by Fiona Lowe
‘Doug, do tell me. What do you do for a living?’
He gave her an easy smile. ‘I own a large automotive service centre. I built it up from nothing and now it chugs along with a staff of ten. It means I can indulge my passion of buying and selling classic cars. It’s a hobby of mine to collect old wrecks and restore them.’
‘Is that your plan with my mother?’
Edwina snorted wine.
‘Harry!’ Georgie spluttered, her voice horrified.
‘Stop it, Harry,’ Xara said as if she was admonishing the twins. ‘That’s too much.’
Unrepentant, Harriet kept her gaze on Doug’s face.
‘Your mother’s a beautiful woman, Harriet.’ He spoke quietly but his voice held an edge that said, Cross me and I’ll fight right back. ‘I loved her when she was seventeen and I love her now. I think you’ll agree with me that nothing about her is old or a wreck.’
‘Seventeen?’ Her mother had been at boarding school in Gee-long when she’d turned seventeen. She leaned forward. ‘How did you two meet?’
‘I was working on Murrumbeet doing everything from fixing farm machinery to fixing fences.’ He gave Edwina a wink. ‘I taught your mother to drive a car and how to change the oil. She had a natural gift.’
‘Ah!’ Xara suddenly sat up straight, her face alight with interest. ‘So that’s why the twins came home from the rally full of car stories I’d never heard. I hate to tell you, Doug, but over the years she hasn’t put her oil-changing knowledge to much use.’
‘Changing oil doesn’t quite go with Chanel and pearls, now does it?’ Harriet glared at Xara. Today wasn’t about getting chummy with Doug, it was about sending him away. ‘I can’t imagine Grandpa was thrilled that his daughter was friendly with a deeply tanned farmhand?’
Edwina flinched but didn’t stay silent as Harriet had expected. ‘I kept my friendship with Doug a secret from everyone. I regret that now but at the time I did it because your grandfather wouldn’t have welcomed him.’
Harriet almost choked. ‘That’s got to be the understatement of the day, Edwina.’ She turned back to Doug, switching on what she’d been told was her uncompromising stare. ‘With your dark eyes and curly hair, I’m guessing either your mother or father was Aboriginal?’
‘In the twenties and the forties there were probably very few white women forcing themselves onto Aboriginal men,’ Doug said smoothly but making his point nonetheless. ‘My mother’s father was apparently Irish and my father was an Englishman. I didn’t know either of them.’
Harriet noticed that Edwina’s forehead creased in a light frown. Good. ‘Your Irish heritage would have been just as upsetting to Grandpa as your Aboriginal blood,’ Harriet said, stating the truth.
‘I met your grandfather before I went to Vietnam for nasho,’ Doug said, accepting a cup of coffee from Steve. ‘He was happy enough to shake my hand as a soldier.’
‘Now that sounds like Grandpa,’ Xara chimed in sarcastically. ‘He’d have been in seventh heaven today with all the photo opportunities selfies offer politicians.’
‘I really regret the old codger died before I met Xara.’ Steve resumed his seat. ‘Given Georgie’s political persuasions, it would have made for some memorable family dinners.’
‘Fireworks would have looked dim in comparison,’ Edwina said dryly. ‘You were very quick with the coffee, dear.’
‘Did you need me to take longer?’
‘I did my best for you with Dad, Steve,’ Georgie added with a laugh.
Steve grinned. ‘Too right and I appreciated it. I reckon Doug and Harriet might just continue the tradition.’
No way in hell. Harriet mustered a thin smile. ‘Was it while you were in Vietnam with enforced distance from Edwina that you realised you were socially out of your depth?’
‘Harriet! That’s enough,’ Edwina said tersely. ‘Now you’re just being obnoxious.’
Harriet widened her eyes against the urge to narrow them. ‘I’m just trying to get a picture of what happened. It’s not like you’ve ever mentioned Doug to us before. He’s a total mystery man.’ She turned back to him. ‘Sorry,’ she said disingenuously, ‘but you obviously went on to recover from unrequited teenage love.’
‘I wasn’t a teenager when I met your mother.’
She ignored the correction. ‘And you’ve been married?’
He frowned slightly. ‘Yes. Sophia and I shared forty-three mostly happy years and four kids before she died.’
‘Sorry,’ Georgie, Xara and Steve offered up in unison.
‘Cancer took her, Harriet.’ A wicked twinkle flashed in Doug’s eyes. ‘I thought I’d mention that just in case you’re worried I murdered her.’
Georgie laughed. Edwina smiled. Steve and Xara exchanged an intimate shorthand look full of meaning. Harriet was unimpressed by her siblings’ willingness to embrace this inappropriate stranger into their lives.
‘That’s reassuring to know, Doug, considering my mother’s worth a lot of money.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that, love,’ he said, his accent suddenly broadening. Harriet couldn’t tell if he was doing it deliberately or not. ‘Business has been good to me the last few years and I’m not interested in your mother’s money.’
James’s treachery seared her and she stiffened. ‘Forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt.’
‘Well, I think it’s lovely you’ve reconnected with Mum after all this time,’ Xara said expansively, courtesy of the champagne. ‘Are any of your kids bratty like Harriet?’
As Steve poured Xara a coffee, Edwina and Doug exchanged a look. A nod. An agreement. A public hand squeeze. Harriet experienced an unexpected chill in the warm afternoon air. Goosebumps rose on her arms, making the blonde hairs stand to attention. With a zip of regret, she realised she’d arrived without a jacket.
Edwina cleared her throat and her fingers crawled toward her pearls. ‘Doug and I have something we need to tell all of you.’
The goosebumps intensified to rafts of painful pinpricks shooting all over her body. ‘No!’ Harriet heard herself yell. She didn’t know what it was her mother was about to say but she knew down to the depths of her soul that she didn’t want to hear it. Everything about Edwina’s demeanour was portentous, heralding a big announcement. She didn’t want a big announcement especially if it pertained to a future that featured her mother and Doug as a couple. She wanted to separate them and send Doug far, far away.
‘Harriet, be quiet,’ Xara instructed. ‘Let Mum speak.’
Georgie’s hand lightly touched Harriet’s arm—the gesture intended to be reassuring, but she immediately threw it off. She didn’t want reassuring. She didn’t want to be placated. She didn’t want her sisters encouraging Edwina in any way, shape or form. She refused to sit here a moment longer and be forced to acknowledge her mother and Doug as a couple. She rose to her feet. ‘I’m going.’
‘Leaving won’t change what we have to say,’ Edwina said quietly in a voice that would cut through ice. ‘I know I’m not your favourite person but I respectfully ask you to sit down and listen. I want you to hear this from me and not from anyone else.’
‘No.’ Harriet shook her head. ‘If I don’t hear what you have to say then I’m not party to it. I can’t sit here and smile and pretend that I’m happy about the two of you being together.’
‘This isn’t about that,’ Edwina said hurriedly. ‘It’s …’ She licked her lips. ‘It’s about your sister.’
Harriet glanced between Xara and Georgie but they were busy looking at each other and appeared to be as equally in the dark as her. ‘Which one?’
Edwina closed her eyes for a moment, her shoulders rising and falling as she inhaled deep breaths. When she opened her eyes she moved her head slowly, taking a moment to rest her gaze first on Xara, then Georgie and finally Harriet. ‘Your older sister.’
The reins on her exasperation gave way completely. She’d had enough and she pulled her handbag off the back of the
chair. ‘And here I was thinking it was Xara who’d been drinking too much. You know as well as I do that I don’t have an older sister.’
‘You have a half-sister.’ Edwina’s words struck the air, clanging as loudly as the old CFA bell on a stiflingly hot February afternoon. ‘In November 1968, I had Doug’s baby while he was in Vietnam. She was forcibly removed from me and adopted out. He never knew about her existence until I told him on Friday. I’m telling all of you today.’
Time slowed the way it does when the foundations of life are shaken to the core and Harriet became hyperaware of everything that was going on around her. Doug remained silent but his arm now rested across Edwina’s shoulders, his fingers cupping the top of her arm and his body tilting toward hers like a protective shield.
‘Oh my God,’ Georgie said softly. ‘I … that’s …’
Xara’s mouth had opened and closed twice but she emitted no sound. She reached for her champagne flute, quickly draining the contents. Steve’s eyes widened in shock and held the same dazed and confused look as a kangaroo caught in the blinding gleam of headlights. He too remained mute.
Harriet looked at her mother, taking in her smooth blonde bob, her tailored pants, the floral chiffon blouse she’d teamed perfectly with a contrasting watermelon camisole before finally coming to rest on the string of pearls at her throat—always the signature pearls. Despite all the familiarity, Harriet didn’t recognise her. Everything she’d ever believed to be true about her mother was now exposed as a carefully created façade. Edwina was like a piece of crazed porcelain whose faulty glaze had fought long and hard to hold the cracks together but had finally given way.
Edwina Mannering had lived a lie.
Harriet’s blood ran cold. She should have questions. She should be demanding answers but it was as if she’d risen out of herself and was now looking down on proceedings as a completely separate entity. Silently, she turned and walked briskly away.
CHAPTER
20
Georgie stood in the shade of the sprawling Norfolk pine and reflected that the joy of children was the euphoric pleasure they got from simple things. Thank goodness for the twins. For them life was uncomplicated. Easter meant holidays, chocolate and egg hunts, and nothing was going to stand between them and their quest. Not even the fact that their mother and aunts had just been poleaxed by the news of an older sister they never knew existed.
They’d barrelled back through the Glenora gates just before three, whooping and shouting that it was time for the hunt. Georgie had wanted to hug them for their enthusiasm and for the fact it had broken her out of her stupor. Their prompting had propelled both her and Xara out of their chairs and away from their mother, Doug and the shadow of a secret sister. Georgie didn’t know what to think of the unanticipated revelation and yet she couldn’t think of anything else. Her head was full and her thoughts utterly consumed by the news. What she wanted most was to sit down with Xara and Harriet and talk it all through but she’d promised Ben she’d be ready to leave at four. The idea of driving back to Melbourne now was untenable.
He wouldn’t like it if she delayed. Cuddled up with him in her bed in the wee hours of this morning, she’d felt his disapproval at her plan to stay longer. But surely if she told him of this new development he’d understand—this time the news affected her directly. A shot of acid burned her under her ribs. Why did all this family crap have to happen right now, just as she’d met a fabulous guy who wanted the same things she did? Ben may have thought the timing of James’s fraud coming to light when he was in town was bad luck and Charlotte’s pregnancy news simply bad timing, but this? The announcement of a lost sister was the icing on the cake of nine days of craziness. He’d declare her family an unmitigated disaster when really they were just as happily dysfunctional as the next family. Weren’t they? She reassured herself that things came in threes and they’d had their three. Surely they were off the hook for any more dramas in the near future.
A thought skated across her mind of an annus horribilis the McGowans had experienced years ago. First came a crippling drought followed by the devastating loss of the farmhouse and the sheds in a bushfire. Two days after the fires, Primrose had received the results of her regular mammogram screening and had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully, after treatment she was still alive a decade later but back then, two weeks after the awful news, their daughter Jenny was involved in a serious car accident on the Hamilton Highway—she’d almost died. Harriet had been the surgeon on call and Georgie would never forget the phone call from her straight after the surgery. She’d never heard Harriet sound so shaken and she hadn’t again until this week. The McGowans’ run of misfortune had all happened in a short space of time too. Remembering that made Georgie feel slightly reassured that the universe wasn’t singling her family out. It cheerfully dumped on everyone.
After Harriet’s abrupt departure, Edwina and Doug had given her and Xara the bare bones of their story: young lovers separated by a disapproving family who feared scandal and the social stigma that came with it. Georgie was bursting with questions, including whether her father had known about the baby, but the twins’ return meant they remained unasked. She couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d lost Eliza to death and her mother had lost her baby to life. Was knowing that a child of yours lived somewhere without you worse than knowing your dreams had died with your child? She wouldn’t wish either situation on anyone.
The twins dashed past her. ‘We’ve got ten eggs,’ Hugh called out. ‘We’re gonna win.’
‘No eggs back there,’ Ollie added.
She smiled at their confidence. It kickstarted her competitive streak, which thankfully flattened all of her unsettling thoughts. There were bound to be eggs in the back of the garden; her mother was cagey that way. She rejoined the hunt and on her way past the potting shed, paused. She jiggled the small round handle and leaned her weight against the old wooden door that was swollen with age until it shifted. She pushed it open and the earthy scent of mushroom compost rushed out to meet her. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, she deciphered the shapes of seedling trays laid out on the workbench. Despite the sunny day, the light through the tiny windows was thin, barely penetrating the accumulation of a year’s worth of grime; young Adrian cleaned the windows once a year and it looked like the time was ripe to do it again.
She reached for her phone, planning on using the torch app, but her fingers hit an empty pocket. Damn it. Lunch was a phone-free affair and she’d forgotten she’d left the sleek device in her room so as not to be tempted to sneak a peek. Ben liked to send Snapchats of things in the area that tickled his fancy, like the road sign where someone had drawn a shark fin on a cow and written ‘Bull shark’ underneath or the dead-end sign on Cemetery Road. The photos invariably made her smile and laugh. He also sent texts, which didn’t make her laugh but sent a flashing hot tingle through her, and she didn’t need anyone in her family catching her mid lust fest. It was safer all around for her phone to be tucked away in her room.
She was just about to return to the house to find a torch when a thin beam of sunshine penetrated the grunge. It lit up a flash of blue foil nestled in the corner of the windowsill. Bingo. She scooped up the egg and then spider walked her fingers across the top of the sill, finding another two small eggs. After that, she turned her attention to the stack of black pots under the table, checking for creepy-crawlies first.
Six eggs later, she stepped out of the shed and closed the door behind her. She was going to give the twins heaps about her haul. Following the direction of their voices, she ran back to the house but before she reached it, she found the boys on the large expanse of lawn near the tennis court.
‘Hey guys, you were wrong. There are eggs back here. Big ones too.’
The twins rushed her and she danced around laughing, holding the eggs in a pot above her head. They leaped and jumped, trying to get to them and when they couldn’t reach they resorted to the guerrilla tactic of ticklin
g. Shrieking, she collapsed onto the grass, rolling around with them until she was puffing and panting, her lungs burning. Aching for breath, she called barley. The twins tore off again to another section of the garden and she rolled onto her knees, sucking in air.
‘You right there?’
Her head shot up at the familiar deep voice and the small amount of breath she had left in her lungs evaporated. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, but nothing changed the image of a pair of men’s casual canvas shoes, tanned muscular legs covered in a smattering of dark hair and an outstretched hand with a small boomerang scar on the base of the thumb.
Smiling, Ben reached down and hauled her to her feet. ‘Looks like you’ve been having fun.’
Oxygen was once again reaching her brain and she was suddenly filled with joy and an odd sense of relief. Compared with the complicated mess that was her family, Ben represented sanity and normality. She rose up on her toes, cupped his cheeks with her hands and kissed him.
‘That’s a welcome I could get used to,’ he said, pulling a twig from her hair.
She laid her cheek against his chest and breathed him in. ‘You have no idea how good it is to see you. Today’s been—’
She stopped, suddenly very aware that she couldn’t tell him yet. How could she, when she’d barely had enough time to absorb the news herself? She had another sister and it begged the question: had she ever really known her mother? She had an overwhelming sense that everything she’d ever believed to be true about Edwina was totally incorrect. Everything was up for scrutiny and questioning. The only parts of her mother’s life that she could recognise as truly authentic were the episodic periods of misery and withdrawal. That made her sad. It also made her mad, which she didn’t understand and that upset her more. Shouldn’t she be full of sympathy for her? Her mother had lost a baby too. Georgie knew what that was like but it didn’t stop her from being angry with Edwina for never telling them.
Would it have changed anything?
