They were sitting in a living room with a group of people, and nobody in the photo was quite facing the camera. There were two couches in the room, at right angles to each other. On the first couch sat her mother. In her arms was a tiny baby with a white knitted cap on its head. Her mother was beaming. She was dressed in a pretty white sundress and sandals, showing off her summer tan. Her hair was loose and long. Next to her sat Willa’s father. He was wearing knee-length shorts with long socks and lace-up leather shoes. It was his casual look that Willa remembered from her childhood. He was looking down at the baby seriously, his greying temples already giving away the signs of middle age.
Further back in the room, standing at the end of the couch, small and pretty, was Lillian, her sweet twenty-year-old face staring not quite at the camera, her dark curls falling messily about her shoulders, the barest ghost of a sad smile on her face. Willa gazed at her for a long moment, trying to decipher the strange expression. Next to Lillian, an attractive middle-aged woman was perched on the edge of the second couch, looking across at the baby. She had one leg bent in front and across the other and her hands were clasped in her lap, as if she were royalty. She wore a tailored floral dress to the knee. It had long sleeves with white cuffs and a high neck that accentuated her slim figure. Her fair hair was pulled back in what looked like a chignon. To the side of her, slouched at the other end of the couch, was a girl of perhaps fourteen. She wore a headband and a dark pinafore dress, and she was looking away from the camera, her arms crossed in front of her in a typical teenage pose.
Willa turned the photograph over. On the back it read: 19 December 1977. Baby Bee-Bee and her new family. Launceston.
A shiver ran through Willa. She knew the baby could only be her, but her tiny, scrunched face looked just like Esme’s as a newborn. Baby Wilhelmena would have been just nine days old in the photograph.
She stood and placed it on top of a stack of boxes as she stretched her cramped legs. She wondered about the identity of the unknown woman and girl in the photograph. Perhaps they were extended family members. Or friends. Or the woman might be from some sort of adoption agency. She knew from talking to Annabelle that it couldn’t be Lillian’s mother, because she had died when Lillian was young, and she didn’t have siblings.
Willa looked back at the photo. She had always known she was adopted, but she had never talked to her parents about the early days of her life. If Lillian was her mother, then the photograph proved she had met Willa’s parents, and must have known them a little. Or perhaps more. But Willa’s parents had never admitted to knowing her birth mother, and somehow Willa now felt cheated – betrayed that her adoption might not have been the scenario she had always imagined: her parents receiving a phone call from a faceless social worker or administration officer saying a baby girl was available to pick up at the hospital. All parties anonymous to the others.
Now it seemed that her parents had owned a key to Willa’s identity that they had kept hidden. She’d always assumed that seeking out her heritage would be a bureaucratic nightmare, with endless forms and applications, red tape and rights of veto and waiting periods. And then the emotional pay-off might not be worth it. She had a friend who’d been adopted and then traumatised by the hostile reactions of her birth parents. She thought she might not have had the strength to navigate such a situation; what if all she found was an unwilling stranger at the other end who resented her for her troubles? But if the hurdles weren’t there, and the truth had been just a conversation away, it mattered. Especially now that neither her biological nor her adoptive parents were here to tell her how it had all happened.
She put the photograph back into the envelope and squashed the flap closed, then flicked through the last two albums. One contained photos of Lillian in her teens, some taken with her father standing next to her, then later sitting in a wheelchair. In those, Lillian looked much older, as if her father’s accident had added a decade of maturity around her eyes. The last album held photographs of her childhood, some taken with her mother and many with familiar background scenes around Sisters Cove and The Old Chapel. A sadness seeped through Willa as she replaced the albums and closed the box. She needed to get outside. To walk. To think.
At the end of the lane, she turned left, the lighthouse beckoning in the distance. The day had become grey and cool, and it suited her mood. She was wearing her leather walking shoes, and she stepped up the pace, wanting to force her brain into a busy rhythm, her breath to come faster, her heart to pound. Before she could make sense of it all, she needed to clear her mind.
It was windy, and she enjoyed the noise of the wind sweeping through the crops and the background pounding crash of the ocean on the rock face at the base of the cliffs. Ahead of her, the lighthouse loomed, an enormous white apparition against the sky. Its base was fenced off, and as she reached the gate, she noticed it was locked. She stopped for a moment, taking in the paddocks, then the majestic scenery of the vast ocean extending off into the distance, scrubby trees clinging to the cliff faces as far as she could see. She walked around the lighthouse. At the front, a bush track opened between trees. The wind was whipping off the cliff face now and the barest hint of salt spray swirled through the air.
She followed the path down towards the face of the cliff, and as she neared the edge, a clearing emerged. Trees had been chopped back and a brilliant vista of the ocean opened up. A wooden seat had been installed. On the seat sat a woman in a patterned raincoat, her hood pulled up. She was completely still, with her back to Willa, staring out towards the ocean.
Willa was unsure whether to continue down the track. She watched the woman for another minute. It was as if she was a statue, frozen by the sheen of the ocean. Then something must have alerted the woman, because she turned, and her face creased into a huge smile.
‘Willa!’
It was Annabelle. She pulled the hood from her head and bustled across, greeting Willa as if they were long-lost friends.
‘Oh Willa, I’m so glad to see you! What a coincidence. I was just thinking to myself how lovely it would be if you could spend some time in the garden with me. Indigo was saying you want to learn, and I have plenty of tips if you can bear to listen. I love gardening.’
‘Oh,’ said Willa, startled by the sudden onslaught. ‘Yes, that would be nice. Thank you. I’m only here for a few more days, though.’
‘What a shame you can’t stay for the garden fete. It’s in two weeks – first weekend of autumn. Thankfully I don’t have any weddings booked for the next month, so we’re free to concentrate on it.’
‘I’m sure you’ll love every moment. That garden of yours is wonderful,’ said Willa.
Annabelle was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Do you think your husband and son could manage without you a bit longer if you stayed on? I promise you would love it. We have a petting zoo for the children, and market craft stalls and food stalls and of course lots of pot plant stalls. We’ve been striking plant cuttings for a year!’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Willa. She knew she couldn’t stay. She needed to be with her family for the anniversary, but it didn’t feel right to quash Annabelle’s enthusiasm by mentioning Esme.
‘Well, anyway… you decide. If none of us can persuade you to sell The Old Chapel to us, then I suspect we’ll be seeing more of you in the future anyway. Neighbours. Only occasionally, I suppose, but still. Won’t that be nice?’ She smiled with delight, as if Willa turning up every couple of years for a holiday at Sisters Cove would be the most wondrous thing that could possibly happen.
‘Yes, lovely.’ Willa looked across at the seat. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. You looked as though you might be meditating.’
‘Oh gosh. No. I don’t really know how. Well, Sylvia’s told me how, but it’s impossible to just let your thoughts go blank, isn’t it? I mean, you tell yourself to empty your mind, but it’s like that thing where they tell you to not think of a pink elephant, and of course all you can think of is the darned pink elephant!’
Willa smiled. ‘I’ve never quite got the hang of it either. I have a wonderful phone app, though – it’s great for getting you started. It gives you little five-minute meditations to help you focus. I can show you if you like.’
‘Really? That sounds good. Anything that helps sort out the million silly things that are always zinging through my head.’ Annabelle paused, and seemed to be turning something over in her mind. ‘I was just thinking about a bit of a problem I have, you see. I don’t know what to do about it. I thought about telling Indigo when we were gardening, but she’s too young to burden with these things. And anyway, it’s not something she needs to know.’ She stared past Willa’s shoulder for a moment, confusion flitting across her face in the tiny movements around her eyes and mouth.
‘If you need someone to talk to, I’m a very good listener,’ said Willa.
‘Oh!’ said Annabelle. ‘Really? You’d listen to my silly problems?’
‘Shall we sit down?’ said Willa, immediately regretting her offer, but at the same time craving the distraction of other people’s much more manageable problems.
‘Well, since you’re not a local, perhaps it would be a good idea to get things off my chest to you.’ Annabelle laughed, as if at some secret joke she’d just made.
They sat on the bench and looked out to the ocean, and Annabelle was strangely silent. Willa resisted the urge to look across at her. The ocean was soothing in its own, vast way.
‘I was thinking of Dan,’ Annabelle said eventually. ‘He never loved me like he loved Sylvia. He only married me because I followed him around. I chased him. For years, until he gave in really. Sylvia ran away from him, you see, to Melbourne, then overseas, and I… I adored him. Always have. And of course, I suppose in those days I had certain charms. I could host excellent dinner parties. I was an asset as a wife because I could talk to anyone. And I was pretty and curvaceous and men liked to look at me. Back then, at least.’
Annabelle had turned towards Willa, as if to emphasise the notion before looking back to the ocean.
‘And Dan adored my breasts. He would say it all the time. “You have the most spectacular breasts, Belle. I could live in those breasts!”’
Willa felt herself reddening under her collar. She wanted to put her fingers in her ears. In her head she could hear herself running interference. La la la la la la la la.
‘But now the doctors say that all the tests show I definitely have breast cancer and that I might have to have one chopped off. And I don’t really want to. But I keep saying to myself, what does it matter, though, Annabelle? Dan is sleeping with Sylvia anyway. He doesn’t love you, he never has, and now he won’t love your breasts either.’
‘Oh, Annabelle…’ said Willa, turning to her.
Annabelle had tears running down her cheeks.
Willa reached down and placed her hand on top of Annabelle’s hand. She couldn’t think what to say, so they sat in silence, her hand warming Annabelle’s cold one underneath.
After a few minutes, Annabelle said, ‘Thank you, Willa. For not jumping in to tell me it will be all right. I know I’ll manage. I always do.’
Willa squeezed her hand. ‘Somehow I think you will.’ Underneath Annabelle’s frippery, she sensed a steadfast resolve.
‘Please don’t mention this to anyone, will you?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Willa. ‘We all have things we want to keep under wraps.’
Annabelle wiped her eyes again. ‘Thank you. And sorry – you’re probably out here for your own thinking time, and here’s me wittering on as if I have the biggest problems in the world.’
‘They’re not small problems. And really, it’s fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Annabelle, drawing her eyebrows together and pondering for a moment. ‘Because you do actually look a little sad today, Willa. I know it might be because of Esme, but is there anything else?’
Willa hesitated. She hadn’t planned to say anything, but Annabelle had trusted her, and she sensed they were allies now.
‘I was in The Old Chapel just now, going through documents and so on. I found a whole heap of stuff, including a photograph of me as a baby with my parents and Lillian. I’m pretty certain now that she really was my birth mother. And I somehow feel cheated; that my parents lied about things.’
Annabelle stared back at the ocean and was silent for a while. ‘Lies. So many lies.’ She sounded tired and sad, and Willa regretted adding to her worries.
Annabelle spoke again. ‘They told me Lillian miscarried. Late in her pregnancy. I wasn’t in Sisters Cove at the time, you see. She had decided to keep her baby and raise it herself. She didn’t need a man or permission to keep it; so she said, anyway. She didn’t care what anyone thought – she was a feminist. We were quite unalike in that regard.’ She glanced at Willa and gave her a small, sad smile. ‘But if you’ve found proof that she adopted you out, then she lied, and I’m not sure why she did that. I would have understood. It would have been a comfort to me, to know that her baby had lived; that she hadn’t suffered that loss.’
‘Yes,’ said Willa.
They both fell silent for a moment, then Willa said, ‘What about my biological father? Did you know him?’
‘Oh Willa, I’m sorry, but he passed away. And I can’t tell you his name because it would be betraying someone who trusted me. And he wasn’t really… well…’ Annabelle’s glance was awkward. She looked down at her hands and paused. ‘He wasn’t really worth knowing, if you take my meaning. But if it helps you, I think Lillian loved him, for a time at least.’
Annabelle brought her hand to her mouth briefly, then let it fall to her neck, where she caressed the cross on her necklace in restless, repetitive motions. ‘We love whom we love, don’t we? Men aren’t perfect. Sometimes they’re just plain horrid. But our hearts can be blind. We can be blind. Blind and stupid.’ She turned to Willa, and there was a desperate sadness in her eyes. ‘But the love is real, Willa, so what’s a girl to do?’
Seventeen
Annabelle
‘I just met Wilhelmena Fairbanks,’ said Dan, coming through the door. ‘She’s over in The Old Chapel garden.’ He pulled a beer out of the fridge and sat down at the table.
Annabelle was busy making fig paste to sell at the garden fete.
‘Mmm,’ she said, steeling herself to keep her voice even. Every day it became a little bit easier to swallow the hurt. ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she? She was going to go home a few days ago, but her husband and son surprised her by turning up.’
Dan raised his eyebrows, then turned to stare out the window. Annabelle wondered what he was thinking. Perhaps he was worrying that if Willa’s family had come all the way from England, they must want The Old Chapel for themselves. Perhaps they wouldn’t sell it to him.
‘I didn’t spot the husband,’ he said. ‘Leandra Pickle was helping her do some mulching.’ He took a swig of his beer. ‘That woman is a total pain in the arse.’
‘Dan!’ said Annabelle. It was true that Leandra was very annoying, but he didn’t have to say it so forcefully. Especially when she was just across the road. What if she popped across to borrow a rake or some pruning shears?
Annabelle pondered Dan’s recent foul moods as she stirred the fig paste and tried to decide if she should let it thicken a bit more. It had been on the stove top for nearly three hours and she needed to use the last of the evening sun to finish deheading the geraniums and weed along the northern boundary.
‘What’s for dinner?’ said Dan.
‘I don’t know,’ said Annabelle. ‘Whatever you’re cooking, I suppose.’
She caught his eye and noticed the look of annoyance. Dan hated cooking, but there was still so much to do this evening, and really, it was about time he took a turn.
He put down the beer and opened the fridge, and stared for a long time at the shelves. ‘Not much in there.’
‘I haven’t had time to shop.’
‘I’ll head down t
o the surf club and get some fish and chips.’
‘That’s not very healthy.’ Annabelle picked up the pot and began pouring the thick figgy sludge into the first of two large rectangular dishes to set overnight in the fridge. Tomorrow she would cut the hardened mixture into small squares, wrap them and label them, ready to sell each one for five dollars at the fete.
‘I’ll eat the chips and you just have the fish.’
‘They only do battered, Dan. I’m not eating it.’
Annabelle had told him about the lump a week ago. She’d also told him she was only eating healthy low-sugar and low-fat food from now on to deal with the cancer naturally, until she started treatment.
Dan breathed out a heavy sigh. ‘Christ, you’re hard work sometimes. What if I defrost some lamb chops?’
‘Perfect,’ said Annabelle. ‘What about greens?’ Dan wasn’t a fan of vegetables, but she had been forcing him to eat them for nearly forty years now. Every night he’d leave half of whichever one he didn’t like, and as she scraped it into the chicken bin, she’d console herself that at least he’d had a few mouthfuls of vitamins and fibre and antioxidants. She wasn’t going to let him die young if she could help it.
‘Spuds?’ he asked hopefully.
Annabelle stirred the remaining fig paste in the pan and waited.
Dan spoke again. ‘I suppose I could make a green salad. Is there still rocket in the back veggie patch?’
‘Yes,’ said Annabelle, and she felt a hot stinging behind her eyes. She blinked it away. It was just that she was tired. So tired. ‘That sounds lovely.’
He dug around in the freezer for a few moments before pulling out an ice-covered bag, then began looking in the fresh-produce drawers of the fridge.
The Daughter's Promise (ARC) Page 17
