Echo Profile

"You can tell yourself you’re not looking for answers, but the second you open the search bar—you already are."

The shower had been too hot, the way I always had it when I needed to think. Or not think. The distinction had become unclear somewhere around the time the water started scalding my shoulders.

Steam filled the cramped bathroom until I could barely see the mirror, the glass fogged completely, my own reflection erased. Water drummed against the fibreglass base that was cracked in three places—one near the drain, one by my left foot, one climbing up the side like a frozen lightning bolt—and probably had been since before we moved in.

I stood under the spray for longer than we could afford.

The water bill was already astronomical, one of those things Mum worried about quietly, checking the meter every few days like it might somehow lie to her if she caught it by surprise. But I couldn't make myself turn it off. The heat worked into my shoulders, my back, the muscles that ached from lifting boxes all day. Trying to wash away the weird knot that had been sitting in my chest since this morning.

Jamie Greyson.

The name wouldn't leave me alone.

It had been there all day, under everything else—under Mrs Woolley and her goats nibbling at my shoelaces, under Luke Smith and his ridiculous tent order and his yapping Shih Tzus, under the small talk with Mum over chicken schnitzel that had tasted like guilt and obligation. Just sitting there. Waiting. A splinter I couldn't reach, lodged somewhere behind my ribs.

When the water finally started running cold—our hot water system had always been temperamental, a second-hand unit that probably should have been replaced years ago—I turned it off and stood there dripping for a moment, listening.

The house was quiet. Mum had gone to bed about half an hour ago. I'd heard her door close, heard the creak of her bedsprings as she settled in, heard the silence that followed. The kind of silence that meant she was lying awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying everything just like I was.

I dried off with the threadbare towel that had been mine since I was about fourteen, the fabric worn soft and thin from a thousand washes. Pulled on track pants and an old t-shirt, the cotton faded from black to grey. Padded down the hallway to my room.

My feet left damp prints on the floorboards, dark marks that would fade in a few minutes.

My room was small—it had always been small, barely fit a single bed and a desk and a wardrobe that didn't close properly, the door always swinging open a few centimetres no matter how firmly you pushed it shut. The window overlooked our pathetic excuse for a backyard: patchy grass going brown in the winter cold, a rusted clothesline that nobody used anymore, the fence that was slowly falling down one board at a time.

But it was mine. The only space in the house that was properly mine.

I flicked on the desk lamp—the overhead light had blown weeks ago and we hadn't replaced the bulb yet, another small expense that kept getting pushed down the priority list—and stopped.

There, on my desk, carefully placed on top of my closed laptop, was the birth certificate.

The paper caught the lamplight, official and undeniable. Cream-coloured, slightly yellowed at the edges, the State of Tasmania seal visible in the corner. Real in a way that made my stomach tighten.

Mum had put it here. Must have come in whilst I was in the shower, whilst the water was running loud enough to cover the sound of her footsteps on the creaky floorboards. Must have decided... what? That I should have it? That it was mine to deal with now? That she couldn't bear to look at it anymore?

I stood there for a long moment, just staring at it.

At my name—Joel Elijah Gibbons—typed in that official font at the top of the document. At Mum's name—Kate Elizabeth Gibbons—listed under Mother. At the father's name that I'd been staring at all day in my head but hadn't actually seen since this morning, since the fluorescent light of the kitchen and the tears on her face.

Jamie Nigel Greyson.

There it was. Black on slightly yellowed paper. Real. Permanent. A fact recorded by the Tasmanian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages on the 15th of October, 1999, twelve days after I was born.

I sat down slowly on my desk chair—the one that squeaked and leaned slightly to the left, the one I'd found at an op shop three years ago for five dollars—and pulled the certificate closer. My fingers left damp marks on the edges.

The room felt too quiet suddenly. Too still. Like the air itself was waiting for something to happen, like the walls were holding their breath.

I picked up the certificate, held it under the lamp.

All the usual details were there, laid out in bureaucratic order. Place of birth: Royal Hobart Hospital. Time: 3:47 AM. Weight: 3.2 kilograms. Mother's occupation: Retail Assistant.

Father's occupation: the line was blank.

Blank.

Like he'd existed enough to have a name but not enough to have a job. Or maybe Mum just hadn't known. Or hadn't wanted to say. Or had been so focused on the baby—on me—that she couldn't remember what a man who was supposedly dead had done for a living.

Under the desk, my laptop hummed slightly—it was old, always running hot, the fan constantly whirring like something small and desperate was trapped inside. I'd been meaning to clean it out but never got around to it.

I set the certificate down carefully, staring at that name. Jamie Nigel Greyson.

For nineteen years I'd believed he was dead.

For nineteen years I'd carried that story—the father who died before I was born, the tragedy that explained why it was just Mum and me, the reason we never talked about him. It had been sad but simple. Painful but final. A door closed so long ago that I'd stopped noticing it was there.

But he wasn't dead.

He was just... what? Gone? Missing? Somewhere out there living his life whilst I grew up thinking he was in a grave?

"Jamie Greyson," I whispered his name again, allowing it to linger in the air, a name that was a part of me yet so unfamiliar. It felt strange to say it out loud, as if giving voice to it somehow made it more real. Made him more real. Made the lie more real too.

A sudden thought struck me, one that had never occurred to me before.

Every time I had made a new friend and the topic of my father came up, the conversation always seemed to hit an invisible wall. The mention of his death before my birth was like a signal to avoid the topic, an unspoken agreement to let it lie dormant in a shroud of awkward, sympathetic silence.

People didn't know what to say, usually.

They'd get that look—the one where their face sort of crumpled with sympathy and they'd mumble something about how sorry they were. And then they'd change the subject as fast as possible, like death was contagious or something. Like talking about it might make their own dads disappear.

I'd got used to it.

The quick condolences followed by the even quicker retreat to safer topics. Footy. School. Whatever. Anything but the dead dad. Anything but the void where a father should have been.

But Beth had been different.

She hadn't shied away from talking about my father. In fact, I remembered distinctly that we had discussed him on multiple occasions.

"Yes. That's right," I murmured to myself, my hand reaching out for the old laptop sitting on my desk.

Beth had once encouraged me to ask my mother about my father, to see a photo of him. It had been summer a few years ago—we'd been sitting in the college library during a free period, supposedly studying for our economics exam but actually just talking about everything and nothing. The air conditioning had been broken, the heat thick and oppressive, and we'd been the only ones in that corner of the library.

"You've never seen a photo of him?" she'd asked, her eyebrows raised in that way she had when something genuinely surprised her. "Not even one?"

"Mum doesn't really... we don't talk about him much."

"But he's your father," Beth had insisted, leaning across the desk, her voice dropping to that intense whisper she used when she was passionate about something. "You have a right to know what he looks like. I'm sure your mother still has a photo somewhere. Just ask her."

But I had resisted, knowing that it would likely bring Mum pain.

The few times I'd asked about him when I was younger—before I'd learned not to—she'd get this look on her face. Like something inside her was breaking. Like I'd pressed on a bruise she couldn't protect. And then she'd tell me the same story: he'd died before I was born, in an accident, it was very sad, and could we please talk about something else.

So I'd stopped asking.

I sighed, a sound tinged with a mix of nostalgia and regret.

Those were simpler times. Beth and I had transitioned from friends to something more, a relationship that had blossomed over eighteen months. We'd been good together—or at least I thought we had. She'd made me laugh. Made me think. Made me feel like maybe I wasn't just the poor kid who'd never amount to anything.

But then Mum's illness had happened at the start of Year 11, and everything had changed.

The hospital visits that stretched through winter and into spring. The medical bills that arrived in envelopes we dreaded opening. The realisation that I'd have to leave school to work, that Year 12 and university and everything that came after would have to be sacrificed for something more immediate.

Beth had been supportive at first—she'd said all the right things, offered to help however she could.

But as the months dragged on and I stopped showing up to college, stopped being available for study dates or movies or just hanging out, the distance had grown. Not dramatically, not with arguments or accusations. Just... gradually. The space between us widening until we couldn't quite reach each other anymore.

Our relationship had changed, becoming more distant, though we still kept in touch occasionally. Text messages every few weeks. The occasional comment on each other's Facebook posts. The closeness we once shared seemed like a thing of the past, and I wasn't sure if it could ever be reclaimed.

She'd moved on with her life—first year of university now, a future that looked bright and certain. And I'd... well.

I was driving a delivery truck and living pay to pay in a house that was falling apart.

Different worlds.

"Well, it's worth a shot," I murmured to the laptop as it hummed to life.

The screen flickered—it always took a minute to properly wake up, the old thing struggling with even basic tasks. The desktop background appeared: a photo of the Southern Lights I'd found online months ago, all greens and purples dancing across a Tasmanian sky I'd never actually seen in person.

Astronomy had always been my escape. The vast distances, the ancient light, the knowledge that the universe was so much bigger than our cramped house and our endless bills and the lies we told each other.

The curiosity about my father, a curiosity Beth had once stoked, was now rekindled, pushing me towards a path I had long avoided. Maybe it was time to know more about Jamie Greyson, to understand this part of my identity that I had left unexplored.

Opening a new browser window—Chrome took forever to load, the icon bouncing on the taskbar for what felt like ages—my fingers hesitated for a moment over the keyboard.

What was I even looking for?

Proof that he was dead like Mum had said? Proof that he wasn't?

I typed in 'Jamie Greyson death 1999' and hit enter.

There was a sense of urgency mixed with trepidation as the search results loaded.

The media, I thought, would have been my best bet to find information. Obituaries, maybe. News articles. Something official that would confirm the story I'd been told my entire life. Something that would make this morning make sense.

But as I scanned the results, disappointment set in.

The first page was full of random stuff—a Jamie Greyson who was a photographer in California, another who'd written a book about gardening, an obituary for a James Greyson (not Jamie) who'd died in 2003 (not 1999) in Texas (definitely not Tasmania).

Nothing seemed relevant.

I was fairly certain my father had never lived in the United States. Hell, I wasn't even certain he'd lived anywhere except Tasmania, though I realised suddenly that I didn't actually know that for sure. I didn't know anything for sure.

That was the problem, wasn't it? I'd built an entire understanding of who I was on foundations I'd never examined, never questioned. A dead father I'd never seen, never asked about, never pushed Mum to explain.

Adjusting my approach, I tried again with a more specific query: 'Jamie Greyson death 1999 Tasmania'.

My eyes moved quickly over the list of results, searching for anything that could be a clue.

More nothing.

An old phone directory listing. A mention of a Greyson family in a historical society newsletter about New Norfolk. A link to a genealogy site that wanted me to pay for a subscription I definitely couldn't afford.

No obituaries. No death notices. No news articles about tragic accidents or sudden illnesses or any of the ways a young man might die before his child was born.

Nothing.

I sat back in my chair, which squeaked in protest. The fan in my laptop whirred louder, like it was working too hard. Or maybe it was just hot in here. I wiped my palms on my track pants—they'd got sweaty suddenly.

No direct hits came up for a death.

But one particular result caught my attention near the bottom of the first page, almost hidden amongst the irrelevant listings: 'Search Jamie Greyson on Facebook'.

I knew deep down that I might be setting myself up for disappointment, or possibly something even harder to grapple with.

Facebook. Right.

Because dead people didn't have Facebook accounts, did they?

Unless he wasn't dead.

My mouse hovered over the link. My heart was doing something weird in my chest—beating too fast, too hard, like it was trying to escape. This felt like standing on the edge of something. Like the moment before you jump into water and you're not sure how deep it is or how cold it'll be.

Yet, driven by a need to know, I hesitated only briefly before clicking on the link.

The Facebook search page loaded.

A few profiles popped up—there were more Jamie Greysons in the world than I'd expected. One in England with a profile picture of a sunset. One in New Zealand who looked about sixty. One whose account was clearly fake, just a blank avatar and no information.

But only one Jamie Greyson was listed in Australia.

And the location said Tasmania.

My heart actually stopped for a second. Or felt like it did. Just... pause. A skip. A moment of nothing. Then started again, harder.

I clicked on the profile.

The profile picture wasn't of a person, but two cute brown and white Shih Tzu dogs standing on a deck covered in a light dusting of snow.

They were fluffy, with those smooshed faces and bright eyes, standing side by side like they'd posed for the camera. One slightly larger than the other. Both looking directly at the lens with that particular Shih Tzu expression that seemed to say they knew exactly how adorable they were.

Shih Tzu?

The coincidence sent a shiver down my spine.

This morning. Luke Smith in Berriedale. The two Shih Tzus—Duke and Henri, he'd called them—one snatching the manifest, the other chasing it away. Brown and white. Fluffy. Exactly like these ones in the photo.

Could they have been some sort of omen?

I sat there, staring at the screen, my mind racing.

This was insane. This was... what were the odds? Tasmania wasn't that small. There had to be more than one person with brown and white Shih Tzus. It was a coincidence. Had to be.

Except I didn't believe in coincidences. Not really. Not like this.

My interest in astronomy had taught me that the universe was vast and random, that patterns emerged from chaos without meaning. But it had also taught me that sometimes patterns meant something, that gravitational forces pulled things together for reasons, that orbits weren't accidents.

I contemplated the next move.

My rational mind told me it was a long shot. Nineteen years was a lifetime ago, and Facebook hadn't even been around back then—it had only started what, 2006? 2007? And even then, it had taken a while to get to Australia.

"It's impossible that this is my father," I whispered to myself, though the words felt hollow even as I said them.

The faint glimmer of hope in my chest contradicted everything my brain was trying to tell me.

But there was still that small, nagging part of me that wanted to believe, to hold onto the possibility, however slim. Should I reach out? Should I message this person? Should I let this go?

The cursor blinked in the search bar at the top of the page, waiting.

Encouraged by the imaginary echo of Beth's voice in my ear—Just do it, Joel. Just see. What's the worst that could happen?—I chuckled lightly to myself despite the nervous energy coursing through me.

This was exactly the kind of impulsive, curious action Beth would take. She'd always been braver than me. More willing to push boundaries, ask questions, demand answers. More willing to risk being wrong in pursuit of being right.

Swept up in a wave of nostalgia and maybe just needing to tell someone—anyone—what I was doing, I grabbed my phone from where I'd left it on the bed and quickly typed a message to her.

20:27 Joel: Hey Beth. You should come over in the next few days. I have BIG news!

I watched the text message mark itself as delivered—the little tick appearing next to it—and then immediately began to second-guess my decision.

She's probably swamped with her studies, I reasoned, trying to temper my expectations. First year of uni. She'd be drowning in assignments and exam prep. She wouldn't have time to come over and listen to me ramble about conspiracy theories involving my potentially-not-dead father.

Shaking off the doubt, I returned my focus to the task at hand.

I clicked on the profile of the Tasmanian Jamie Greyson, my curiosity overriding my hesitation. If I'm gonna be a stalker, I may as well do it right, I thought with a mix of apprehension and excitement that made my fingers feel clumsy on the trackpad.

The profile loaded slowly—my internet was rubbish at the best of times, the cheapest plan we could find.

The header photo appeared first: a river or lake, all grey-blue water and distant mountains. The Derwent, maybe, or somewhere up the highlands. Tasmania in that particular muted palette that meant winter, meant cold, meant home.

Then the rest of the page filled in.

Jamie Greyson. Lives in Berriedale, Tasmania.

My breath caught.

Berriedale. Where I'd been this morning. Where Luke Smith lived. Where I'd delivered eight boxes of tent to a half-naked bloke with two Shih Tzus.

This couldn't be coincidence. Could it?

Scanning through the sparse details in the About section—most of it was set to private, I could only see the basics—a particular detail caught my eye.

"Partner: Luke Smith," I read aloud, the words coming out strangled.

The same name as the guy from this morning's delivery. Luke Smith. 2 Wallcrest Road, Berriedale.

But the rational part of me intervened immediately, trying to pull me back from the edge I was teetering on.

Luke and Smith were common names. Tasmania had what, half a million people? There had to be dozens of Luke Smiths. Hundreds, maybe. It was probably just a coincidence. A weird, unsettling coincidence, but still.

Except...

But Beth's imagined voice urged me to dig deeper. You've come this far. Just check. Just see.

I hovered the cursor over Luke's name—it was a clickable link, highlighted in blue. My hand was shaking slightly. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears, loud and fast.

His profile picture popped up in a preview bubble as I hovered: a man's face, mid-thirties maybe, short dark hair, olive skin, smiling at the camera with his head tilted slightly. Casual. Relaxed.

I gasped. Actually gasped, the sound embarrassingly loud in the quiet room.

"That's definitely gotta be the same Luke Smith," I exclaimed to the empty room, my voice cracking slightly.

It was him.

The bloke from this morning. Same face, same hair—though in the photo it looked neater, less like he'd just gotten out of the shower. Same olive complexion. Same smile, that slightly distracted look even in a photo, like his mind was somewhere else entirely.

Definitely, absolutely, unmistakably the same person.

The likelihood of it being a coincidence now seemed incredibly slim. Impossible, actually.

What were the odds?

I deliver tent boxes to a random house in Berriedale, meet a guy named Luke Smith with two brown and white Shih Tzus, and then find a Facebook profile for Jamie Greyson—my potentially-not-dead father—who lives in Berriedale, has a partner named Luke Smith, and a profile picture of two brown and white Shih Tzus?

No. No way. That wasn't coincidence.

That was... something else. Something that made the hair on my arms stand up.

What was that?

My phone jingled softly on the bed beside me, pulling me from the spiral of thoughts. It was a message from Beth.

20:34 Beth: Hey back. Haven't heard from you for a while. I've got a lot of study to do this week. But I still wanna know. What's your news?

A wave of mild disappointment washed over me.

It was as I expected—she was too caught up in her studies to actually come over. Not that I could blame her. She had exams. A future. Things that mattered more than whatever weird family drama I was uncovering.

20:35 Joel: Never mind. It's really not that big of a deal. Good luck with your study

I hit send, then tossed the phone gently to the other side of the bed, feeling a tinge of resignation.

She probably wouldn't respond to that, I thought. The brush-off was clear enough. It's fine, don't worry about it, I'll deal with it myself.

The story of my life, really.

But that brief exchange, though inconclusive, had reignited something within me. A connection to my past, to Beth, to the person I'd been before everything got complicated. Before Mum got sick. Before I dropped out. Before I became the delivery driver who couldn't afford ice cream.

And it pushed me forward.

Turning my attention back to the Facebook page, doubts and questions began to surface in my mind with renewed intensity.

Is it just a coincidence? The same name? The same dogs? The same address?

I had always believed in my mother's honesty. Always. She was the one constant in my life, the person who'd never let me down, who'd sacrificed everything for me. She wouldn't lie. Not about something this big.

Except she had. For nineteen years.

The growing knot of uncertainty in my stomach suggested a sliver of doubt had taken root.

Could my father have walked out on us?

The thought made me feel sick.

Walked out. Just... left. Decided that a pregnant girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend, maybe?—and a baby on the way weren't worth sticking around for. It happened. It happened all the time. Half the kids I'd grown up with had absent fathers. Some had never even met them.

But no. Mum had said he died. She'd been so certain. So sad. There were tears, real tears, the few times we'd talked about it when I was younger.

Except... what if he hadn't died?

What if he'd just left, and Mum had decided that "dead" was easier to explain than "abandoned"? What if she'd been protecting me from the truth—that my father was alive somewhere, living his life, and had chosen not to be part of mine?

Nineteen years was a long time.

And Tasmania's past attitudes towards gay people flashed through my mind suddenly. I knew enough history—had learned enough in school, seen enough documentaries—to know that Tasmania had been one of the last places in Australia to decriminalise homosexuality. That it had only happened in 1997. Two years before I was born.

Could that be why his existence was a barely-touched topic?

Had my father been gay?

Had he left Mum because he'd realised—or accepted—or finally been able to admit what he really was? And had Mum, heartbroken and pregnant, decided it was easier to tell me he was dead than to explain that he'd left her for... what? A man? This man? Luke Smith?

It would explain so much.

The secrecy. The sadness. The way she'd always shut down any conversation about him. The absence of photos, of stories, of anything that might reveal the truth she'd worked so hard to hide.

Yet, if that were true, why did my mother still hold him in such high regard?

She did. I knew she did.

The few times she'd mentioned him—those rare, unguarded moments—her voice had been soft. Gentle. There was love there. Real love, not bitterness or anger. She'd called him a good person. Had said I would have liked him. Had cried when she talked about losing him.

You didn't talk that way about someone who'd abandoned you.

And in these more accepting times, wouldn't he have reached out by now? It was 2018. Tasmania had marriage equality now—the whole country did, as of last year. Being gay wasn't illegal, wasn't even particularly scandalous anymore. If my father was alive, if he'd left because of his sexuality, wouldn't he have at least tried to contact me? To explain? To... something?

Unless he didn't know I existed.

Unless Mum had never told him. Unless he'd left before he knew she was pregnant and she'd never reached out to tell him.

But that didn't make sense either. His name was on the birth certificate. You couldn't put someone's name on a birth certificate without their knowledge. Could you? I didn't actually know how that worked.

My head was spinning.

Every answer led to more questions. Every explanation created new contradictions. Every thread I pulled seemed to unravel three more.

I clicked through the photos on the Facebook profile, each one a potential clue, but mostly leading nowhere.

Most of them were set to private—I could only see the ones he'd made public, which weren't many. The profile picture with the dogs. A few landscape shots—the river, some mountains, a beach at sunset. Nothing with people in them. Nothing that gave away any real information about his life.

I was about to shut down for the night, resigning myself to the unanswered questions piling up in my brain, when a particular photo caught my eye near the bottom of his public photos.

It had been posted about three months ago.

It was tagged "Jamie Greyson"—a young man standing on what looked like the same deck from the profile picture, the two Shih Tzus at his feet. He was smiling, casual clothes, one hand raised in a wave. Dark hair, average height and build, maybe mid-thirties.

The photo quality wasn't great—slightly blurry, taken from a distance, probably by Luke on his phone.

But the face. Something about the face resonated with me.

I clicked on it to enlarge it, leaning closer to the screen, studying the features. Strong jawline. The shape of the nose. Something about the way he was standing.

Staring at it, I couldn't help but wonder: Am I just trying to see part of myself in him?

That's what people did, wasn't it? They looked for connections that weren't there. Saw what they wanted to see. I'd probably convinced myself this random stranger looked like me just because I desperately wanted him to be my father.

"But no," I whispered to myself, dismissing the thought even as it formed.

There was something more, something familiar yet elusive that I couldn't quite place.

I kept staring. The longer I looked, the more certain I became. It wasn't about looking like me. It was something else.

And then it hit me.

"That's it!" The realisation hit me with sudden clarity, the words bursting out of me.

This was the same man I had seen watching me several times over the past month.

The recognition sent a shiver down my spine, a mix of excitement and unease coursing through me.

It had started maybe four or five weeks ago.

I'd been leaving work one afternoon, walking to my car in the depot car park, and I'd felt... watched. That prickle on the back of your neck that means someone's looking at you. I'd turned around and there'd been a man standing by a car across the street. Just standing there. Watching.

He'd gotten in his car and driven away when he saw me looking.

I'd thought it was weird but hadn't thought much more about it. People were weird sometimes.

But then it happened again.

I'd been at the shops in Glenorchy, just grabbing milk and bread, and I'd seen him in the car park. Same man. Same feeling of being watched. He'd been sitting in his car, and when I'd looked over, he'd quickly looked away and started his engine.

And again, maybe two weeks ago. I'd been walking home from the bus stop—my car had been in the shop, something wrong with the transmission that cost too much to fix properly—and I'd seen him. Across the street. Just... there. Watching.

Each time I'd told myself I was being paranoid. That it was coincidence. That I was seeing patterns that weren't there.

But this was him. I was certain of it now. The same face. The same man.

Jamie Greyson had been watching me.

My father—if this was my father—had been following me.

A chill swept through the room, or perhaps it was just the realisation washing over me, leaving a trail of goosebumps on my arms. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I grappled with this new revelation.

Why?

Why would he be watching me? If he knew who I was, why wouldn't he just... talk to me? Introduce himself? Say something?

Unless he was trying to work up the courage. Unless he was trying to decide if he should reach out. Unless he was...

What? What was he doing?

The man in the photo, possibly observing me from afar—it was unsettling, yet it held an undeniable allure of mystery. And fear. Definitely fear.

Lying there in the dim light of my room, I pondered over the next step.

Should I confront my mother with this new information? Would she divulge anything different now, armed with the knowledge of this man's possible presence in my life?

The questions weighed heavily on me, the room feeling colder as I contemplated the potential impact of uncovering truths long buried.

Or maybe I should just message him.

The Facebook profile. Just send him a message. Hi, are you my father? Why are you following me? Did you really die in 1999 or was that just a convenient lie?

No. That was insane. I couldn't do that.

But I couldn't do nothing either.

Closing the laptop with more force than necessary—it made a sharp snapping sound—I sat up, my movements sudden, fuelled by adrenaline and confusion and anger I hadn't quite admitted to feeling.

My phone lay on the bed where I'd tossed it earlier, the screen dark. I picked it up, which it felt heavy in my hand—or maybe my hand just felt weak.

I knew I needed someone to talk to, someone who might understand. Someone outside this mess who could maybe help me make sense of it.

Beth.

I quickly typed out another message, one that I was sure would pique her interest, one she couldn't ignore, regardless of how busy she thought she was.

20:57 Joel: I know the name of my father - Jamie Nigel Greyson

I hit send before I could second-guess it.

Then I lay back on my bed in the dark, laptop closed beside me, birth certificate still on my desk, and waited.

For what, I wasn't sure.

An answer from Beth.

An answer from Mum.

An answer to any of the thousand questions now screaming in my head.

The streetlight outside cast its faint orange glow through my window, the same glow that had been there every night of my life, unchanged whilst everything else tilted and shifted beneath me. Somewhere outside, a dog barked once and then fell silent.

I thought about the Shih Tzus—Duke and Henri—and their bulging eyes and wagging tails. About Luke Smith standing in his damp shorts. About the house in Berriedale with its eighty-inch TV and its stone benchtops and its eight boxes of tent.

About my father, who might live there. Who might have been watching me for weeks. Who was very much not dead.

The ceiling of my room was the same ceiling I'd stared at for years. The same cracks, the same water stain in the corner, the same everything.

But nothing was the same. Not anymore.