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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Illegitimate

I came to in a wave of dizziness. I was on a massage table in a room with ambient lighting and indoor palms and ferns everywhere. Andrew the PT stood over me, looking concerned. I sat up and breathed deeply through a wave of nausea. As my vision began to clear I saw Julie hovering nervously.

“Are you okay, Mel?” she asked cautiously. I nodded, holding my forehead and refusing to look in her direction. I looked down at the floor, where the little boy was playing in the corner with some Lego bricks. That made me feel sick again.

“Andrew, can we have a moment?” I grated out. The trainer left hurriedly. I think he sensed that there was about to be one whopper of a showdown in the room.

Julie took a seat in a chair against the wall. I looked around – everywhere except at the child on the floor.

“This your office?” I asked, buying time while I figured out what I wanted to say. Julie nodded, looking around herself.

“It’s nice,” I commented.

“Mel, listen –” Julie started. I didn’t let her finish. So much for trying to say this diplomatically. I was just going to blurt out the first thing that came into my head.

“No, you listen to me ! I don’t like being lied to and it seems that both you and DJ … Joel … have been doing exactly that! You have a child together … he’s a fucking father !”

“Mel, just let me –”

“Let you what? I thought you two had never met before that day in the change room, but obviously I was wrong. I mean, I knew that you were sleeping with him, but I didn’t know that it has been going on for,” I turned to look at the child, “what, four years? You’re a decade older than him!

Oh my God, I can’t believe I slept with him!

I can’t believe I actually thought that there might be …

” I let that trail off. It was dangerous to go there, especially out loud.

Julie came and stood directly in front of me, staring me straight in the eyes. I pouted childishly at her.

“Have you said your piece, Mel?” Julie asked me in a stern-mum tone. I shrugged belligerently.

“Good,” she continued. “Now before I say anything, I want you to promise not to use the F word, or any other swear word in the presence of my son. You clear on that?”

I nodded grudgingly. I knew better than to swear in front of children. But I had a good excuse: I’d just had a pretty massive shock.

“Okay. I can tell you’re pretty mad right now and I totally understand that. But don’t blame Joel.”

I snorted. How could I not blame him? He should learn to keep his impressive penis in his pants. He’d told me he’d never had unprotected sex with anyone but me. Well, I was starting to realise how big a liar he was.

Julie gripped me by the shoulders.

“Seriously, Mel, don’t blame Joel. This isn’t his fault; I made him promise that he wouldn’t tell anyone. But I suppose you would have found out sooner or later, so we may as well just come clean now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘You would have found out sooner or later’ ? I shouldn’t have to find out like this! I shouldn’t have to deal with this! He should have been honest with me before we … did you know that we slept together?”

“Yes, I knew. He told me.”

I gaped. So, he talked about his sex life with the mother of his child? His sex life with other women? That just totally creeped me out.

“Mel, I made Joel promise not to tell anyone because it’s not his secret to tell. It’s mine.”

I sneered at her. “It’s his too! Does the kid call him Daddy?”

Something I said must have made Julie snap, because she glared at me, eyes ablaze. “ Shaun has a name, and no, he doesn’t call Joel ‘Daddy’. Why would I teach him to call Joel that?”

I shrugged, returning her gaze with a glare of my own. “What, so you’d rather your son grew up not knowing who his father is?” I was disgusted, and I was pretty sure that DJH wouldn’t want that either.

Julie looked away, towards the child still mashing his Lego blocks together.

“It wouldn’t be right to let Shaun think of Joel as his dad.” She turned back to me. “Mel, Joel’s not Shaun’s father.”

Relief flooded me, so intense that I nearly passed out again. “Joel’s not the father?” I repeated, stunned. Julie shook her head.

“No. Shaun’s never going to know his father.”

I breathed through the feeling of my heart beating vitally in my chest once more.

“What, don’t you know who the father is?”

“I know exactly who the father is, but he’s dead, so of course Shaun’s not going to know him. Mel, Steve was Shaun’s father.”

My vision blurred. “Woah. Okay, just give me a minute to process this. Steve? As in Steve Herbert?”

Julie nodded.

I rubbed at my temples. “Does Joel know?” I whispered. Julie nodded again. I swallowed, trying to make my mouth feel less dry.

“Does Sandra know?”

Julie looked away. I had my answer right there.

“I can’t believe that he cheated on her. I can’t believe that you … Julie, why? You knew he was married!”

She turned back to me suddenly, tears in her eyes.

“I loved him, Mel! I was in love with him. I know it was stupid and wrong, and don’t think that I don’t regret every day what I’ve done.

But Mel, love isn’t something that’s rational.

You can’t pick and choose who you fall in love with.

I made a stupid decision because of love. ”

I pursed my lips. Her words were too close for comfort for me, and I didn’t want to let my mind follow that path.

“So, Steve knew that he had a child with you?” I asked.

Julie nodded. “He wouldn’t meet Shaun or openly acknowledge he was the father, but he set up a trust which regularly deposited money into an account that I could access, so that he felt like he was contributing to raising Shaun. I don’t know how he kept it from Sandra.”

My eyebrows knitted together. “But now he’s … gone. So how does the trust work now? Wouldn’t those sorts of things have been frozen when Steve died?”

Julie shook her head. “Don’t ask me the ins and outs of it, because I have no idea. All I know is that the trust is under Joel’s control now. He’s making sure that there continues to be money available for Shaun.”

Holy fuck. The gravity of the situation really hit me then. Joel had an illegitimate half-brother and he was now responsible financially for that child. A child that Sandra didn’t know her husband had fathered to Julie.

“How long has Joel known about this?” I asked quietly.

“Since the Australian Open. Since that night that we spent together.”

I swallowed the bile that was rising in my throat. “So, you were banging the father, but you decided to upgrade to the son? You’ve been having sex with your son’s brother ?” I looked away, disgusted.

Julie looked askance at me. “I’ve never slept with Joel. What on earth gave you that idea?”

I pressed my lips together so she wouldn’t see how shocked I was. Another lie he’d told me.

“I wanted Joel to meet his brother. I knew he was coming to Melbourne for the Open. Steve tried to make me promise not to tell him, but I was adamant – Joel should know he has a brother and Shaun deserves to know he has one too. Steve was … unhappy about it, to say the least. ”

I recalled the way Julie had snapped at Steve the day I sprained my ankle. At the time I’d just thought she was angry at him for being unreasonable about what I could safely do, but clearly there had been so much else going on that I’d had no idea about.

“Joel gave me the perfect opportunity, when he asked to take me out that night.”

“So, you let Joel think you were DTF to get him on the hook, and then you dropped the brother bombshell on him? Why are you making him do this? Lie to his own mother, look after a child that isn’t even his ! Don’t you feel a little guilty about all this?”

Julie’s shoulders slumped. “Of course I do. I told him that I didn’t expect anything from him, but he insisted on continuing his father’s agreement.

He helped me to move up here so that he could take a more active role in Shaun’s life.

” She looked at me earnestly then. “Mel, he’s a really decent guy.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say he’s one of the nicest, most genuine people I’ve ever met. ”

I met her eyes for a split second, before looking away.

“Yeah, well, if you like him so much, why aren’t you together – he was more than happy to let me think that was the case.”

“Well, aside from the fact that it would be wildly inappropriate, and I’m not attracted to him in that way … he’s in love with someone else.”

I looked up at her, desperate for more information, but Julie’s face had closed down, and I knew that I wouldn’t get anything more out of her on that side of things. I tried another line of questioning.

“How did Joel take it? When he found out I mean. I guess it would have been a shock. I mean, he had every intention of sleeping with you that night, and instead he finds out his dad got there first.”

Julie had the grace to look ashamed. “I really don’t think he ever planned to sleep with me.

He certainly didn’t try to make a move, and I didn’t tell him about Shaun until after we’d had dinner and drinks and coffee.

I didn’t tell him until we got back to my place, and I couldn’t avoid it any longer, because the evidence was right there. ”

She looked down at Shaun with a loving expression .

“Well, if he wasn’t making any moves, what on earth did you talk about all evening?” I asked.

Julie turned back to me, with a wry expression on her face. “You, Mel. We talked about you.”

I reeled. “Me? Why?”

Julie smiled at me. “Joel wanted to know how best to rehabilitate your ankle. What exercises to work on, how long it needed to be rested. He was very focussed on making sure you got better.”

Well, that made sense. He had just been appointed my trainer at that point, so I guess he was just doing his job.

“So, when he found out, what happened?” I prompted, hoping that Julie’s talkative mood would continue until all the questions swirling in my head had been answered.