The year was 1989. Kate was already in her 20s, and on holiday in Paris with her then-boyfriend, Stephen Kearney.
One evening, while having dinner in the Latin Quarter, Stephen said: “Wild about your mum, eh?”
Kate was confused.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“You know,” said Stephen, “having another son. You having another brother.”
Kate was floored. She had no idea. Her mother had another son? She had another brother?
“What are you talking about?” she said, and Stephen, who was close to Kate’s mum, told her the story: Kate’s mum had given a son up for adoption, before Kate was born.
Kate sat and listened, stunned.
“It wasn’t the story itself that I couldn’t believe,” Kate writes, in her autobiography, I’m Talking. “It was the fact that he knew it, and I didn’t. I thought I knew everything about (my mother) but I was wrong. And I was furious.”
It wasn’t long before Kate confronted her mother, and what happened next is an extraordinary love story.
Want to know more? Come and her Kate speak at a very special lunch for the Australian Women’s Weekly’s new book club in the glorious city of Newcastle on 24 June. Book here.
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