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‘I broke my promise to you. It was…And I made a terrible mistake, I know, not telling you… I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Congo.’

‘It’s okay, Dad. It’s cool. Really.’

Mintie gave a short commanding bark. They released each other.

‘Okay, Mints, park,’ Olivia confirmed. ‘But, Dad, can we just talk about – you know, nothing, for a while? I’m not up to any more big stuff just now.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Angus smiled. His face looked kind of blurry. ‘Idle chitchat?’ he suggested. She nodded. ‘Idle chitchat it is then. For now. Big stuff whenever.’

Inside the house, James sat down at the kitchen table and indicated to Deborah that she take the seat opposite. Quietly Silver slid into the chair at the end.

‘Deb, there’s something I need to ask you,’ he said gravely. ‘And I want a straight answer, okay?’

He told her what Olivia had said about the letters. There was a silence. Deborah said nothing; her face was frozen, expressionless.

‘So, Deb,’ James said. His voice was polite. ‘What can you tell us?’

Deborah swept one hand to her face and covered it almost completely with the open palm, pressing her fingertips against her
forehead. Then she took her hand away and said, ‘Yes. I need to show you.’ But she didn’t move.

‘Show me?’ asked James, prompting.

‘Should I leave?’ asked Silver, half-rising from her chair. ‘I’ll wait in the car, I’m happy to do that.’

James lifted one hand and made a patting-down gesture towards her.
Stay.

‘No, don’t go,’ said Deborah. ‘It’s better that I tell you both, I think.’

They waited, but still Deborah didn’t move. She had covered her face with her hand again and didn’t seem able to go on. ‘So what is it, Deb?’ asked James at last.

Deborah got up then and went into her study. She wasn’t gone long and when she came back she was carrying a long, sturdily made black cardboard box. James vaguely remembered these boxes from pre-computer days.
Card file
, the name popped up in his brain. Or maybe it was
card index
. Something like that.

‘It’s this,’ Deborah said. She opened the box. James expected to see those old stiff lined cards, separated by alphabetical dividers. Instead it was crammed full of envelopes, lined up neat and tight. Most were a uniform size, with red and blue diagonal airmail stripes around their edges, the others, plain white or coloured, were larger envelopes for greeting cards.

‘What are these?’ he asked. He had to hear her say it.

‘They’re the letters,’ Deborah said tonelessly, then swallowed hard and closed her eyes for a moment.

‘From Rose. From our mother,’ said James. Deborah nodded, confirming.

His brain was spinning out, like a fishing line racing through the reel. He concentrated on his breathing, trying to slow it down. ‘She sent these to us?’ he said, leaning forward, drawing the box toward him.

‘Yes, to us kids.’

‘But they’re addressed to Dad,’ he said. He’d pushed the first
envelope in the box back a little and was reading the name and address. They were packed in so tight.

‘That was part of some arrangement they had, she could only write to his office. So he could read them first, I guess. Vet them, or something.’

‘They really do exist,’ James said wonderingly. He was running his fingers across the tops of the envelopes. There were so many of them. They were
real
. ‘But when did you get them? Where were they?’ he asked. ‘Did you pinch them from Dad’s office?’

‘No. He gave them to me. Not all at once, I don’t mean. He gave me each one as it arrived.’

‘But… ’ James gaped. ‘You’re kidding me! He
gave
them to you? I never saw
any
of these!’ He was staring at his sister now, frowning hugely. Nothing made sense.

‘No. I was supposed to read them and then pass them on to you younger kids. But… I never did.’ Deborah’s voice was unusually light, as though she wanted the words to float away.

‘Wait a minute. Dad gave them to you, you read them – and then you… what? Just
kept
them?’

‘Yes.’ Again Deborah pressed one hand to her face, covering it. James pulled an envelope from the box at random and drew the letter out.
Darling kidlets
, it began.

‘Rose told me she wrote to us,’ he said. His brain seemed to be working at the wrong speed again; his speeding thoughts could only find words very slowly. ‘She thought Dad kept them.’

‘I know. I could tell she thought that. Naturally.’ Deb, on the other hand, seemed to be talking very fast. ‘I used to wonder why she didn’t accuse him of it. Why he didn’t ask me.’

‘But didn’t he?’

‘Not once. He never said a word. He just never talked about her, you know that.’ Suddenly her voice rose in pitch. She looked straight at him, her face contorted with frantic intensity. ‘Lots of people thought our mother was
dead
, did you realise that?’

James pulled out another envelope, one of the larger ones. Inside was a handmade birthday card, to Robert. His fourteenth birthday.
What it would’ve meant to him, to get this
, he thought, staring at the whimsical drawing, the fond words.

‘All that time,’ said James slowly, ‘we thought she never wrote to us, not even a birthday card.’

Deborah suddenly put her head down, burrowing into her forearms crossed on the table in front of her.

‘I know,’ her muffled voice said. ‘She wrote to us for ages. Lots at first, then less and less. They just kind of petered out.’

‘Did you ever write back?’ But he knew the answer to that, and Deb just moved her head from side to side there on her arms, not raising it. ‘Not to send,’ she muttered. ‘I wrote, but I didn’t send.’

James stared across the table at the top of her head. Suddenly he knew he had to get out of there. Quickly.
I’m gonna lose it if I stick around
, he thought.
I could break things. Cry and not be able to stop.
He stood up so abruptly his chair teetered on its legs. Silver, silent and alert, met his eyes, and that steadied him. He picked up the box and strode with it over to the message book beside the phone and wrote something, quick and short.

‘I know I’ve given you Rose’s email address already, but here it is again, so you’ve got no excuse. You have to write to her and tell her what you’ve done. Then you have to tell Robert and Meredith. You have to do all that, today. ’

‘Yes,’ said Deborah humbly. ‘I will.’ She had lifted her head now and her face was stricken: he saw that she was sad and ashamed and a lot of other things, but he couldn’t bear to look at her a moment longer.

‘Tell the others.
Today
. No excuses, Deb.’

‘I’ve thought a lot about why I did it,’ Deborah offered. ‘I’ve thought about it so much.’

James remembered her voice on the phone to him just a couple of weeks ago, berating him.
Sneaking bastard
, she’d called him, and he’d
felt like the worst person in the world. He slapped his hand down on the kitchen bench, hard. ‘Right now, I don’t give a
fuck
why you did it,’ he said, as close to yelling as he’d ever been in his life. ‘Jesus! I don’t wanna hear it, Deb.’

He looked at Silver and she rose immediately from her chair. ‘Say goodbye to Olivia for us,’ she said quietly. Deborah nodded. They left the house.

PART SEVEN

CHAPTER 31

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Dear Rose,

James has just left and I have to write to you immediately, before I lose my nerve. It has to be me who tells you, he’s right. This is not how I’d imagined our first communication – and yes, I have been imagining it, ever since James dropped his bombshell about you. But I hadn’t got very far with making that first contact, had I? Maybe this whole disaster had to happen first.

Today I gave James a box containing every letter and card you ever sent to us. I know you thought Dad never handed them on, but he did, or at least, he handed them to me and then they got no further. James was very angry and upset, and I’m sure Robert and Meredith will be too. Probably more so.

I’ve thought a lot about why I did what I did. I wanted to explain it to James but he was too angry, and now that I sit down to write this, I’m not sure I can explain it after all. It’s like you trying to explain why you dumped us in the first place, I guess. What can you possibly say?

I genuinely believed I was protecting the younger ones by not showing them your letters. I thought it was best for them to make a clean break. That was my job: deciding what was best for them. It’s the job you left me with, anyway, and Dad seemed happy to leave things up to me too. But ever since my own daughter was born, I realised I should never have been given that job. You and Dad both failed me, and I failed the younger ones. I seem to have failed at more things than I ever thought possible. Failing is what my life’s mostly about these days, it seems.

I don’t know why I kept them all. I really don’t know. Several times since James told us about you I seriously considered destroying the lot. If we’d had a backyard incinerator like in the old days I think I would have! And in some ways I wish I had, because then no one but me would’ve known what I’d done. But that’s the thing, isn’t it: I would’ve known. I think I literally would not have been able to live with myself if I’d destroyed your letters.

Now James has the whole box-full and he knows what sort of person I really am. I’m sending this email to the others too. I have to. And in a little while you’ll be here in Melbourne and we’ll all have to face each other. That is, if anyone can bear to see my face again.

Deborah

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Hi Rose,

It was great to talk to you on the phone last night. I’m feeling a lot better now. All that stuff I told you about, Olivia and Dad and the mine – I think I was having some kind of delayed reaction. I didn’t expect to start crying like that! I guess it’s this thing with Deborah too, it’s really rocked me. That stuff she wrote about ‘protecting’ us – I am still completely gobsmacked. It’s the kind of thing that makes you question, not your sanity exactly, but certainly your judgement – about people, and life and the whole darn thing. And knowing that I’ve gone along with Deb’s notions of ‘protecting’ us for all these years. It’s the shattering of trust that’s just so – shattering, I guess! Especially for me, because I trusted her totally.

Anyway, I’m just going to take it easy for a couple of days, hanging out at home. I took the letters over to Robert’s place this morning so him and Meredith can look at them over the weekend. It’s just amazing to read them; I said that on the phone I know. But it is, it’s incredible.

I haven’t spoken to Deb again yet, and have no plans to.

Thanks for letting me blah all that stuff out to you. Whew!

love, James

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Hello dear Mummy!

It seems so STRANGE to write that! But I call Daddy Daddy so it seems like I should call you Mummy. And today you really FEEL like my mummy, now that I’ve read all your AMAZING letters!

I cried and cried! They are SO BEAUTIFUL!! Me and Robert read them all in one big burst, hours and HOURS we were reading yesterday. And Robert cried too, yes he DID! Twice!!

Mummy, it is SO SAD to think of you writing all those letters and making all those beautiful cards AND NEVER GETTING A SINGLE WORD BACK!! I could KILL Deborah! She is not just bossy and a control freak she is EVIL!! It was an act of pure evil to keep your letters from us.

I am SO SORRY about my phone call to you a couple of weeks ago, or was it longer, I can’t remember. I was angry with you , I really was ANGRY! Daddy is such a WONDERFUL person, he is is so KIND and he tried so hard to make a nice life for us kids, I couldn’t BELIEVE that you could have just walked out on him like that. I thought you must be a horrible person and you’d just sucked James in.

Oh, if ONLY I’d KNOWN!! Especially that you thought I was artistic! What a HUGE difference that would’ve made in my life, to know that you SAW something artistic in me when I was just a little girl. If only I had known that you BELIEVED in me! Then I would have believed in MYSELF too, do you know what I mean? Oh, it makes me start crying all over again. I am NEVER going to talk to Deborah again, that’s for sure!!

But now I feel like you really ARE my mother again and you can’t imagine what that feels like!! SO AMAZING!!! I can’t wait till you’re here!!

lots and lots of love and kisses
from your little girl (now all grown up!!)

Meredith xxxxxxx

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Dear Mother,

I have just been re-reading my two previous letters to you. When I wrote them I believed I was being reasonably open in describing my life, family, career, and in particular the therapeutic work I have undertaken recently. However, I now see my caution and indeed distrust as very much in evidence. The revelation of all your past letters has made me look at the whole situation with fresh eyes. Clearly, when James described searching for these letters at Dad’s house, he had no doubt whatever that you had written to us. But I couldn’t quite believe it, myself. Amazing, the power of the written word. As we read through this veritable treasure trove yesterday, Meredith and I agreed that their existence changes, if not everything, then certainly a great deal.