The Daughter's Promise (ARC)

by Sarah Clutton

  Through the awful blackness, Annabelle could sense people gathering around her. Then she heard someone say, ‘Call an ambulance! She’s sick. She’s having a heart attack or something.’

  ‘Annabelle! Can you hear me?’

  She couldn’t breathe, she could feel herself becoming giddier. She needed air.

  ‘Help me get her onto the floor,’ she heard a voice say, and Annabelle lurched sideways and toppled into somebody’s arms. The last thing she heard before she passed out was Mary Trelawney’s bitter voice hissing to someone, ‘How’s she going to host the fete if she’s having a damned heart attack?’

  Nine

  Sylvia

  The box of diaries sat in the corner of Sylvia’s living room, next to the old slow-combustion fire. There had been a cold snap over the last two nights, and each time she had twisted newspaper into long sticks and stacked neat piles of kindling into the mouth of the fire, she had glanced guiltily at the box before striking the match. For just a millisecond before coaxing the flame into life – stacking small logs onto the sticks, then larger ones – she would imagine burning the diaries. But of course, that would take courage and a certainty of morals, and Sylvia knew she was lacking in both.

  Instead she would move her gaze back across to the fire, ensure that it was burning, let it draw for a few minutes with the door ajar, stoke the flames with the metal poker, and allow defeat to settle into her bones. Perhaps I’ll just read a little. Just enough to know there is nothing there.

  It had been the morning she’d seen Willa that she had finally succumbed. She had picked up the diary on top of the pile and flicked to the date page inside. She had checked the year of each one in turn before putting it back and wondering if she really dared to read a single page. She hadn’t packed the diaries into the box in chronological order. That would have been too premeditated. What she had done was the opposite, telling herself she probably wouldn’t read them – she had no right – but if she did, then she would just choose one at random, and if fate intended that there be anything in there – anything that might give her answers – then it would place the right diary into her hands. And in her own defence, she had only brought about a dozen of the diaries home with her. Did that lessen her crime, she wondered?

  Either way, now, she wished she hadn’t begun. The first diary she opened had almost stopped her. It was 1987, and Lillian had talked about a new lover. She had dissected his passionate devotion to her, talked about his daughter, one of Lillian’s art students, and about Lillian’s desire to be free when he wanted her to be tethered to him. Sylvia knew about the need to be free. Here, in Tasmania, she didn’t feel free. She felt suffocated by the past. It was meant to be her home, but she had been away so long that perhaps she didn’t belong here any more.

  It was true that she had known happiness in Tasmania, and she’d also experienced the thrilling terror of being in love for the first time. But mostly she had known sadness. Lillian wasn’t the first person she’d nursed to the grave. Her mother had died of cervical cancer when Sylvia was eighteen, and she had cared for her through the whole of 1975, taking time out of her nursing training course. She’d also looked after Annabelle and their father at the same time. Annabelle had been fourteen and completely caught up in her own world. She was vivacious and tempestuous, but she was also squeamish. Illness, hospitals, their mother’s fading health – they had all terrified and repulsed Annabelle. She would stand at the doorway to their mother’s room and whisper, ‘Mummy, are you all right?’ Their mother would raise her arms as much as she could off the bed, and Sylvia could see that her little sister wanted to run in and fold herself into those arms, but instead she would freeze. As the disease raged through their mother, leaving patches around her eyes the colour of bruises, her skin became so translucent and taut that Sylvia feared it would tear at the slightest touch. Annabelle, who loved their mother with ferocious devotion, couldn’t bring herself to witness the daily withering away.

  But in the end, Sylvia had forced her to. In the last few days, she had made her sit at the bedside as their mother mostly slept. Annabelle would sob and beg, because she didn’t believe what Sylvia was telling her; the talk of funerals, and relatives coming, and their father needing them to be strong – how could it be true? Their mother had been lively and talkative and busy, much more like Annabelle than Sylvia. And this faded version, about to be gone from them, didn’t fit with any kind of new reality that Annabelle could fathom. Annabelle was lost and rudderless, while Sylvia just felt dead inside.

  It was Dan who had saved Sylvia then. His love for her. But after that, he had failed her. She didn’t want to think of the terrible ways he had let her down. Sylvia had worked hard to evolve spiritually over the decades, but still, she had locked some things away in the blackest, murkiest corners of her psyche. Some things were untouchably painful. Which was why all these years later she was appalled at her own weakness. Dan had promised that his marriage to Annabelle was a hollow void, so she had shut her eyes, boxed up her self-loathing, and followed him into the abyss.

  She shuddered. She could see her mother’s face as she stared into the flames of the fire.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘I’m a terrible sister.’

  Sylvia put down the diary she was reading and randomly picked up another: 1995. There were a few cursory notes about the weather, and Lillian’s daily art-making, and various issues involving people in the town. She turned the pages slowly, then stopped.

  18 June: Annabelle very low. The loss of this baby has hit hard. The other losses were much earlier. Her morning sickness was terrible until the bleeding, so it made her think this one would make it. Something called a ‘molar’ pregnancy – she is convinced that she will get cancer now because of something the doctor said. Poor soul. Dan out and drinking most nights. She swears this was their last attempt. She was sobbing tonight – says she can’t go through it again, even though she so wanted to give him a child.

  Sylvia stared at the words, a thick, heavy feeling in her chest. She had never known this. Annabelle had never talked to her about trying to have children. Of course she wouldn’t have, though. Walls had been erected. Annabelle’s marriage to Dan had driven an unspoken wedge between them.

  A molar pregnancy. Sylvia knew what this meant from her nursing training. She felt terrible at what her poor sister must have gone through. A hydatidiform mole – a sickeningly malformed foetus – grew in the womb instead of a baby. Sometimes it could leave behind deadly malignant cells that caused cancer. Poor Annabelle.

  She stared at the entry again. She so wanted to give him a child. Sylvia felt the weight of the past settling in on her. The lost opportunities. The choices made, then regretted.

  The flash of a torch through the glass panel of the door pulled Sylvia out of the past. She got up just as Indigo knocked and walked in.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Indigo turned off the torch on her phone, then held out a bottle of white wine.

  ‘Oh, wine,’ said Sylvia, taking the bottle and hugging her daughter. She felt uneasy about the idea of alcohol on a week night – at least now that Lillian wasn’t here, demanding Scotch on ice and a drinking partner. She’d almost gotten a taste for liquor last year. This year she was back to being healthy.

  ‘Chill, Mamma. It’s organic, from that vineyard outside Launceston. Paid a fortune for a case of it on my way back on Sunday arvo. Let’s have a drink. It’s been a weird day.’ Indigo kicked off her sandals and collapsed onto the couch.

  ‘Weird how?’ asked Sylvia. She pulled wine glasses from the cupboard and poured, wondering as she did how Indigo could afford expensive bottles of wine, the new car, the frequent trips to the mainland to meet friends – all on her cleaning and babysitting income and the occasional gym class she taught. She took a sip and flinched. The wine was tart.

  ‘I had lunch with Willa today,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Wilhelmena? From England? How was that?’ asked Sylvia. She handed the second glass
to Indigo and sat down opposite on her favourite patchwork-covered armchair.

  ‘It was nice. I ran into her in the street. I took her to Hero’s. We had the new cauliflower rice dish.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking about the food. I mean, what about her? What’s she really like? What did you talk about?’

  ‘She’s lovely. And we talked about lots of things. But mostly we talked about her idea that Lillian might have been her birth mother.’

  ‘What? No!’ said Sylvia. The words came out harshly. She could feel herself going pale. Her legs felt weak. She knew she sounded too defensive. Wilhelmena was adopted? Indigo was looking at her oddly.

  ‘It’s what she said. She was adopted in Tasmania. How do you know it’s not true?’

  ‘Well, Lillian… she would have told me if… if…’ Sylvia couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. She stared at the wine in her glass. She took a huge, disgusting gulp and forced it down.

  ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’

  ‘When? When did she say she was adopted? Did she tell you her birth date?’

  ‘Not exactly, no. But she has teenagers. She looks early forties at most, so she must have been pretty young when she had them. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I… don’t know,’ said Sylvia. She downed the rest of the wine and got up to refill her glass, but her head was spinning. She felt shaky.

  ‘It’s strange,’ said Indigo, staring at Sylvia, her eyes screwed up. Sylvia remembered that look. She used to see it when Indigo was trying to do a maths problem at school. A focused intensity, like a dog with a bone.

  ‘I mean, she looks nothing at all like Lillian, does she? No similar mannerisms, either. She’s tall, and Lillian was short. She’s got fine features – Lillian’s were much thicker. She’s pale, and Lil had that awesome olive skin.’ Indigo took a sip of the wine, then swirled it around her glass and took another sip.

  ‘I’m just going to the bathroom,’ said Sylvia. Her stomach was churning. She walked into her bedroom and through to the small en suite. It needed updating, but she couldn’t afford it. The tiles were brown and depressing and the small square shower unit had ground-in mould in the corners between the cheap metal frame and the white plastic of the shower base that no amount of her special organic cleaning products could remove. In the end, she had resorted to using bleach, but that hadn’t worked either.

  She pushed the toilet seat down and sat on the closed lid with her head in her hands. Good grief. Willa was adopted in Tasmania around forty years ago. She sat back up. Her heart rate was elevated. Her palms felt sweaty. Meditation. She needed to meditate. Willa was the baby. She scrolled through her mental index of the best stress meditations. Such a tiny little thing. She conjured up Jenoa Bay, the soft white sand, the green of the palm trees, the hammock strung between them. She transported herself there. The soft breeze on her skin. The rhythmic rush and froth of the ocean lapping and receding on the shore. She could taste coconut milk, feel the grains of sand between her toes as she breathed in the salty ocean air. In and out. In and out. She continued, letting the twitter of birdsong in the trees above calm her, the hum of distant traffic, the conversations of street vendors now on the beach chatting to tourists. She felt her heart rate slowing. Her breath came evenly. In and out. In and out. She felt calm.

  Eventually she pulled herself out of the meditation. She felt stronger. More centred. She should go back to the lounge room and be a sensible, normal parent to Indigo. She washed her face and took some more deep breaths. She paused to regard her slightly lined face and fading blue eyes in the mirror. As she dried her hands she realised she must have been in the bathroom for more than fifteen minutes. Twenty at least.

  When she walked back through to the lounge room, Indigo was bent over, reading.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sylvia.

  Indigo looked up. She had an odd, blank expression on her face. In her hands she held one of Lillian’s diaries.

  ‘You never told me you were with Dan first,’ said Indigo. There was a definite accusation in her voice. It trembled with the injustice of it: that her mother had a sordid secret. A bizarre love affair with her Auntie Annabelle’s husband.

  Sylvia stood frozen at the end of the couch.

  ‘I assume it’s Uncle Dan that Lillian’s writing about in here? It sounds like him,’ said Indigo, pushing, probing. Like a dog with a bloody bone. She’d always been so forthright. So unwilling to compromise with the truth.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘That’s…’ Indigo looked up at her, ‘just… I don’t know. Weird. Totally weird.’

  Sylvia picked up the wine glasses and crossed back into the kitchen. She put down the glasses and grasped at the bench top with both hands, peering out the window. From behind the clouds, a silver thimble of moonlight was catching the heaving swell of the ocean.

  ‘We were in love.’ She refilled the glasses to the top.

  ‘Right,’ said Indigo. ‘So… how did Annabelle feel about that?’

  Sylvia felt the crash of angry righteousness tumbling through her, bringing her back to her broken twenty-year-old self, lost and alone, pretending to be the grown-up while everyone around her went mad. What the hell is it to do with Annabelle? I was with him first!

  ‘It was a lifetime ago. Let’s leave it,’ she said. Her head was spinning with the unfamiliar effects of the wine. ‘They weren’t together then. She was only sixteen when we broke up.’

  ‘Is that why you left? Was it just after that?’ asked Indigo. ‘You told me once you left here when you were twenty.’

  ‘Did I?’ said Sylvia. She couldn’t remember talking about it. She usually avoided the topic. But Indigo liked to probe people’s emotional depths, and she had always found Sylvia to be an interesting psychological study. Sylvia was much happier confining herself to her own thoughts. It was less messy. There seemed to be so much pain everywhere you looked, if you probed too deeply.

  ‘It was around that time, yes,’ she said.

  ‘I wonder if Lillian had the baby soon after that,’ said Indigo. Sylvia could see she was doing mental calculations in her head.

  ‘I told you, she didn’t have a baby.’

  ‘She could have had her after you left, Mum.’ Indigo sounded so calm. So sensible. It was disturbing.

  ‘She would have written. She would have told me,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘Everyone has secrets, Mum,’ and Sylvia thought: oh, my clever darling girl, when did you get to be so wise? She wondered fleetingly what secrets Indigo herself was keeping, but then closed down the thought. She didn’t want to know.

  ‘Darling, you’re right. But you have to remember, it was a different time. The secrets were necessary. Whole families’ lives were at stake. Reputations meant something. Sometimes they were all that was binding us together.’

  ‘Okay, sure. I get that,’ said Indigo.

  Sylvia pondered the casual flippancy, the condescending agreement. Indigo could never really understand. In 1977, the north-west coast of Tasmania had been a cultural backwater. News of the new law providing supporting mother’s benefit hadn’t made its way to the sparsely populated farming communities around Sisters Cove for a long time. Or if it had, there was little appetite to sign up for it in Sylvia’s circles. A handout from the government was shameful when there was an honest day’s work to be done. Pregnancy was no excuse either. An unmarried pregnant girl was an embarrassment at best, but she was a pariah if her family or the baby’s father chose to turn their backs.

  ‘If a baby had been born,’ she said slowly, ‘it wouldn’t have been possible to keep her.’

  Indigo looked at her carefully. She closed the diary, then got up and replaced it in the box.

  ‘Whatever happened back then, Mum, Willa has to be helped. It’s not fair to come between a child and her family. The blood ties, the search for identity. If she’s looking now, if that’s what Lillian was doing with this bequest, then she’ll need your help.’

  Indigo was staring at Sylvia
with knowing eyes; an old soul. Sylvia remembered seeing that same look when her daughter was put into her arms twenty-eight years ago, as she lay in the birthing pool. A soul reborn, all-knowing, wise beyond words.

  ‘Mum, she’s going to need you to help her,’ said Indigo again. And Sylvia thought: no. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it is you’re really asking me to do.

  Ten

  Willa

  ‘How are you, darling? Really?’ asked Hugo.

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Willa. Hugo didn’t respond straight away, and she turned the question over in her mind as she pictured him sitting in their living room in Oxford with the fire burning, leaning back in his old leather chair. ‘I really am, Hugo. It’s lovely here. I’ve met some interesting people.’

  ‘Great. Have you learned anything yet? About who the woman was?’

  ‘Not for certain. No. I had lunch with her god-daughter yesterday, though. She hadn’t heard anything about Lillian having a baby. But Indigo is only in her twenties. I suppose Lillian wouldn’t have broadcast the fact if she’d given up a baby for adoption.’

  ‘No, I imagine not,’ said Hugo. ‘You know, you could start the paperwork to get access to your birth records if you really want an answer.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Willa. She stood up at the table. Through the glass double doors of the beach house, she watched the waves rolling and receding rhythmically across the fine white sand of the cove. A mother stood with her toddler at the shoreline, her jeans rolled up to her knees. The little boy was bouncing up and down, scooping up water and jumping around – whether in glee or fright, Willa couldn’t quite tell. She slid the glass door open and walked onto the deck. The cool wind blew across her skin, bringing a fresh salt smell. She let the summer sun warm her. ‘It seems… unnecessary in some ways. I’m just…’ She let the unfinished sentence float. She couldn’t quite articulate her feelings. Now that her mother, her beautiful adoptive mother – the only mother she had known – had passed away, she wanted to honour her memory. Digging up the circumstances of her birth felt strangely like a betrayal.