The Secret Daughter (26 page)

‘God, Lilly. I’m so sorry.’

‘The worst thing is the hate,’ she choked. There was a tortured wildness in her eyes, and it would have been quite unnerving if her story wasn’t so harrowing. Her trauma was difficult to watch, but it was absolutely understandable. ‘I felt they’d swapped a perfect seed formed in love with this seething, writhing
hate
and anger in me. It tainted every part of my life at some point. I just don’t understand
why
she had to play with me like that. I had already lost you – why dangle you in front of my nose like that, and then take you away again? It’s never made any sense.’

‘I really wish that I could explain it to you.’

For a minute we sat without speaking. I listened to the shuddering sobs that still came from Lilly periodically, but I was thinking about Mum. I was
livid
– angrier with Mum than I’d ever been, and I’d had some furious moments over those recent weeks. But intermingled with that was a memory of the terror I’d felt when I first learned about her miscarriages, and how scared I’d been for my baby. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what suffering through that, over and over again, would do to a person’s mind.

Was it possible that something in Mum had just
broken
? I’d never seen her so unhinged as I had that day when she told me about her miscarriages. Had it just been too much, caring for a newborn when she’d wanted her own child so badly? I wondered if she’d thought about the chaos her decision would wreak, or if she’d acted purely on impulse. I could almost imagine her holding me, staring down at me with love and absolute adoration, and struggling with the knowledge that she would have to hand me back when she could so
easily
just keep me, and no one would ever know.

Or had it really been more sinister than that, as Lilly suspected? Had Mum planned it this way all along?

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I battled with an automatic reflex to dismiss it. I wasn’t sure I would ever believe that Mum would have made the choices she’d made out of malice. I wanted to hate her. I
was
still angry with her. But in spite of all of that, if I had ever known her at all, Mum was
not
the kind of person who would deliberately cause pain.

‘So – it’s your turn to talk . . . why
did
you find me now
,
Sabina?’ Lilly asked. The softness returned, just a little. ‘After all these years, why were you ready now?’

‘Oh . . .’ I winced, and shook my head. ‘No, Lilly – I only
just
found out. About the adoption, I mean.’

Lilly gasped, and then covered her mouth with her hand.

‘They didn’t even
tell
you?’

‘No, they didn’t. It all kind of erupted when I told them I’m pregnant.’ I said. ‘I don’t think they intended telling me. They said they thought it would be easier on me if I didn’t know.’

She turned to stare out at the empty paddocks around her home. We sat in stillness for a while, as she digested this information, and then she turned to me and said flatly,

‘The cruelty is just
mindboggling
. I registered with the agency so that you could find me the
day
that you became an adult. I literally waited by the phone for a few weeks after your birthday, I was so sure you’d call. And you didn’t even know I existed?’

‘I didn’t even suspect,’ I admitted. I thought about Mum again, and I shivered a little. Regardless of how the adoption had come about, there was
no
avoiding the fact that she’d hidden it from me.

‘But – didn’t you get your birth certificate? How did you get a licence, or a job?’

‘It lists them as my parents, it was forged somehow. Hilary told me it happened sometimes at those places . . .’

‘I’m not even on your
birth certificate
?’ she spoke with a wild panic, a desperate devastation in her eyes that just about broke my heart. I started to cry too then, as I shook my head. ‘They
erased
me. All of this time I thought you might be angry with me or blame me, but it’s even worse than that. You didn’t even
know
about me.’

‘I know about you now,’ I whispered.

‘She has to pay, Sabina.’ Lilly was shaking now. ‘It can’t be legal, what they’ve done. She just
has
to pay.’

‘Pay?’ I repeated, and I couldn’t contain my alarm. ‘But, Lilly . . .’

‘The system was broken and messed up and treated us girls like disposable incubators. That’s one thing, but this is another
altogether.
It was
never
legal to forge birth records. Do you have a copy of the certificate? We could go to the police. We have to
do
something – she can’t just get away with this.’

‘Lilly – I d-don’t know about that.’ Her panic was confusing, and I started to panic too. She was right, of course, Mum probably
had
broken the law if my birth certificate had indeed been forged. But that wasn’t the
whole
picture. There were decades of love and laughter between
that
decision and
this
discussion. How on earth could I explain that to Lilly though, with that wild hate in her eyes, and the pain in her voice?

Surely Lilly was entitled to her vengeance. It looked very much like Mum had done a terrible, unforgivable thing to this woman, and maybe reporting her to the police would give Lilly some peace.

But . . . this was my
Mum
we were discussing.

As angry as I was with Mum and Dad – and I
was
still furious – I was always going to be loyal to them, at least to some degree. Maybe I’d grow to
really
hate them, and maybe what they’d done really
was
unforgivable, but I could never forget the happy times. Could one side of the equation balance out the other, or was I destined to live with the ambiguity forever?

‘Becoming a parent forces you to be selfless,’ Lilly whispered. She gestured towards my stomach. ‘You learn to adjust to a new reality where you’re no longer your own first priority . . . you’ll see all of this for yourself in a few months. Even if I
ignore
what they did to me and James, I can’t fathom a parent deciding again and again to lie to a child about who they really were.’ Her voice rose again and then she broke off suddenly. She turned to me and finished flatly, ‘
You
must hate them too, surely?’

‘I’m confused, Lilly.’ I admitted. ‘I’m so bloody confused I can barely even make myself a cup of tea these days.’ I cleared my throat again and picked at a piece of lint on my jeans so that I could avoid the distress on Lilly’s face while I replied. ‘It’s hard to believe now and I know this is probably going to be awful to hear but . . . but they were
brilliant
p-parents. I had the best upbringing a child could imagine – there was no hint of this darkness swirling around beneath it all. The first glimpse I got of that was when they told me about the adoption and it felt like it came out of
nowhere
. Wait until you see these albums . . . you’ll see a childhood that could have been out of a storybook.’

I stared at my thigh and waited for her to speak until the moment stretched just a little too long, and I finally found the courage to look at Lilly’s face again. She was still staring at me, but it was like my confused statements had deflated her rage somehow. Now there was only confusion and hurt on her face. I wanted to say more – to explain more – but it felt like I’d run out of words. Instead, I offered her an apologetic half-shrug, and she sighed – a long, slow sigh, and turned away from me a little to face out towards the paddocks again. After another minute or two, the gentle rocking of the swing started up again, and she pulled me close for another hug.

Mum had dished out many motherly hugs in my time, but once I was an adult, we didn’t really have much reason to touch. Lilly, on the other hand, seemed to offer a hug me every five minutes. She was just so different to Mum – softer, warmer, more passionate. More like
me
. I resolved then and there to become a woman and a mother who hugged. There was something so generous about the gesture.

‘I planned it all out for when I met you,’ she said softly, ‘I kept my plans up to date, too. So when you were a kid, I pictured activities we’d do – colouring in, or going to the park . . . then when you were a teenager, we were going to go
shopping
or talk about boys . . . then when you were in your twenties, I planned to show you my photo albums –
all
of them one by one – then I’d talk to you about your plans for your life. And we’re here now, doing all of the things I planned to do with you if we reunited when you were in your thirties . . . but I just never thought about the loudness of all of the emotion, you know . . . actually having you here with me.’ She sighed and rested her head against mine. ‘It’s
so
full on, isn’t it? And I never really stopped to think about the tension. I see the way you’re looking at me, with just a little wariness in your eyes . . . I guess you don’t know
me
at all. But I held onto the memory of you so tightly that it’s like you’ve been here with me the whole time, and
you
are exactly as I’d expected and hoped . . . even if this meeting is even more difficult than I’d anticipated.’

‘I’m sorry, Lilly,’ I sat up and shrugged helplessly, ‘I can’t imagine what this is like for you. If it’s any consolation, I think you’re
wonderful
, and I’m so, so glad that I’ve found you.’

‘Me too, Sabina. Why don’t you show me these photos, hey?’

I opened the first one across our laps. Lilly stared down at the first page of photos.

‘Oh, look at you,’ she whispered around a sob. She reached down and touched an image with her fingertip. ‘You were p-perfect.’

She helped herself to the album then, lifting it onto her own lap as if it was actually my newborn body. I watched the emotions play out across her face as she looked from image to image. She touched each photo and let the pad of her finger linger on each word of each description.
Sabina, trying to roll over, January 1974. Sabina, sitting up, April 1974. Sabina, eating pears, April 1974.

‘Are they all like this?’ Lilly asked me. ‘They’re so organised.’

‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘There are photos right up to my birthday this year in the newer albums. And . . . if you want them, you can keep them.’

Lilly glanced at me and frowned.

‘Are you sure? Don’t you want them?’

‘Mum has her own set,’ I whispered. ‘She made these for
you
.’

Lilly froze. Her foot dragged limply against the deck as the echoing movements of the swing faded away. She had been staring at me, but now her gaze sank towards the ground, and her shoulders crumpled forward, and then a shudder ran through her as if I’d slapped her. She shook her head, then pressed her hand to her mouth. There was sheer wildness to Lilly’s eyes for an instant, and I thought she was going to get up and leave, or worse still, to lose it completely all over again. In the split seconds after silence fell, I wondered if I should have waited to bring the albums out.

I rested my hand on her arm, trying to placate her.

‘I’m sorry, Lilly. I really . . . I’m just so
sorry
.’

She started crying again, just like she had when I arrived the night before; great, heaving sobs that originated somewhere in the core of her.

‘I just wonder what she
thinks
about these,’ Lilly said, between sobs. ‘Does she think this makes everything okay?’

‘I doubt it,’ I murmured, thinking of the guilt on Mum’s face the day that she brought the albums to our house.

‘It’s a beautiful gesture. I’ll look at these over and over again, you know. I’ll memorise them, eventually I’ll know them off by heart.’ Lilly wiped her cheeks and her nose. ‘But these weren’t
her
moments to catalogue. As generous as she is to share them, they belonged to
me
in the first place.’

THIRTY

Megan—September 1973

I barely even looked at Sabina until I had her in my house.

As awful as it sounds,
she
was almost an afterthought. After all, she wasn’t
my
baby. I was just minding her for a few weeks, a minor favour – a good deed for a friend. It was only when I found myself completely alone with her that I actually thought about what that would mean.

The midwives had loaned me a bassinet, and provided me with one of the little care packs they sent home with the new adoptive parents. There was formula and nappy cream and nappies, and I felt reasonably confident that I knew what to do with all of the supplies.

My calm went right out the window when I found myself standing in my own kitchen looking down at her. Responsibility rushed in at me, and it was instantly overwhelming.

She was lying on her back in the bassinette, with her little fists up balled beside her cheeks. The striped hospital blanket was tucked tightly around her, right up to her chin, where a purple bruise had formed after her birth. On either side of her head I could see the two deep scratches from the forceps that had assisted her delivery. She made a whistling sound when she breathed out.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had to keep this tiny bundle of humanity alive for several weeks at least, and a cold terror gripped me. The nurses had said she’d need a bottle,
when
was that? Would she cry? How would I know when she needed a nappy changed, or if she was sick? Would she sleep enough? Would I become too attached and find it impossible to hand her back when the time came? How would I protect myself against that? How would I protect Graeme?

I waited. I held my breath and braced myself for the adorable
newness
of her to grab at me. I loved babies . . .
everyone
loves babies, and in spite of her minor birth injuries, Sabina was beautiful from her very first hours. I had braced myself hard, but I needn’t have. I felt no automatic emotional response whatsoever to Sabina as she lay there in my kitchen.