The Secret Daughter (27 page)

After a few minutes, I gently pushed the bassinet right to the middle of the table, and I went to make myself a cup of tea. No swell of emotion had risen, no resurgence of the desperate tide of longing for a baby of my own, and I suddenly acknowledged that
this
was what had scared me most about adoption. Surely for biological mothers there is some hormonal assistance in the bonding, and I knew that I would
need
that. I’ve never been an emotional person, certainly not an overly affectionate person, and my work had by then well and truly trained me to hold myself at arm’s length even from highly emotive situations. I knew instinctively that even had Sabina been coming home forever with us, I’d have felt no different. I just wasn’t programmed to parent someone else’s child.

So I made my tea, and I sat beside the bassinet to drink it, then I read the instructions on the formula tin as I waited for her to wake up.

As I sipped my tea, I decided quite calmly that I would run these weeks with Sabina by the clock, with all of her necessary physical needs attended to in a timely fashion, and nothing more. There would be no pretence that I was parenting her, and certainly no fooling myself that this was any kind of trial for a real adoption. I was merely a baby-care nurse, here to do a job. That was a
much
smarter way to approach the situation anyway, rather than to be motivated by some hysterical emotion or desperation for my own baby, particularly given that I would have to pass her back to Lilly when she was ready.

I was going to pretend to be Sabina’s attendant, not her mother. And as long as that was all that I expected of myself, we’d all come through this strange period in our lives unscathed.

I looked to the baby again, and then I sat back in my chair and let a grin cover my face. I felt proud and quite satisfied with my own cleverness – how, in just twenty-four hours, I’d completely turned things around for myself, and for Lilly and James.

Finally, I was back in a role I was comfortable with – helping people, supporting families, making a difference.

And maybe now that I was doing
good
again, life would be kind to me too, and my own family would be just around the corner.

THIRTY-ONE

Sabina—April 2012

When Lilly was upset or anxious, she gravitated to the kitchen. We left the albums on the veranda and moved inside after a while, and I sat at the breakfast bar while she made tea and served us both some cake. We talked about the cake recipe to an unnatural level of detail. Lilly told me what brand of flour she used and how important it was to ensure the eggs were at room temperature. I asked her whether her oven was fan-assisted and what kind of cake tins she used. Every time the cake conversation seemed to stall, one of us would force a continuation – anything to avoid returning to the veranda, and the photo albums, and the confusion and the pain.

When the last of the cake was gone, and I felt like I was bursting at the seams from her giant portions, James wandered out from the bedroom.

‘Cake? After
that
lunch?’ he surmised, then grinned. ‘You’re fitting right in already, Sabina.’

I smiled at him and watched as he walked directly to Lilly. He seemed to review the expression on her face for a moment, then he suddenly embraced her.

‘Can I get you a tea?’ she asked him, but she was watching me over his shoulder.

‘No, no – but thank you, my darling,’ he murmured, and then I heard him whisper, ‘Are you okay? You’ve been crying.’

‘It’s just hard,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s wonderful, but it’s so hard.’

I swallowed the lump in my throat. James turned back to me, but kept his arm around Lilly’s waist. There was a twinkle in his eye, and I could tell he was going to make a joke to break the tension.

I suddenly realised why I’d never been able to keep a secret. Lilly and James were people who wore their every thought right there on their faces, and Megan and Grae had drilled into me the importance of honesty. I didn’t stand a chance.

‘What were you two ladies going to do next?’ The twinkle in his eye grew bolder. ‘Do you want to see the crop where we’re growing genetically modified—’

‘James,
no,
’ Lilly laughed, and she thumped him playfully. ‘
No
more
farming chat. You’ll scare Sabina away forever. I was just about to show her our wedding album. Did you want to sit outside with us?’

‘I’d love to,’ James said, then he winked at me. ‘But if you
do
want farming chat, Sabina … you just say the word, okay?’

His presence was a comfort, even to me, because just by entering the room he’d shattered a lingering sense of tension from the discussions Lilly and I had been sharing. It was a very different conversation over the next few hours. Ted joined us after a while, and he and James sat on the step among all of the little concrete animals. Lilly and I stayed on the swinging chair, but now, she showed me photos of her wedding to James, and then we worked our way through all of the books of photos of Simon and Charlotte as children. We giggled together at dated hairstyles and outfits, and in a roundabout way I started to get to know my siblings.

I almost would have enjoyed myself, except for the heavy cloud that seemed to be hanging over my head. I wanted to enjoy the time with Lilly and this more casual trip down memory lane, but at the same time, I wanted to jump back into my car and drive to Mum’s house. I wanted to corner her and to refuse to leave until she told me why she had kept me, rather than returning me to Lilly as she’d promised.

Everything seemed to hang on that decision, because
that
was the decision that created the lives that we’d all lived ever since. I needed to understand, and I could only hope that if Mum could explain herself it would go a way towards soothing the ache and anger in Lilly.

But in the meantime, I was there at the farm with my
other
family, and it was nearly time to meet my new siblings. As I dressed for dinner, I tried to steady myself and brighten my frame of mind. I desperately wanted to be positive at dinner – I
needed
Simon and Charlotte to like me.

When it was time to drive into Orange to meet them, James opened the garage to reveal his other car.

‘We don’t drive this one around the paddocks,’ he winked at Ted, and Ted laughed.

‘I’ll bet you don’t. She’s a beauty.’

It was a dark grey, late model Mercedes, obviously lovingly maintained by James, who ran his hand along the roof as if he was caressing it. Lilly made sure that I could see her face, then rolled her eyes and slipped into the back seat.

‘Oh no, you take the front,’ I protested, but she shook her head, closed the door with a slam and pointed to the front passenger’s side. I reluctantly slid in, and Ted joined Lilly in the back.

‘I want to chat with this handsome husband of yours. Besides which, someone is going to have to listen to James prattle on about the wonder car and I’ve heard it plenty of times already.’

‘She loves it too,’ James assured me, as he gingerly pointed the car towards the driveway. ‘We bought this car after a particularly bumper crop a few years ago.’

And he did
prattle on
, as Lilly had said. He described to me in great detail all of the information about that model of car that I could ever have wanted to know, and I noticed myself drift off into my thoughts. I was thinking about James, and Lilly, and how wonderful their relationship was. The playful teasing, the open affection, the patience with one another . . . it all reminded me of my own marriage, and I was so glad for them that they’d not only made it work, but they’d built a lifetime together.

It was impossible to avoid comparing them to Mum and Dad. I felt fairly sure that my parents loved each other; they were sometimes affectionate and generally kind to one another. But in the brief period of time since learning about the adoption, I’d become so aware of what
wasn’t
there in their relationship. There was no great sense of partnership, unlike Lilly and James, or even Ted and me. There was Dad, leading the ship, and Mum at the rear, propelling the thing. And that’s how it had always been. Perhaps that was even part of what I had loved about Ted, that from the outset of our relationship, he wasn’t looking for an accessory – he wanted a partner.

James was still talking about the car. Ted and Lilly were chatting about her school. And I suddenly started to wonder about Mum, and whether or not she was aware of how harsh Dad could be with her at times. I remembered him refusing her permission to join me when I visited the adoption information social workers, refusing to even allow her a voice, and I felt a pang of concern for her. Why did my intelligent, headstrong mother
put up
with that?

I hadn’t really missed her until that moment. I had been so angry with her for keeping so many secrets, and then for making it so difficult to find out the truth about myself. Now, I wondered what else I was missing in all of this. How much of the structure of this lie had been my father’s doing? Why was I so angry with Mum, when I’d finally seen for myself that she was sometimes only his pawn?

I wanted to call Mum and check in with her and make sure she was okay. She would be suffering terribly, and I knew she’d be fretting for me. And then I wanted to ask to speak to Dad, and to demand he explain himself and apologise, and just
do better
. Dad was a good man, I was sure of that. He had been a wonderful father to me, and I counted him as one of my best friends, so much so that I’d viewed him through a set of heavily tinted rose-coloured glasses for most of my life.

‘Hey, Sabina, we’re running a bit early – want to see where you were born?’ James asked, and I froze, then turned back to Lilly, expecting to see horror on her face. She smiled a little, and shook her head.

‘Its fine, Sabina, I was going to offer to take you past at some point too. I’ve been there plenty of times since, I’ve made my peace with that place.’

‘Are you sure? It seems like a lot to ask.’

‘I had Charlotte at the same hospital. There were some minor complications and I was transferred there from the little hospital over at Molong. But your birth was so difficult, so I always knew there was a possibility that things would be complicated and I’d have to come over to the Base hospital here. I’d prepared myself as well as I could.’ She snorted suddenly and then shot me a mischievous grin. ‘It helps that they built a whole new hospital and the old one is now a dilapidated shithole. It’s hard to feel haunted by a place that looks like it would fall over if the wind blew too hard.’

A few minutes later, James brought the car to a stop outside of the red brick building I recognised from the Wikipedia page. Lilly was right – it was totally derelict, the downstairs entrances were boarded up with particle board. The top floor looked like a ghoulish mouth – the entire line of windows damaged in some way; panes of fractured glass in a row like a macabre set of damaged teeth. Lilly stepped from the car without preamble and immediately walked over to a temporary security fence, then leant against it to peer inside.

I turned to James.

‘Are you
sure
this is okay? It must be very difficult for you guys.’

‘We both have awful, awful memories of this place,’ James said with a sigh. ‘I got dragged out of here by security when Lilly was confined. She was here for months, and there was nothing I could do about it – and believe me, I tried. Lilly’s Dad had made
sure
that she was never leaving this place with you. So no, it’s not pleasant to be here . . . but . . .’ He nodded towards Lilly. ‘One of the remarkable things about my wife is that she never shies away from her past, no matter how ugly it is. She has this theory that you only kill the demons by bringing them to light. That’s why we told the other kids about you as soon as they were old enough to understand. I’ll be honest with you Sabina, she’s walked through some very dark times over the years . . . but she has
always
spoken about you with me. We grieved every birthday and we missed you every Christmas, but if I happened to forget to honour you on some important occasion, she’d make sure I knew about it.’

It was hard to believe that I hadn’t
known
somehow about these wonderful people who had obviously held me so close to their hearts. I felt like their love for me was big enough that I should have felt it somehow, even across the vast distance of my not knowing about them at all. For a moment, I felt almost guilty at
not
having guessed, and although I tried to dismiss this thought, it was difficult to move past.

‘Thank you, James,’ I murmured, then slipped from the car and joined Lilly where she had been waiting at the security fence.

‘That was my room,’ she murmured, pointing to a window on the second floor. ‘That one right there, where both panes of glass have shattered.’

‘Was I born in there?’

‘Oh no, the maternity ward is across the road, in the main hospital. But I lived in this home for several months before you were born, right from when my Tata found out about you.’

We stared at the building in silence for several moments. Lilly silently slid her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. There was a gentle wind blowing, just enough to rattle some of the windows. Dusk was falling; the light was fading fast. I had a feeling there would be some very vocal ghosts around this place after dark.

‘Did you make friends with the other girls?’ I tried to imagine what it was like for her, living in this near-prison with twenty other teenagers.

‘Not really. My roommate was a strange kind of friend – although I didn’t think of her like that at the time. She was an angry, angry young woman when we were in here,’ she smiled sadly. ‘She’s actually the only one I’m still in touch with. I ran into her at the shops maybe ten years ago and we’ve become quite close.’

‘Has she found her child?’

‘No. Well, she found him. But he doesn’t want to know her.’