“Call her,” I said.
Anna picked up the phone.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
“James,” she said quietly.
“She may not take this well.
She’s had forty years to build a life around a version of events that wasn’t true.
Finding out the truth now — it may not feel like a gift at first.”
“I know,” I said.
Anna pressed the call button and raised the phone to her ear.
It rang three times.
Then a woman’s voice answered — warm, slightly distracted, the voice of someone in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.
“Mum?
Everything okay?”
Anna looked at me across the table.
“Yes, sweetheart,” she said.
“But I need you to come over.
There’s someone here you need to meet.”
A silence on the line.
Then:
“Mum.
Who is it?”
