't be able to look after me soon and I can't expect her to. So if you're worried about me getting in the way of her work … ? I imagine that's why you're here?'
She was dying. It should have been clear from the moment she opened the door-her bird-like frame, her gaunt features and pained walk. It should have been clear. But then he'd had plenty of experience in ignoring death, shoving it aside in his quest to reach the top.
She was dying and she thought he was here to find out whether Philly would still make a good employee.
'No,' he said, bursting out of the chair. 'No, that's not why I'm here.'
He paced around the small room, trying to banish the nervous tension invading his senses. But why was he here? What did he hope to achieve? Certainly something more than this sense of hopelessness and despair, this struggle for an answer to questions he couldn't even frame-something that would answer this desperate need he couldn't even put words to.
He stopped beside a display of photographs assembled along the mantle. The history of a family, laid out before his eyes. A wedding photograph, fading with age, showing a young Daphne and her late husband on their wedding day, smiling for the camera, happy and hopeful for the future. A photograph of the young family with two children, a boy-just a toddler-and his older sister, maybe six or seven years old, with pigtails and wearing a frilly dress.
Philly.
Just a skinny kid then, but there was no mistaking her eyes and that chin, defiant and serious even back then.
And now she was a woman. Every part a woman, as this morning's heated passion had attested. What drove her then, to deny him? Three times she'd evaded his reach. Three times she'd slipped away from him. The Christmas party when she'd stolen away, that night at the Gold Coast when she'd pushed him from her room, and today, when he'd all but offered her luxury on a platter. Still she seemed to want no part of him.
But he would have her. He'd never failed at anything in his life. Anything he'd wanted he'd strived for and achieved. Philly would be no exception.
He dragged his eyes away to the graduation photographs, the two children all grown up and about to set the world aflame. Another wedding photograph, more recent, no doubt Monty with his new bride, smiling into each other's eyes, totally oblivious to the camera. And the last one, another young family, a tiny baby cradled in its proud parents' arms.
He swallowed as he continued to stare, feeling swamped by the history, the tragedy, but most of all by the sheer force of emotion contained in the photographs so lovingly arranged on the mantle. Those most wonderful moments in a family's history recorded-disparate images of a particular moment of time-together making up a snapshot of a family's history, a pictorial chronology.
For some reason the picture of the baby drew him, its doll-like quality, the sprinkling of downy hair on its head and its surprisingly long fingers poking out from beneath its blanket as it slept.
He didn't know the first thing about babies. He'd never wanted to know. But now there was this overwhelming sense of fascination. A door had been opened to him and there was a whole new world to explore. Philly had opened that door.
'That's little Thomas,' Daphne said, her voice soft and heavy with sorrow. 'He would have turned two just last week. I can't help but think what he'd be up to now if he were still alive. No doubt toddling about everywhere, getting into everything.'
He looked over his shoulder. She was so small and weak, her sadness so much a part of her. 'You must miss them very much.'
Her nod was no more than a tilt of her head, even her gaze still fixed on the floor in front of her. 'I do, but then there's something so special about babies,' she said, as he turned back to the photograph. 'I think that's almost what I miss most-the wonder of new life, the hope for the future. It's too late for me to experience that again now.'
She sighed and reached for a handkerchief to blot the dampness from her eyes. 'Oh, just listen to me,' she croaked, almost to herself, 'rambling on like a silly old woman.'
He put the photograph down and turned, barely noticing her words as what she'd said earlier slowly permeated his consciousness.
She didn't know.
Philly hadn't told her.
Why on earth wouldn't she tell her own mother about the baby? Couldn't she see how much it would mean to her?