The Secret Daughter (6 page)

I got used to it a little by the end of the day, although I saw myself in the mirror tonight and my face has never been so shiny or so red.

I don’t mean to complain . . . I mean, I
can
do the work . . . and of course, I will do it, because I don’t really have a choice anyway. And at least it gives me something to do while I wait for you to come. I could almost distract myself with the endless loads of washing and wish away the time until you arrive.

I keep thinking about what Mrs Baxter said, and trying to keep my chin up. It is already really hard to do that, because when I see the residents I can tell that they feel lost too. I wonder where their boyfriends are, and why
they
didn’t just get married. They can’t
all
have found themselves caught with bad timing like we did.

Are all of these girls waiting for someone to come get them, like I’m waiting for you?

I can’t wait until you see the way my belly moves. You’ll feel the baby from the outside now, its kicks are so strong, its jabs determined and constant. Today was the first day I really thought about what it all means, and I know that’s silly, but until the secret was out I really was very busy pretending this wasn’t happening at all. As awful as it is here, at least I can start to get used to the fact that I’m about to become a
mother
. Those bumps and kicks and punches inside me aren’t gas or my imagination – there’s really a whole other
person
in there. I’ll bet our baby is going to be so cute. How could he not be, with you for his father? I hope he gets your brain and your eyes and your smile. Actually, I hope our baby is just like you, except maybe with my hair because yours is always messy, and mine seems to manage itself just fine.

I love this baby, James. We’re going to make a wonderful family together, you know. Can’t you just see it? We’ll move into one of those little houses on your farm, the ones the shearers usually stay in when they come through. I’ll try to decorate it and set it up for us – as well as I can, anyway. I know we won’t have much money, but we
will
have each other, and isn’t that all that really matters? I won’t finish high school or make it to university now, but I’ll see our baby’s first smile, and first steps. Isn’t that so much more important than any degree or job?

I can always borrow books from the library and read while our baby sleeps. I can still learn, and now, instead of just teaching children facts and inputting information to their minds, I can mould an entire little person by being a good . . . no, a
great
mother.

I never really understood what it would be like to be pregnant. I saw Mama have the younger kids, and I watched her grow fat and uncomfortable and cranky. I didn’t realise that she would be feeling a devotion bigger and bolder than anything else in the world. No wonder she was so angry with me yesterday when she found out what we’ve done. She had such big plans for my life; I was going to be the first member of our family to go to university . . . the first of us to get a profession. She must be so disappointed. But you know what, James, as much as I’m starting to get
that,
I’m equally
sure
that Mama will come around. Nothing this baby could ever do could make me love it less. And that’s how I know that Mama will eventually see that somehow, this baby will be the best thing that could have happened to me.

I hope I find a way to reach you soon, James. I’m hoping I can get Mrs Baxter alone at some point to ask her if she could post these letters for me, she seems like my best shot at contacting you.

I love you, always and forever.

Lilly

FIVE

Sabina—March 2012

I was still sitting at my dining table when the sun came up. I had tumbled headfirst into the trap of believing that if I turned the situation over in my mind enough times, it would suddenly swim into focus and make sense. When Ted woke just after 6 a.m., and placed a gentle kiss on my head, I realised that all I had actually done was to exhaust myself into a state of utter fragility. The sight of my husband; the way his gaze searched and assessed the shadows on my face, was enough to bring me to tears again.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, but I could see that he knew that I wasn’t.

‘I called in sick,’ I said. I’d sent the text at 4 a.m., so that my boss would find it as soon as she woke and have time make other plans. I loved my job and hated to miss a day, but trying to wrangle classrooms full of primary school children into something like musical harmony was difficult enough on an average day. Attempting that feat on no sleep was a recipe for disaster.

‘Do you want me to stay home with you?’ Ted suggested. ‘We can sit under a doona and drink hot chocolate and watch movies?’

‘No, no.’ I shook my head. ‘I just need . . .’ I looked back to the laptop. The internet held somewhere just about every secret in the world, almost every piece of information the human race had ever discovered. Surely sooner or later I'd stumble upon just the right search to make it all make sense. ‘I think I just need some time to
think
.’

‘The last few days have been so full on.’ Ted turned the coffee grinder on and the sound was jarring, but the reward soon came as the scent of fresh coffee filled the air. He waited until it had finished before he spoke again. ‘Did you sleep at all?’

‘No.’

‘Tired now?’

‘Exhausted.’

‘What are you thinking?’ He busied himself packing the coffee into the machine, and the simple act of that was a strange comfort to me. Everything was upside down, but there was still a world waking up. Ted was making himself a long black, just like he did every morning, and soon he'd dress and go into work as if nothing had changed. I couldn’t even imagine how I would ever do the same.

‘I think I relived every moment of my life through the night, from my first memory to now, wondering how they could have kept this from me, wondering how I didn't know. And it makes even less sense than it did last night when they told me.’

‘Do you want to talk to them? We could ask them to come round again tonight?’

‘No.’ The very thought made me shudder. ‘
God
no, I don't want to see them yet.’

‘You’re angry?’

‘No . . . not angry. Not
yet,
anyway . . . I'm still too shocked and confused for anger. I keep thinking this is some strange nightmare and I'll soon wake up.’

‘You look like shit.’ Ted flashed me an affectionate smile, and I couldn't help but smile back.

‘I feel like shit.’

‘Go to bed?’

‘I will when you go to work,’ I promised. ‘Let's have breakfast first and make small talk about the boring engineering jobs you're going to suffer through today.’

I slept the morning away. When I woke up, I was disoriented and confused at the blaring midday sun, and at first I thought I’d had a feverish dream. I stared at the ceiling for a while, facing properly this time the full barrage of the hurt and confusion. Even after a little sleep, the shock had eased just enough that I could think the words and understand their full implications.

I was adopted.

I knew a lot of things about myself. I was a teacher – but a singer and a musician at heart. I knew jazz better than almost anyone I knew. I could take a ratty seven-year-old and transform him just by giving him a triangle. I was petrified of crowds, unless I had a microphone in my hand and a band behind me. I preferred to wear bold colours, and I was taking my first baby steps towards motherhood. I loved my husband with a strength and a passion that seemed almost other-worldly. I hated the taste of cinnamon, and with an equally strong preference, enjoyed any form of basil. I had never had a piercing, or a tattoo, or even dyed my hair. I had always been overweight, and in recent years, I’d
finally
accepted that I always would be. I had a very happy, uneventful childhood. I had scraped through school and university, just by the skin of my teeth and the strength of my results in my music classes.

And now, I had new facts to add to my internal dossier on Sabina Lilly Wilson.

I was adopted. I was a victim of a life-long lie. I had been betrayed.

I had five missed calls on my phone and a bunch of text messages. Mum and Dad had both phoned me twice, and there had been a call from Ted. I drafted a quick message to Ted to let him know that I’d slept and that I was ‘doing ok’, whatever the hell
that
meant. And then I turned the phone off.

After a shower, I made myself a decaf coffee and sat back at the laptop. I opened the browser and brought up the Wikipedia page again, and this time I read all the way through it, right to the end.

I let the picture form in my mind. I stared at the photo of the maternity home and I imagined in sepia a young woman standing out in front of it holding an old style vinyl suitcase. Mum had said she was sixteen – less than
half
my age. In my mind, my biological mother looked exactly like me, and was lost like me, but she was about a million times more terrified.

And then I imagined her looking down at her stomach and I wondered what she was thinking of me, nestled in her womb. I imagined her looking to the front doors of the maternity home and being nervous to step inside, but believing she had no choice. I imagined that she thought it was for the best, but maybe she was really not sure. I could only assume she
wanted
the best for me.

I wondered if she wanted to keep me.

I wondered if she had made something of her life.

I wondered if she still thought about me.

And then I wondered if I should try to find her.

I took a second day off work, and I went to visit my parents.

I didn’t tell them I was coming, just as I didn’t tell Ted that I was going. I was nervous about the discussion, and I thought I might back out at the last minute, so I didn’t want to have to deal with any expectations or concerns.

As I stood on their doorstep, I wondered if, on some level, I was looking for revenge. Here I was, turning up unannounced, demanding answers and information – just as they had turned up unannounced and tipped my life on its head. I hesitated at the double oak front doors, my hand on the ornate gold knocker. My parents were not wealthy, but they were definitely well-off. I’d grown up in a large home in the pricey suburb of Balmain, only a few kilometres from the Sydney CBD. My parents
always
had new cars, I’d attended prestigious private schools, and we’d holidayed overseas almost every year.

I’d led a charmed life, or so it seemed.

I slammed the knocker into the door with too much force. When the door opened a moment later, my mother gasped as she recognised me.

‘Love, you
know
you don’t have to knock – why didn’t you just let yourself in?’

I thought of the keys in my bag and the countless times I’d let myself into this very house. That seemed like the action of another person in another life. Physically, I knew every inch of this house, I knew its cracks and its crannies and the secrets within every crevice. I’d hidden cigarettes here during my
very
brief smoking phase at age fifteen, I’d snuck a boyfriend in via that window over there when I was seventeen, and more than once I’d caught Mum crying on this very step after a disagreement with Dad.

This was my home, and I knew it like a fourth family member. But emotionally . . . spiritually . . . I was visiting this place for the very first time, and I didn’t know a single one of its rules.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. My voice was small. Mum stepped aside and motioned for me to enter, but I hesitated. ‘Mum, I just don’t know what to think about anything any more. Can we talk, please?’

‘Of course,’ she said, and she brushed the hair back from my face and then framed my cheeks with her hands, just as she’d done the night that I’d told her about the baby. Mum’s eyes, close to and locked with mine, were concerned and sad and relieved all at once. She didn’t often touch me now that I was an adult, not that we weren’t close; she just had never been the physically affectionate type. The very fact that she was making physical contact with me so much these days told me that she was as scared as I was.

How could I navigate this and come out the other side? How could I understand this lie, and hold onto the truth that even when we had clashed over my lifetime, I’d
never
doubted the ferocity of her love for me?

‘Of course we can talk,’ she said, ‘Dad’s just coming back from golf. But let’s make some tea and sit down and I will tell you whatever I can.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and I was suddenly teary and
so
glad that I’d come. Everything had changed, but Mum’s presence still meant comfort to me. She slipped her arm through mine as she led me into the kitchen, and didn’t release me until the very moment when she had to use both of her hands to open the fresh box of tea. After she’d handed me my cup, she opened the cupboard and withdrew a packet of low calorie fruit biscuits, then at my incredulous expression, sighed and put them back in the cupboard. When her hand emerged again she was holding Dad’s not-so-secret stash of triple chocolate cookies, just as I knew she would be.

‘That’s more like it,’ I muttered. I took the packet from her and helped myself to one as we walked through to her sitting room. Awash in the sun at this time of day, the room was an explosion of pastel floral fabrics and throw cushions. This room was my mother’s favourite, and maybe it was mine too, because it was so uniquely
her
– stylish and neat and impeccably decorated, but comfortable and familiar. That same insanely expensive lavender room spray she’d splurged on for years lingered, dragging me back to a time when I lived under this roof. Way back then, my incessant nagging meant that Mum had tolerated a television in one of the few spaces not taken up by burgeoning bookshelves.

The television was long gone now, upgraded and shifted out of sight – Dad had turned the second office into a media room, although they rarely used it. Most of their leisure time was spent here, in the carefully styled sitting room overlooking the cottage garden that Mum maintained with military precision.