Seven siblings. And a half.

I was the middle (fourth; three either side) of seven until the half-brother materialised one day. My father took the phone call in another room and returned haggard to the harsh kitchen light where we sat in a ticking silence until he told us the story.

He had married a few years after the war. She was on a rebound, someone in Queensland. John was born, but she went back to the Queensland home; left him and my father. Then she changed her mind and John was despatched north. Later, tragedy struck when their own two children died in an accident. Suddenly they couldn't look at John. He was adopted out and lost contact. Years passed, and then that phone call in 1978. He had traced his - my - father.