The Secret Daughter (13 page)

But in the real world, Hilary Stephens was only in her early twenties, and she was not very motherly at all. She was concerned and empathetic, but clearly very professional. I couldn’t imagine her hugging any client, not even if they were weeping buckets of tears. I was irrationally disappointed when she shook my hand, then shook Ted’s hand, and pointed us towards a partition. She didn’t even have an office. Instead of the heavy oak desk I’d been picturing, we sat on cheap plastic chairs while she took out an iPad and began my file.

‘So, Sabina, tell me about yourself. What’s your date of birth?’

‘10
^th
October 1973.’

‘That’s what’s on your birth certificate?’ When I nodded, she made a note then glanced at me. ‘Do you happen to know if it’s your
actual
birth date?’

The question was more startling than it should have been. I felt my jaw slacken, and I stared at her, as if she’d said something offensive. Ted reached over to take my hand.

‘Well, yes. I think it’s both.’ But how did I know? I slumped. ‘I mean, I assume it is.’

‘And do you know your place of birth?’

‘Orange. There was a maternity home.’

‘Yes . . . I know it.’ Her tone was grim, and she made some notes on the iPad.

‘Is that bad?’ Ted asked.

‘Sometimes, the paper trail can be difficult to follow, especially at these rural maternity homes. But not always – so we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Is this the first time you’ve tried to find your first family?’

‘I only found out about this a few weeks ago.’

Hilary glanced up at me, assessing my expression.

‘So, still coming to terms with the adoption? Was it a shock?’

I laughed.

‘That’s an understatement.’

‘And how are you handling it?’

‘I don’t know. I’m really hoping that finding them, or finding out who they are, might help me to understand it.’

‘There are a lot of ways this can play out, Sabina. Sometimes, I meet people like yourself, people who discover late that they were adopted and immediately come looking for answers about their past, and they have expectations about a reunion which are just not fair to anyone. It doesn’t always go smoothly, and it’s rarely a fast process. Rural births during that era can be very difficult to trace, and even if I
can
find your first mother or your father . . . well, they don’t always
want
to be known. There are a lot of careful steps between here and any reunion, and the reunion is the
beginning
of a journey, not the end of one.’

‘I understand,’ I said, but I was already disappointed, and feeling so fragile and on edge that even her very reasonable warning made me want to get up and leave. I looked at the floor and started counting the loops of carpet near my feet.

I got to seventeen loops of the blue-grey carpet, one slightly longer than the others, before she spoke again. The room smelt faintly of coffee. Had Hilary Stephens had a coffee just before we arrived? How many other men and women had sat in this chair and prepared themselves for this journey? How many had waited decades to hear about their own origins? How many times had it ended in tears – and not happy ones?

‘Is this always the right thing to do?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think there are right or wrong ways to process what you’ve learned. I think you can only go with your gut, and your gut has brought you here, so I’m very happy to help you start if you chose to. But if at any time, you decide you don’t want to proceed, or you don’t want to proceed just
yet
. . . just say the word, okay?’

‘That sounds like a great plan,’ Ted said softly. I glanced towards him, drew comfort from the steady gaze he maintained on me, and turned back to Hilary.

‘Okay. Yes, let’s do it.’

‘Do you have your birth certificate?’

I reached into my bag and withdrew the faded copy I’d had for years, since my very first job at a music store when I was fifteen. Hilary took it and reviewed it carefully.

‘Did they tell you anything about the adoption?’

‘No, not really . . . Mum was a social worker at the maternity home . . . but she told me that she never knew who my birth mother was.’

‘But . . .’ Ted interrupted me, although I could see he was hesitant. ‘I mean, they
say
they don’t know who she was . . . but it’s pretty obvious that they’re lying. They knew how old she was, and they’re very defensive when we ask any other questions.’

‘I traced a birth at the Orange home a year or so ago,’ Hilary murmured, ‘from just a few years before you were born, actually. The home wasn’t all that large, no more than forty women even at its height, and by the seventies, it was on the downhill slide – it closed in the early eighties from memory. I’d be surprised if she really didn’t know who gave birth and when, especially given that it sounds like she adopted you quite quickly after you arrived. But look, we’ll track back through the records and see what we can find.’

It had been easy to focus my anger on Dad until that moment. His abrasive manner had been drawing my ire like a magnet. I could blame him, because he seemed to want to control the situation, and surely that meant it was all his fault.

But Hilary Stephens was twisting the kaleidoscope again, and shifting my perspective with it. The situation swam in and out of focus and suddenly I realised that it was
Mum
in the system,
Mum
in the home,
Mum
who had somehow mysteriously been able to take me home from the hospital.

Mum was where this whole lie started, and if Hilary was right and Mum really did know who my birth mother was, then Mum had the power to end it.

I could not think of a single acceptable reason for my mother to keep that secret and to keep me in this anguish. I’d assumed that we’d get past this. I’d assumed that we’d have a difficult few weeks or months but eventually they’d open up and I’d forgive them and we’d all move on.

Suddenly though, I realised that there was a possibility that I’d face my future
without
my parents. My first thought was to my pregnancy and the challenges of parenthood ahead – how would I ever cope without Mum’s guidance and advice, or Dad’s support?

But, I told myself, I’d managed just fine in the last week, and I’d
continue
to do so. I was beyond angry; my rage dialled all the way up toward hatred, and I wasn’t sure that I even
wanted
to get ‘past this’ at all.

‘I’ve read a little about forced adoption,’ I said. My voice was strangled and strained. Ted gave another gentle squeeze of my hand. ‘I just can’t
understand
– it sounds like something out of the dark ages.’

‘The thing to keep in mind is that being pregnant and unmarried was a
huge
deal when you were born – especially in rural areas. Here in the city, attitudes were starting to shift, but in the
country
– well, the idea that an unmarried woman might raise a child alone was unthinkable.’

‘Mum did tell me that her parents probably gave consent on her behalf to the adoption. That she might not even have had the right to give consent because of her age, I mean.’

‘Yes if she was a minor that’s probably how it worked. But something to keep in mind is that
consent
is a very loaded word when we talk about adoption. Particularly during the era of your birth, and even more so in these little rural maternity homes. There really was no such thing as
informed
consent. In a maternity home like the one you were adopted from, even if a woman did sign the right paperwork – even if she was an adult and had the
right
to – it was usually after months of coercion. If we find that your first mother did ‘consent’ to the adoption, that doesn’t mean that she
wanted
it to happen.’

‘I’d run away,’ I whispered, sliding my hands over my belly. I had a fierce confidence in the protectiveness I felt for our child. ‘I’d find a way to escape.
No way
would they take my baby.’

‘That wasn’t really an option, Sabina,’ Hilary said gently. ‘These were highly regimented places, attendance rolls marked at regular intervals and doors physically locked at times to keep the women inside. Not to mention
serious
punishments where the rules were broken. When women did escape, they were often returned by the police – remember that the law was
on the side
of the maternity home.’

‘It just seems crazy now, doesn’t it?’ Ted murmured. ‘If this was happening today, there’d be an uproar.’

‘The uproar is finally starting now,’ Hilary said. ‘The problem at the time was that the government didn’t see what was happening as an injustice, if anything it saw the whole adoption industry as a way to deal with the moral failure of the mothers. At the heart of all of this was a sick kind of misogyny, the belief that women who fell pregnant outside of marriage were fundamentally sinful and undeserving of their babies. A lot of maternity homes were run or sponsored by religious institutions. Orange was sponsored by the local Salvation Army, from memory.’

‘Did they really think they were
helping
anyone?’ I murmured, shaking my head.

‘I am sure that most involved in the system
thought
they were doing the right thing.’ Hilary said quietly. Ted and I glanced at each other, and I knew we were both thinking about Mum.

‘What is the process from here?’ Ted asked quietly.

‘Sometimes, it’s a long one.’ Hilary sat the iPad on her lap. ‘I do have the bulk of the Orange records already, so that may speed it up a little. But basically I need to look to find an exact match for the details provided. If I can be sure who your first mother was, then I can search to see if she’s already registered with us. Sometimes, the end of this journey comes that quickly – either
yes
, she’s registered with us looking for a reunion, or
maybe
, if she hasn’t registered at all, and we have to then try to track her down . . . or
no.
It’s a
no
if she’s registered with us to put a veto on contact.’

‘Does that happen often? The veto, I mean.’ My mouth was dry.

‘More often than you’d think. Sometimes a first mother really does want to carry on as if the pregnancy never happened, and we have to respect that. Often it’s that the mother has gone on to have a family later in life and has never told anyone about the pregnancy. If there’s a contact block, there is
nothing
I can do. And if I can’t be
sure
who your first mother was, there’s usually nothing I can do. That scenario can happen if the paperwork was forged, which happened sometimes too … often where the first mother entirely refused consent.’

‘Refused consent? So – even if the women
didn’t
agree, the babies were taken sometimes?’

Hilary hugged the iPad against her stomach and nodded slowly.

‘In most cases, Sabina, it didn’t matter
what
the mothers did. If they weren’t minors and they were even entitled to a say in their child’s future, and they
did
somehow resist the coercion and the pressure, then ‘consent’
was achieved via drugging the mothers, or even brute force, and sometimes when all of that failed, staff resorted to fraud.’

Brute force. Forced adoption. Fraud. The language of this new world was so
violent
.

‘Do you think . . . do you think Mum – my adoptive Mum, Megan – would she have been involved in those things? As a social worker?’

I think she was trying to maintain a poker face, but I saw that slight compression to Hilary’s lips and the minute narrowing of her eyes. The hint of disdain told me everything I needed to know.

‘It’s possible,’ was all that she said.

When we left her office, I slipped into a daydream, and I didn’t really emerge until later that night. I thought about the woman who had given birth to me, and what it would be like if I could reunite with her. I thought of how wonderful it would be to look into a face that mirrored mine, and I wondered if, on some level, I had actually missed that for my entire life. I thought only about the future, because every time I wondered about the past, I’d feel my heart rate start to race and the simmering anger in my gut would threaten to rise.

Mum shattered my daydream and triggered the explosion. She sent me a text, a sweet and somewhat innocent text, but it enraged me such that I nearly threw the phone.

Sabina, are you okay? Please just let me know that you’re okay, I am very worried about you.

How dare she enquire after my welfare? How
dare
she check in on me, as if I was walking through some unpredictable, unavoidable turmoil . . . as if she hadn’t caused the whole damn thing?

My hands were shaking as I replied.

I am not okay, Mum. You’re still lying to me. I won’t be okay until you tell me the truth. What is it you’re trying to hide?

I let the phone rest in my palm while I waited for a response, but I stared down at the screen with such a desperate fury that my eyes began to ache. After a few minutes I realised that she wasn’t going to reply.

‘I am starting to hate them,’ I whispered to Ted.

He looked at me in surprise.

‘I’ve never heard you say that about
anyone.
’

‘I want to hurt them. I want revenge. I want to break them into a thousand tiny pieces and rebuild them as the people they were supposed to be all along.’ I was typing on my phone again as I spoke, but Ted suddenly caught my hands.

‘I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be,’ he whispered. ‘But don’t do anything you’ll regret, Bean.’

I snatched the phone away from him and finished my text message with violent jabs of my fingertips. When I was satisfied with the message, I added Dad to the recipient list and held the phone up for Ted to read.

I don’t want to hear from either of you, not
ever
again if you can’t even bring yourself to be honest with me. Don’t contact me until you are ready to tell me everything.