The Secret Daughter (34 page)

‘But . . . this isn’t even
working
, Graeme.’ I was panicked at the mere suggestion. ‘I’m terrible at this. She hates me. Why the hell would you want to make this a permanent arrangement?’

Graeme shifted Sabina so that she was resting along his forearms, her tiny head cradled in his palms. He stared down at her, and I saw then . . . at last I really understood what I’d done. I’d missed a lot of things in the weeks that had passed me by in a blur – the change in Sabina’s eye colour apparently, but also the depth of love in my husband’s eyes.

As distant and frustrated as I felt by Sabina, Graeme was equally besotted, and that was entirely
my
fault. I had put us in this situation, a pressure cooker of tears and emotion and twenty-four hour baby care, and of course he had bonded with her. He had done what came naturally.
I
was the odd one out, with my frigid distance and my exhausted resentment.

‘I’m thirty-five years old, Megan,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve been trying to have a baby of our own for fourteen years. Every time we fall pregnant, I wait for the moment I’m going to have to watch you die a little bit, right in front of me. We’ve given it our best shot, Meg . . . we really have . . . but I’m not doing it anymore.’

‘What are you saying?’ Cold fear had gripped my gut. At first, I thought he was talking about our marriage. Had Sabina shown him that he wanted a baby, even more than he wanted me? I’d been waiting for
that
axe to fall for years. He looked away from Sabina, to me, and I felt overwhelmed with relief at the gentleness in his gaze. He still held affection for me.

‘I’m going to be sterilised. I am giving up on the idea of a pregnancy, Meg.’

‘No – but,
no
! Grae, we can
do
this, we just have to keep trying – maybe next time …’

‘
No
.’

He didn’t need to roar the word. He stared right into my eyes and delivered it quickly but with a force of emotion behind it that stopped me in my tracks.

The tears that spilt this time were different. These weren’t exhausted, embarrassed tears at having my manipulative plan found out. These were tears that came from the very core of me. Grae was taking from me the one thing in my life that I’d kept going for.

‘Sometimes you have to let go of one dream to pick up another one.’

‘It’s not the same for me, Graeme. It’s just not. I need to
do
this . . . I want to carry our baby, to make you a
real
father—’

‘Meg,’ he sighed, and shook his head, then looked down to Sabina again. ‘Can’t you see? I
am
a real father.’ His voice broke and we sat there in ragged silence, now we were both battling to bring our emotions under control. When he spoke again, he was pleading with me. ‘Life has handed us this baby for a reason, and I
love
her already. I’m
not
letting her go – not to some foolish kids; too young to get married,
far
too young to provide her with the life that she deserves. Can you really ask that of me, after all we’ve been through together? I know this is hard on you, Megan, and God – I understand how much you’ve wanted to have a child and I’ve tried to be supportive. But this is the end of the road.’

‘Grae . . .’

‘I’m putting my foot down, and I’m doing this for all of us – for me, for you, and for
Sabina
.’

‘She needs to go home to Lilly,’ I choked.

‘She
is
home.’

‘I promised Lilly—’

‘Even
Lilly
will see that this is for the best in time.’ Grae stood abruptly, and turned away from me. I saw the rise of his shoulders as he lifted Sabina close to his face and kissed her gently. He walked to the door, then turned back to me. ‘I don’t want to be cruel, Megan. I really don’t . . . but I need you to think about something. For fourteen years we’ve fought for a baby. For fourteen long years
your
body has been all that stood between us and a family. You can’t control that, but you can control
this
. We have a chance here to raise this beautiful little girl as our own.’ He stared directly at me. ‘Are you really going to take that from me too?’

The neatly folded paperwork sat on my kitchen table for four days. We ate meals beside it and I wiped the table several times a day but did not touch it, I wiped
around
it, as if even brushing against it would be dangerous.

I thought about a lot of things during those four days. I thought about Graeme and how much I loved him, and how much marriage to
me
had cost him. I thought our lost babies had drained and wounded me. I thought they were exhausting and devastating and depressing to suffer through. I’d never much thought about the toll they took on Graeme.

He could have walked away, and he didn’t.

I wondered what he would do this time, if I refused to sign the paperwork, and insisted on handing Sabina back. Would this be the final straw? Would he leave me now, and render me utterly barren for once and for all? He hadn’t said as much, but there had been an undeniably deadly intent to that difficult conversation at the kitchen table.

On the fourth day, I stopped looking at the paperwork and thinking about what would happen if I
didn’t
sign, and instead, I picked up Sabina and I walked outside into the garden with her. I lay a blanket down on the grass and I sat on one side of it, then I rested her on her back on the other.

She was awake, and content for once, that precious state of emotion she usually reserved for Graeme. I sat apart from her on the other edge of the blanket, but I stared at her and I asked myself if I could even bring myself to do this. What kind of a future could I offer Sabina? What kind of person would she grow to be, with a mother like me?

Sabina waved her fists and kicked her feet a little, and she stared up at the sky as the shadows of clouds overhead passed across her face. I remembered Grae’s remarks about her eyes. I bent low to investigate and realised that her eyes really were changing, morphing from baby-blue to something darker . . . brown, like Lilly’s?

And mine. Maybe Sabina’s eyes would be brown like mine.

Sabina suddenly met my gaze, and then for the first time in her entire life, a smile broke over her tiny face. Her eyes brightened and her mouth opened and her cheeks turned upwards and for a moment we both froze just like that.

It was the first moment of
real
connection I felt with Sabina, and it was almost as if some essential part of her reached in and hooked deeply into some part of me. There were weeks and months and probably years of exhaustion and tears and self-doubt left ahead of me, but in one single smile, she managed to persuade me that I really
could
do this . . . that there was untapped love for her inside of me, and if I just gave her the chance, she’d draw it right out.

Then her smile faded away, but her gaze was locked on my face, and I couldn’t look away from her either. There were tears raining down from my eyes all over her and I tried to push them away as they rolled onto my cheeks but soon gave up, there were too many and they were flowing too hard and fast. It was like a dam had burst within me, and I was crying for all of the babies I’d loved and lost already, and for this baby that I really
could
take, and the fact that she would never really be mine. After a while, I picked her up and I cuddled her close to me, and I breathed in her scent and delighted in the softness of her cheek against mine, just as I’d seen Graeme do and just as I’d been too afraid to do myself.

I finally looked at the paperwork that afternoon. Grae had already signed the line designated for
father
, and in June’s careful handwriting I was listed as Sabina Baxter’s mother. It was a beautiful sight to behold – that paper may have been a lie, but it said that I was a mum. I wanted to frame it somewhere prominent and tell every person I’d ever met.

There was a careful space left for a middle name, and the date.

Just a few more lines of black ink on a page, and history would never even know the difference; June had even had one of her less than honourable doctors certify that he’d seen me give birth.

Sabina had gone to sleep in her bassinet for once. I was feeling tender after our sudden moment of connection in the garden and it was good to have the distance from her while I thought about our situation.

It was even better to have empty arms when I walked to the phone.

I didn’t even have Lilly’s phone number. It was an oversight on my part – but the plan to take Sabina for her had formed so quickly that I hadn’t even had a chance to scribble it down before I resigned. It wasn’t difficult to find, though. There was only one listing for
Wyzlecki
in the entire district.

‘Hello?’ The voice that answered was young and male.

‘Is Liliana home?’

‘Yes. Who’s speaking?’

I panicked, and stammered rather like Lilly when I said,

‘T-this is a teacher from school. I’m – Mrs Baxter.’

‘Lilly doesn’t go to school.’

‘I know that,’ I said, and offered a thin laugh. ‘But she used to be in my class.’

I heard the sound of the receiver dropping, and then in the distance heard the boy calling for Lilly. A few minutes later, she came to the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Lilly, it’s Megan. I mean, it’s Mrs Baxter.’

‘Oh . . . hello! Is everything okay?’

I’d almost forgotten about the breathless, naïve quality to Lilly’s voice. Over the phone, she sounded younger still than she seemed in person. I tried to steel myself against the sickly guilt in my gut.

‘Everything is fine, Lilly.
She’s
fine. But . . . how are you and James going? Are we any closer?’

I could hear movement on the other end of the phone, then the sound of a sliding door closing. When Lilly spoke again, she was whispering,

‘Not yet. Tata won’t even let us talk to each other, and he won’t let me send letters and if James is sending them, I’m not getting them. I really don’t know what to do.’

I’d hoped that she’d tell me that there was a plan, that they were days away from a marriage licence, that the solution was within arm’s reach. If they’d been ready, the decision would have been made for me, and I would have politely wound up the phone call and readied myself to break my own heart, and to break Graeme’s with it.

Instead, the directionless optimism in Lilly’s voice was like a knife twisting in my gut. I slowly sat in the chair beside the phone table and closed my eyes.

I had the fate of two families in the palm of my hand, and the power to change more lives with one decision than I could bear to really contemplate.

‘And you’re not even going to school anymore?’ I whispered.

‘Tata was worried people would find out what . . . about . . . you know,’ she whispered back. ‘He said he might send me to boarding school in the city next year but . . . I don’t know if he means it. I’m working on the farm with him and Henri.’

‘Lilly—’ I was going to explain to Lilly a few practical things – about birth registration requirements, and my marriage, and my husband and Sabina and the nature of love and bonding. Then I realised that not a single thing I could say would justify to Liliana Wyzlecki what was about to happen.

I knew, you see. Even in the moment, I knew that it was not justifiable, and I knew that it was unforgiveable.

I did it anyway.

‘We can’t go on this way forever, Lilly,’ I whispered instead.

‘I know . . . I
know
. But . . . I don’t know what else to do.’ I could hear the tension and the terror rising. ‘C-can’t you take care of her any more, Megan?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying,’ I could barely form the words. ‘I’ll . . . we’ll . . . I promise you I’ll take
very
good care of her.’ A sudden sob interrupted my words and I pressed my hand over my mouth. ‘I promise, Lilly.’

‘Are you going to keep her?’ She was suddenly weeping too, and I couldn’t bear it. She’d trusted me with the most important thing in her life, and I was taking it from her.

‘I think so,’ I choked. ‘I don’t think I have much choice, Lilly. Grae loves her, and we have to do the paperwork now, plus – it’s not good for anyone to go on like this.’

‘Please, Megan. Please just give us a few more weeks, maybe a month or two—’

‘I
can’t
.’ I could barely speak. I knew I had to end the conversation. There was no good to come out of this chat. ‘We all have to get on with our lives. I am so, so sorry.’

I should have hung up. Instead, I listened to the desperate gasps of breath as Lilly struggled to control her own panic. We were both silent for a moment, and then when Lilly spoke again, she sounded as if she was choking.

‘You said you’d help me,’ she said. Her voice was rising, getting stronger and louder with each word until she was shouting. I knew her family would hear her and I knew she had been whispering for fear of that. She was beyond rationality, and all because of the hurt that
I
was causing her. ‘You said you’d
help
us, but you’re the worst of all of them. You just wanted my baby for yourself, didn’t you? You couldn’t have one of your own, so you tricked me into giving you mine!’

I hung up then, frantically fumbling with the phone, desperate to distance myself immediately from the pain that I’d caused her.

It was a retreat into denial. I
could
hang up the phone, I could cut her off. And out of all of the unfairness, it struck me that
this
was the worst part.

Lilly had been powerless in the hospital, and I had watched that struggle and been sickened by it. It seemed but a heartbeat later that now
I
was the one rendering her powerless . . . offering her daughter and then snatching her back . . . hanging up the telephone right in the middle of her speech, cutting off her right of reply.

Lilly was right.

I really was the worst of all of them.