Steal My Sunshine (21 page)

So Essie had swapped secrets for other rewards too.

‘But why did
you
leave, Dad?' I said. ‘You should be here helping Mum, not abandoning her.'

Dad shifted in his seat. ‘It wasn't just that, it was lots of things; a whole marriage. It's not easy.' I knew he couldn't just come out with it so I looked at Mum.

‘Essie wanted me to find Connie for her. She begged me for years. She tried manipulating me, she even tried to blackmail me. She was agoraphobic by then and she said I was keeping her prisoner.
I
was! Oh god,' Mum sighed as if she didn't have the energy to get angry any more. ‘She wouldn't help me find myself though. I don't even know when my real birthday is. Not that I've ever properly tried to find out.'

‘Being the dickhead I am,' said Dad sheepishly, ‘I thought your mother was wrong not to help Essie find Connie and face up to her own roots. It was eating away at us.'

‘But it wasn't just that,' Mum said, and flashed Dad a warning look. Then she softened again. ‘Marriages are complicated.'

‘I get that,' I said, and pressed my lips together because I didn't want to cry again. ‘Mum, I think you should come with me.' I stood up and held out my hand.

‘Where are we going?'

‘I think we should go to Essie's. Just you and me.'

‘What for? I can't go near her. It's too much, Hannah.' She looked terrified. It reminded me of all the times I'd been too scared to do something and Mum had held out her hand for me to hold onto.

‘Mum, please just trust me.'

I could hardly believe it when she did. It was the first step in a plan I hadn't even mapped out properly. Maybe it was time to wing it.

 

Mum drove and I navigated. Even though she'd been on this route nearly every day since we'd moved away from the bay, her nerves were stopping her from thinking straight. But I could see a clear line from us to Essie. A dozen times Mum said she was going to turn round, that it was a stupid idea, but I managed to keep her on track.

The night was clear and I looked up to see if I could recognise Orion's belt, those three stars that looked close but were miles apart in the universe. Maybe what we were about to do would drive Essie, Mum and I even further apart.

The thought of Evan was still a stutter in my heart, but it was what he'd said about stories that I held on to now. We needed stories to survive – we made them up just to get us through. But there was a truth behind Essie's story that needed to come out just so we'd know which direction we were facing.

‘What makes you think she'll tell us?' said Mum.

The inky sea had just come into view, and I thought of Sophie, cold and lost, perhaps forever. ‘I think Essie wants to. She has nothing to lose now, and something to gain.'

Mum looked at me like she really wanted to believe me, like it was some kind of comfort to have me in charge.

 

Essie called through the door. ‘Who is it?'

‘It's Hannah.'

Her face was a picture of hope when she opened up, as if she'd expected me to be standing there with the baby from over the road. And when she saw Mum, all the expectation twisted into confusion.

‘What's this?' she said.

The words would come if I let them. She looked more scared than I was. ‘Essie, I came for the rest of the story,' I said. ‘And Mum, too.'

‘I don't know what you mean,' she said, but she turned around and walked inside, and I guided Mum in. She wouldn't look at Essie or me.

Essie sat in her chair, a drink and a burning cigarette in front of her. Mum stood by the window, looking at Essie's things; I think she wanted to be forgotten, to listen in and not have to do the asking.

‘I know about Mum's birth certificate,' I said. ‘Essie, we need to know what happened.'

‘Why?' she snapped.

I waited a moment, and thought of the compass Dad had left under my pillow. ‘You know your whole story, Essie. It might be painful but it's yours. Mum needs to know how she began.'

‘And what if I don't even know that part?'

‘But you do know
something
,' said Mum, loudly, as if she couldn't just stand on the outskirts any more.

‘Essie, whatever it is, I promise I'll help you.'

Essie's face was a battle between fear and defiance, but I knew it was coming. Mum sat next to me and I held both her hands. This had been the real destination all along, it just wasn't marked on the map.

 

June 1960

I shouldn't be here but I didn't know where else to go. Not home. All I can think about is Malcolm's face when I walk back into the shop. His show of grief makes me sick to my stomach.

‘Not again, my poor, poor Essie,' he'll say, breaking his own damn heart. Yes, Malcolm, again. Again and again and again because my body won't carry another baby. Of course, he doesn't know Connie was mine. I try to tell him that it's no use in us trying but ‘You're young,' he says, and ‘we'll get there.'

I'm not young inside. I can't keep hold of a baby any more than he can keep his bloody endless feelings to himself.

‘Can I help you, madam?' says a nurse, so rushed off her feet she barely stops when she talks to me.

‘It's all right, I know where I'm going,' I say. I don't add: I want to look at how it's done here. I want to see a woman like me cradling her newborn baby for the first time. To see what it's like to be a respected woman in this position, now that I have a husband and a business and no past. I want to know if that sight, and all the smells and high feelings, will flick a switch inside me so that my body stops turning my own babies away.

Nobody minds my being here. I stand at the nurses station and watch as curtains are swished back and forth across the ten white beds by brisk nurses in starched uniforms. Ten miniature theatres all with their own story going on behind the curtain.

‘Are you the almoner?'

‘Pardon?'

‘I'm Matron. I didn't think you could come at such short notice. She wasn't due for another two weeks but she's in the delivery room now and she's making a fuss so let's get on with it, shall we?'

She doesn't wait for an answer. Her tone makes all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. She sounds like Sister. ‘Making a fuss' – that's what Sister used to say
when one of the girls was in pain. I follow her, struggling to keep up as she marches down the corridor. She speaks to me firmly but as if we're on the same side.

‘We're quite sure she'll sign, but you'll need to have another word just to make sure. All being well, it'll be put in the babies room. We'll give the girl the usual, and once everything is signed off, you can take it. Is everything in order?'

There's a rush of adrenalin and that familiar ache between my legs all at once. I suddenly stop and have to steady myself with my hand against the wall.

‘Are you quite well, Mrs . . .?'

Come on, Essie. Steel yourself. You know what they're doing, and why. Play along, I tell myself. ‘Pringle. I'm Mrs Pringle.' That fat cow would be dead by now. ‘Yes, I'm quite well, thank you. I forgot to eat breakfast and I've been rushed off my feet this morning. I do apologise, Matron.'

‘I'll have someone bring you some tea, but we really have to hurry now.'

Matron leaves me outside the delivery room. The screams of a girl charge through every vein of my body as people come in and out of the room – there must be twenty or so in there. So, this is how it's done. This is how it's still done. I get a glimpse of her face. She must be just a few years younger than me – not a girl like I was. What did she do wrong?

I catch more glimpses of her. Momentary snapshots, not like watching
a movie but like images from a View-Master, separate pictures clicking into view one after the other.

She can't move her arms and her feet are in stirrups. A giant domed light hangs from the ceiling and shines between her legs.

A group of young people who could be medical students huddle around a doctor to look at her most private part as if she's something less than human.

The room is tiled in neat squares; there are piles of white towels, three gleaming white basins. Everything is shiny and orderly, except for her.

The girl writhes and screams. A nurse slaps her face.

No one comes in or out of the room for a while. I think about leaving but there's an unknown force keeping me here. I can't help this woman. Even now that I'm an adult and respectable and it's 1960, no one can help her.

She's still, but crying, and the medical students have stepped back. Matron is busy in one corner.

I walk backwards and collide with a trolley of instruments. I'm sweating all over. Soon the door opens and a nurse holding a neatly wrapped bundle marches past me, followed by Matron.

‘All is well,' she says. ‘The girl is quiet and you can get her to sign the papers when she's feeling a bit more herself in an hour or two. The baby will be in the usual room.'

An hour or two. Papers. The baby.

‘Yes, Sister,' I say. ‘Leave it to me.'

 

‘Mum?'

Mum wasn't moving but her mouth was open as if she was choking.

‘Mum!'

‘Yes,' she whispered. ‘Yes, I'm okay.'

Essie was crying into her hands, and I didn't know what to do. Mum stood up and started to walk down the hall. I looked from her to Essie, over and over. Mum flung the door wide open, sat heavily on the porch and put her head in her hands.

‘Essie,' I said. ‘You took her.'

She nodded, unable to take her hands away from her face.

‘But you can't have walked back into the bakery with her. How did you . . .?'

‘Get away with it?' She looked up. ‘I went to Sydney. I found Patrick and Rose's art gallery and they helped me. Again. And then I went back to Malcolm. It wasn't difficult at all, you see, because he wanted to believe the baby was his. I had a simple answer for every question he asked. I lied so much I forgot what the truth was.'