The Secret Daughter (17 page)

You know how I
hate
trouble, James. You
know
how hard I worked at school to avoid confrontation with the teachers. It seems that I’m not that girl anymore. I didn’t really
want
to do what Tania proposed, but how could I not? There was such desperation in the way Eliza held my hand that it would have been inhumane to refuse to help her.

In the end, I didn’t need to do anything, because the kindly midwives waved us in and one even allowed Eliza the chance to hold her son. Oh, how beautiful that little boy was, with his mop of fine blonde hair and his squished up button nose. Tania took a photo of Eliza with him in her arms. It was a beautiful moment, the best one I’ve had since I came here – actually, the best by
far
. For just a few minutes, she was any new mum, getting to know her babe. I could see what Eliza was doing – she was staring at him, almost unblinking, and touching every part of him with her fingertips, and even breathing in deeply again and again, trying to soak the essence of her baby through her senses . . . to steal it away with her.

But when the time came to leave, the bliss of those moments was gone. Eliza just wouldn’t give her son back. Eventually I had to hold her arms while Tania and the nurse worked to get the baby away from her and back into its cot. Eliza begged and wept and tried to bargain with us for just a second more and we all wanted to give it to her, but we really had to be back before 10 p.m. As it was we only made it by a minute or two before the nurses locked the front door and came past to do a head count.

I can still feel the way her body shook when she fought to get out of my arms and get back to her baby. I can still hear the way she screamed, the sound is bouncing around in my ears – burned into me like some kind of audio tattoo. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to someone in so much pain before. I could feel her agony just as if it was my own – maybe because I am so terrified that it will
be
my own.

When we got Eliza back to her room, Tania handed her the Polaroid, and Eliza clutched it to her chest and collapsed onto her bed. We left her alone then, because we had to run back to our rooms, and because even though I wished with all of my heart that I could do something
more for her . . .
anything
more for her . . . there was nothing more that we could do for Eliza H.

She’s one of the lucky ones, you know. Lots of the girls never even get those moments with their babies. It seems like such a small thing to ask for – after all, we’re talking about one single cuddle here. It’s nothing at all in the scheme of things and it’s
everything in the world
to the girl who misses out.

My heart and mind are racing tonight. I feel trapped and desperate because I really am just a caged animal with everything on the line. I was so sure that you’d be here by now. Why
aren’t
you here, James? I turn it over in my mind day and night, trying to find the missing piece of the puzzle that would explain why you haven’t come. I am so distracted by your absence that I don’t even want to eat and I can’t sleep.

You must by now have received these letters and you must know how utterly, hopelessly desperate I am for you to come.

What possible excuse could you have for not being here now?

I don’t even want to write this in case writing it down makes it real, but I really am starting to wonder . . . did you ever love me? How
could
you have loved me, if you leave me here to face this alone?

Could I have misjudged you so badly? Did I know you
at all
? You’ve been part of my life forever, how could I have been so wrong?

I am sorry for the handwriting, and for the mess of these words. I keep thinking of Eliza, and me, and our baby, and you – and I am all over the place.

If it is true that you don’t love me and that you are just going to leave me here, then please at least send your parents to let me know. I will find a way to extinguish the love I have for you too. Maybe if I do that, I will feel less, and maybe that will make me numb so that I can survive what’s coming.

Lilly

SEVENTEEN

Sabina—April 2012

Ted and I both called in sick from work. We sat at the dining table with the piece of paper, watching it, like it was a newborn child.

‘Wyz-lecki?’ I read awkwardly, after a while. ‘German?’

‘Polish. It sounds Polish to me. But so does Sabina, now that I really think about it. And Liliana . . . Lilly . . . do you think—’

‘They
named
me after her?’ I picked the paper up again, and stared at the name, then sat it down as if it might bite me. ‘That’s ridiculous. Why would they give me her
name
but keep her from me for half of my life?’

‘Unless
she
was the one to name you?’ Ted suggested.

This was startling. I had always
loved
my name. There had never been another Sabina in my classes at school, and I often revelled in comments on its uniqueness when I was growing up. I remember once asking Mum where the inspiration had come from and her shrugging and telling me she
just liked it
.

There was something disconcerting about Liliana’s potential involvement in the selection of my name. If I hadn’t already been wondering who I was, this revelation would have really raised the stakes around that question. That Liliana might have chosen my name made me feel as though she really had made an impact on me beyond just genetics. A person is
known
by their name – in every circle of their life, in every context, in every situation.

I had been Sabina Lilly for my entire life, but maybe without Liliana’s input into my label, I’d have been someone else entirely.

I picked up the paper again and stared at the date, then did the calculations in my mind.

‘There’s more than a month between this date, and the date on the birth certificate,’ I whispered.

‘Maybe she cared for you for a month
then
had to relinquish you for some reason? Maybe she didn’t cope with motherhood, or something terrible happened,’ he sighed, and shook his head. ‘This just gets more and more confusing, doesn’t it?’

‘But . . . if it was really as simple as that, wouldn’t Mum just tell me?’

‘True,’ Ted conceded. ‘And . . . I’m not sure we can believe her, but Megan
did
say they had you from the day after you were born.’

‘There are photos, too. In my albums at her house. Photos of me with Mum and Dad as a very new baby.’

We both stared back at the paper.

‘Polish,’ I whispered. Random memories were connecting in my mind, I was joining the dots with perfect hindsight. ‘But . . . maybe some of it makes
perfect
sense. Remember, Mum took me to Europe when I finished high school, and we spent nearly half the trip in Poland?’

‘Didn’t that seem strange?’

I shrugged.

‘We were having the trip of a lifetime, and she’d been fascinated with Polish history for a while. I had no reason to suspect she was secretly trying to connect me with my
roots
.’

‘Do you remember when she went through that phase of trying to cook those Polish dumpling things . . . what are they called?’

‘Pierogis, I think,’ I grimaced, and then Ted did too.

‘That’s right. God, they were
disgusting
.’

‘She said she’d read about them in a cooking magazine.’

Our eyes met, and we shared the sadness of the moment. Poor, misguided Mum had apparently made at least some kind of effort to expose me to the culture of my birth mother.

‘Could I just look Liliana up on Google?’ I asked, and the idea was so exciting that I warmed to it immediately. ‘Maybe she has Facebook—’

‘I don’t think so, honey. I think we need to do this via Hilary, in case there’s a veto.’

‘Oh yeah.’ I slumped, then glanced at the clock. ‘We can call Hilary in an hour or so.’

After a while, Ted went out to get us coffee and croissants for breakfast. Alone and impatient, I paced the house for a while, until the photo albums caught my eye

I couldn’t imagine how many hours of careful attention had been invested in these albums. There were hundreds of photos of me, but not a single one included Mum or Dad. I could see from some of the odd shapes of the photos that Mum had cut them down with scissors sometimes to remove their image. There were photos of so many milestones when I was an infant;
Sabina, trying to roll over, January 1974. Sabina, sitting up, April 1974. Sabina, eating pears, April 1974.
There were photos of me at preschool, and some of my early paintings and drawings, and merit certificates from primary school and even a ribbon I won for a novelty race at an athletics carnival. Every single school report was included, carefully labelled with a date. I read through the comments and grimaced.
Sabina needs to apply herself. Sabina is managing her stutter much better but still will not speak or read in front of the class. Sabina is a nice girl with a good heart but needs to put more effort into her classwork.

There was a photo of me at every birthday, and photos of me in the car sleeping or listening to music when we went on holiday, or at the airport sulking while we waited for a flight. There were photos I remembered Mum taking – like the one she took of me the day we moved into the house at Balmain, standing in my bedroom grinning my gappy grin and pointing with delight at the brightly coloured walls. I’d chosen the gaudy shade of my pink myself, and although she and Dad must have cringed, they’d let me have my way. There were also photos I had no recollection of – my first singing performance in Year Seven, me holding the microphone at the wrong angle and looking like a rabbit caught in headlights. She had included a photo of me with my first boyfriend, and underneath
that
snapshot of teen awkwardness and embarrassment had been written
Sabina and Robert – true love forever, at least for a few weeks
.

It was miserable to look back through my life like that – I felt like a spoilt brat, because here was photographic proof that I’d experienced every opportunity and privilege that a child could want for, and I still felt cheated. Where was the
truth
? How could my mother be so thoughtful as to collect these mementos, but so selfish as to keep them to herself for all of this time?

I had always known that Mum kept detailed photo albums; she had a whole wall of her own in the family room at her house, but I had never seen
these
before, and I couldn’t imagine where she could have hidden them or when she would have found the time to maintain them. She’d obviously been meticulous about it. This was no last minute after-thought.

When Ted returned, he handed me breakfast and motioned towards the albums.

‘Did she just do this in the last few weeks?’

‘No, it looks like she’s been keeping these pretty much since I was born. The photos are all old, and I can see how her handwriting has changed over the years.’

‘That’s
so
sad.’

‘It really is,’ I murmured, shaking my head. ‘It’s bloody tragic. I don’t even know what to make of it. Why go to all of this effort, but miss the step of actually telling
me to
look
for the woman she made the albums for?’

Ted picked up an album and laughed at a particularly unflattering photo of me as a toddler, my face covered in birthday cake. I was mid-tantrum, ‘
protesting our refusal to sing “Happy Birthday” for an eleventh time’
, according to the caption.

‘Apparently you loved music even as a two year old.’

‘You’ve heard Mum and Dad sing. I was probably c-crying
because
they sang me “Happy Birthday” ten times,’ I muttered, but I wanted to cry again. I couldn’t remember, of course, but I could very easily imagine the scene around this photo – Mum and Dad had put such work into my birthday each year. There would have been a terrible, hand-made cake that Mum would have invested hours in creating, and at the party there would have been loads of decorations and gifts. All of my cousins and aunts from Mum and Dad’s families would have been there. ‘All that effort,’ I whispered, ‘but it would have been on the wrong
date
. I wasn’t two years old on the 10
^th
of October. I was two years, one month and a few days. Does that make all of the love that went into making these memories mean any less?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t
think
so.’

‘How can it not? What were they even celebrating? It wasn’t my
birth
day?’

‘There’s more to a person than the day they were born. They were celebrating
you
, Sabina. That doesn’t really change with the date of your birth.’

‘It’s hard not to be cynical looking at these photos now,’ I admitted.

‘She didn’t
have
to do this, Bean. It tells you a lot about her intentions – they’ve told us that they never intended for you to know, but Meg obviously had other plans. There’s hundreds of hours work in maintaining these books. She
wanted
you to find Liliana, and on some level I think she wanted you to be able to show her that you’ve been okay for all of this time. Isn’t that exactly what
you
want too?’

‘If Mum had told me about this twenty years ago, Liliana could
be
in some of those albums.’

‘I know. But maybe she can be in the next
twenty years’ worth of photos – and those years will include our baby. At least you will have that, and if you do, it’ll be
Meg’s
doing.’

‘You sound less angry with Mum after this morning.’

‘I’m still angry, Bean – God, what they’re putting you through, and at this stage of our life? It’s just awful. But at least she’s
trying
. This is a step in the right direction. Until this morning I wasn’t even sure Graeme and Meg were going to be a part of our life anymore.’