‘You wouldn’t have liked it,’ Sam assured her. ‘Believe me. My mum would drive you mad.’
‘My mum already has,’ said Charlie. ‘You don’t know her.’
A twinge of bitterness caught in Sam’s throat. That was hardly her fault.
Charlie continued, oblivious. ‘She makes a big show of all her herbal shit, but she drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney and blows what’s left over on the pokies. And the men? Fuck, there’ve been that many of them. None of them lasted, of course.’ Charlie looked sad and angry at the same time. ‘Mum loves me, don’t get me wrong, but she’s dysfunctional as hell.’
‘My mum takes pills,’ said Sam, like it was some sort of contest for who had the worst mother. ‘That’s just as bad. She’s kind of clingy and cold at the same time. And Dad doesn’t even live with us.’
‘So your folks have split up?’ asked Charlie.
‘No, but Dad’s an ambassador. He’s been living in Dubai for the last two years.’
Charlie whistled approvingly. ‘Some cushy job. Why didn’t you and your mum go too?’
‘It’s like living in an oven eight months of the year, apparently, and women don’t have much freedom. Mum refuses to live over there, and I can’t blame her.’ This wasn’t the entire truth. Sam had witnessed enough blazing rows between her parents over the years to guess there might be more to the separate living arrangements. ‘But Dad went anyway, and sort of forgot about me. We speak on the phone a bit, but I only see him twice a year.’
‘At least you have a dad,’ said Charlie. ‘Mine was a ratbag, shot through when Mum was pregnant.’ She stopped short.
‘Um … that ratbag would be my father too, remember?’ said Sam. They burst out laughing.
‘Listen to us,’ said Charlie. ‘We’re a pair of jealous bitches.’
‘We should do the prince and the pauper thing,’ said Sam. ‘We should swap lives.’
Charlie suddenly knelt up on the bed and yanked out the tube attached to her central line. Amber fluid spattered across the white hospital spread. With a deft twist she tossed her headscarf to the floor, exposing an ugly red rash. Her inflamed scalp looked as thin as eggshell. She spread her pale arms high and wide above her head, as if in supplication to some terrible god. The dramatic pose accentuated her wasted frame and gaunt features.
‘I think people might spot the difference,’ said Charlie. ‘Don’t you?’
Chapter Nine
The counselling session was Professor Sung’s idea.
Sam wasn’t a default pessimist, but her gut told her this wasn’t going to work. ‘My mother’s impossible,’ she’d confessed to him on more than one occasion. ‘One minute she’s obsessed with hearing about everything that’s happening at the hospital. Next minute she doesn’t want to know, and accuses me of abandoning her if I even mention Charlie.’
Professor Sung had nodded, his eyes wise and understanding. ‘There is an implicit tension in the relationship between Mary and Faith,’ he said. ‘Whether they admit to it or not, adoptive parents often feel secret jealousy, or even anger towards birth parents, and vice versa.’
‘There’s nothing secret about it with my mum,’ said Sam.
‘Faith has done all the hard work of parenting, and now worries an interloper might take over your affection. This rarely happens – but the fear is still there. It’s quite natural.’ Sam had almost argued the point. She was the one who’d done all the hard work. Being Faith’s trophy child hadn’t been easy. ‘I’ll schedule a group counselling session,’ he’d said.
They’d arrived early. Faith’s hair had been done especially for the occasion, cut in an immaculate geometric bob. She wore a plum silk shirt and Donna Karan slacks, and sat in the waiting room with her back to the wall and a good view of the door. Sam sat one seat away. The room was otherwise empty of people, though the air was thick with anticipation.
They heard Mary before they saw her. A little sing-song chant grew louder as she approached. There was a jangle of bangles and there she was, standing larger than life at the doorway, in a flowing white skirt and a beaded peasant top. Purple-polished toes poked from fringed leather sandals. She wore flowers in her untidy hair – daisy chains woven into an olive turban headband. Faith glanced at Sam with a look of horror, then wrinkled her nose as the combined odour of tobacco and incense wafted in. Sam couldn’t help but grin.
‘Sam,’ said Mary, her eyes lighting up. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ She produced a jar. ‘Lemon bath salts. Wonderfully calming.’ Sam acknowledged the gift with a nod, intrigued to see what would happen next. Turning her attention to Faith, Mary enveloped her in a huge hug. Faith recoiled, like the little cat in the old Warner Brothers cartoons, trying to escape Pepé Le Pew’s malodorous embrace. ‘And for you,’ said Mary, when she finally released Faith, ‘my famous anti-ageing cream.’ Sam gasped out loud. ‘For those of us who want to pretend that we didn’t have a forest fire on our last birthday cake, eh?’ said Mary with a laugh.
Faith’s face contorted, like she was struggling with something. In the end she forced a smile and took the proffered jar. ‘You’re Mary?’ she asked, as if she was hoping there’d been some mistake. Mary nodded and beamed. Faith inspected the jar. ‘Homemade, then?’
‘Of course it’s homemade,’ said Mary. ‘Only the best for my Sam and her family.’ Faith visibly flinched at the ‘my Sam’. Mary couldn’t be doing a better job of alienating her if she was trying. ‘You take two ripe cucumbers, skin and all. Half a ripe avocado, a few leaves of mint, almond oil and a cup of rainwater. Oh, and a good dash of friar’s balsam.’ Faith grimaced. ‘Would you like me to write down the recipe?’ asked Mary. ‘You might like to make up some yourself. That little jar won’t last you long.’
Sam began to suspect that Mary’s motives were not pure. Faith was fastidious about her appearance and horrified about growing old. She’d had a brow lift, a lip lift, an eyelid lift and attended quarterly appointments at one of Melbourne’s most exclusive aesthetic-surgery clinics. She’d even presented Sam with a rhinoplasty gift certificate on her sixteenth birthday. ‘Now you’ll be able to do something about that nose,’ she’d said brightly.
‘Mum,’ she’d said. ‘My nose is fine.’
‘Well, of course it is, darling. It’s beautiful, just like you. But at the moment it turns up at the tip. Weren’t you saying that you’d like it a little straighter? A little more classic in profile?’
‘No, Mum,’ she’d said. ‘That was you saying that. Leave my nose alone.’
Faith was forever chasing eternal youth, and she would not react well to the suggestion that she needed wrinkle cream. Not well at all. Sam was more gloomy than ever about the forthcoming counselling session.
A smooth-looking woman emerged from a hallway and summoned them into another room, where they seated themselves in a semicircle on comfortable chairs.
‘I’m Sandra,’ the woman said with an unctuous smile, and made the introductions. ‘I’m here to help you all find a new equilibrium.’ Everybody looked blank. ‘We’ll begin with you, Faith.’ Faith blinked. Sandra put on a serious face. ‘Adoptive parents often have powerful negative feelings about a child searching for their birth family. We’re here to help you work through them.’
Faith bristled. ‘Samantha never searched for her birth family.’
‘That’s because she didn’t know she had one,’ said Mary. Petals from her wilted headband floated to the floor. ‘Sam was supposed to know about me and Charlie all along.’
‘We’re not here to argue,’ said Sandra evenly.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Mum?’ asked Sam.
‘I thought it would be … less complicated if you didn’t know. And in any case, your father wouldn’t allow it.’ There was a catch in her throat. ‘Victor was adamant, and since he’d arranged the whole thing, well … he said it was to be a closed adoption.’
Less complicated. That was a good one. This was about as complicated as it got. ‘Wher
e is Victor?’ asked Sandra. ‘It would have been very useful for him to come.’
‘He’s … he’s overseas,’ said Faith.
‘There was no fucking closed adoption,’ said Mary. There was a real edge to her voice.
Sandra rose to her feet, shaking her head and positioning herself between the two women, who were now glaring at each other in open hostility. It was the first time Sam had seen Mary drop her serene earth-mother persona.
‘Adopted children are nearly always hungry to know their own personal stories,’ said Sandra. She smiled encouragement. ‘Would I be right, Samantha? Is that what you want?’ Sam nodded. Sandra looked pleased and resumed her seat. ‘Equally, birth parents and adoptive parents often want to hear from each other. Want to gain a complete picture of their child. To fill in the blanks, as it were. It’s a gift only you can give each other.’ Nobody spoke. ‘Right then, let’s start with you, Mary. I’m sure Samantha would like to hear the circumstances that led to her adoption. Only tell us what you’re comfortable with.’
It was pretty much as Faith had said, back at that awkward lunch almost three weeks before. Mary had been an unmarried teenager, barely able to provide for one child, let alone two. Sam hung on every scrap of information. Mary’s mother had died in a tractor accident when Mary was just three, leaving her to be brought up by her father, Jock Kelly. He’d been a lazy, uninterested parent, by the sound of it, who’d pulled Mary out of high school to help run the farm. ‘Dad died of lung cancer the year before the girls were born,’ said Mary. ‘I worked Brumby’s Run by myself after that … but I was never very good at it.’ She shrugged. ‘Should have sold the damn place, but I promised Dad before he died that I’d hang on if I could. So like a sentimental fool, I kept my word to the old bastard.’
‘Tell me about my real father,’ said Sam, her breath coming fast.
‘It’s not a pretty story, my sweet,’ said Mary. ‘His name was Robert Smith. Some sort of travelling sales rep. I left messages on his phone to tell him that I was pregnant, but he never called back. My final message was when you twins were nearly due. Said I’d have to relinquish one baby if I didn’t hear from him. Never a word. It did my head in, Sammy, it really did.’ How desperate must Mary have been, and how young. Just seventeen. Sam struggled to put herself in Mary’s place. ‘The adoption agency found a suitable couple the same day I approached them. All I knew was their name, Mr and Mrs Carmichael, and that they had loads of money.’
‘Would you like contact with your father, Samantha?’ asked Sandra. ‘Is that something you’d welcome?’ Faith looked horrified.
‘Maybe,’ said Sam. ‘Mary, tell me more about Charlie. What was she like before she got sick?’ It was a question that she hadn’t asked before.
‘You wouldn’t know it, to look at Charlie now,’ said Mary. ‘But she’s always been a bit of a devil. Skipping school, running off into the mountains after brumbies. Disappearing for days at a time, to who knows where, with who knows who.’ Faith frowned at Mary’s words. ‘But in spite of that, your sister’s always had a heart of gold.’ Mary smiled at Sam. ‘Just like you, sweetheart.’
‘Samantha recently completed her final school exams,’ said Faith, sitting up a little straighter. ‘She did very well, I might add, and has been accepted into a Commerce degree at Melbourne University. My daughter has always taken her education seriously.’
‘What choice did I have?’ said Sam, suddenly angry. ‘You made me study day and night. You wouldn’t let me go anywhere except music lessons or the stables. My friends were never good enough. You wouldn’t let them come over, wouldn’t let me go to their places. I always felt so isolated.’ It was Mary’s turn to frown.
‘You have friends. What about Cate?’ said Faith, clearly grasping at straws. ‘I always liked Cate.’
‘You only like Cate because she’s Randolph Fox’s daughter. You used to go on about it all the time, how she was heiress to a media empire. It’s just a fluke that I liked her too. Now that she’s gone away to that stupid school in Switzerland, I don’t have a single friend left in Melbourne.’
‘Darling, you know that’s not true. And besides, that was a marvellous opportunity for Cate,’ said Faith. ‘Le Rosey is one of the most exclusive schools in the world. Cate will rub shoulders with the Rothschilds and Borgheses.’
‘You’re such a snob, Mum. I’m surprised you didn’t send me off there as well. Oh, that’s right – it would be too difficult to live your life vicariously through me if I was in Switzerland.’ Had she really said all that? Had her bitterness finally found so loud a voice?
Sandra said something about one person talking at a time, but nobody paid her any mind.
‘Poor darling,’ crooned Mary. She reached over and patted Sam’s hand. ‘When Charlie’s right, you come home with us to Brumby’s Run. We’ll show you how to have some fun.’
Faith rose to her feet. In spite of her petite frame, she seemed to tower over Mary. ‘How dare you! You’re not fit to look after your own child, let alone mine. What sort of mother lets her child miss school and run wild like that?’
‘At least I didn’t lock her up like a nun!’ retorted Mary. ‘Maybe if you’d had something else to occupy your time – like a job, maybe – my girl could have had a normal childhood. Sam says you’ve never worked a day in your life.’
Faith shot Sam a swift, disappointed glance. Mary looked at her too, like she was expecting her to take sides. ‘Shut up!’ said Sam, her voice rising. She jumped to her feet. ‘Shut up, both of you! I’m not anybody’s child. I’m eighteen, I’m an adult, and I don’t have to put up with any of this crap.’ With one last contemptuous stare, she marched from the room.
‘Goodnight, Charlie.’ Sam tossed her phone onto the bed and stared out the window. It was late, the new moon already high in the sky, but she wasn’t tired. Sam had told her sister all about the disastrous counselling session. They’d dissected it between them, word for word. Having Charlie was like having a best friend and a shrink all rolled into one. They shared everything about their lives. Well, perhaps not everything. There was one topic Sam had steered clear of: boys. She had the impression that Charlie knew quite a lot about boys. Sam had never even had a date. The very idea would have sent Faith into a tailspin. It was a prime example of just how cosseted she’d been. So Sam quickly shut down any talk of Charlie’s love-life, whenever it raised its embarrassing head.
The phone rang. Dad.
‘How’s tricks, Sammy?’
‘Charlie’s getting better every day.’
‘Good, good.’ The pause that followed seemed interminable. ‘Are you okay?’ he said at last.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said. ‘And neither’s Mum.’
‘Well, there’s not much I can do from over here, Sammy. We’ll thrash things out at Mamie’s.’
‘No, we won’t. I already said I’m not coming.’ There was another long silence on the end of the line. ‘Dad, why didn’t you tell me about Mary … about Charlie?’
‘It’s complicated, sweetheart. There are things you don’t know.’
‘Obviously.’
This time the silence lasted so long that she thought he might have hung up.
‘Your mother isn’t answering her phone.’
‘She’s had a rough day.’
‘Really? Well, just tell her I rang. Tell her I love her.’
‘Okay.’
‘Thanks, Sammy. Love you too. You know that.’
‘Bye, Dad.’ The end of the call came as a physical jolt. Sam tasted tears although she didn’t know she was crying.
She slipped out to the landing at the top of the staircase. Classical music played – a sad flute solo – and a light shone from the lounge room. Sam padded downstairs. Faith stood staring out the window at the dark garden, a near-empty wineglass in her hand.
‘Mum?’ Faith started. ‘Dad’s been trying to call you.’
‘Has he?’ Sam followed her mother into the kitchen. Faith opened the
fridge and reached for a bottle of chablis. Her glass knocked against the bench and broke into three pieces. Faith tried to put them back together with shaking hands.
‘Don’t, Mum,’ whispered Sam. ‘You can’t fix it.’ She eased the broken glass from her mother’s grasp, cutting herself in the process. Blood dripped from her finger, and mingled with the spilt wine. It hurt more than she expected it to.
Chapter Ten
In an hour Faith would be gone – flown to Paris. Sam concentrated on the road, on finding the airport turn-off, steeling herself against her mother’s constant stream of words. ‘You mustn’t move those two into our house while I’m away,’ said Faith, her voice taut with anxiety. ‘It’s just too hard for me, Sam – I can’t have Mary taking over my home as well as my daughter.’
Sam’s grip tightened on the wheel until her knuckles were white. Careful now. Faith would soon be in France. A long month away, breathing space for them both. ‘Why would you think that, Mum?’ she said. ‘I never said anything about them moving in.’
‘I’ve done my research. Charlene won’t be able to return to that backwater with her mother, not for ages. They’ll need ongoing treatment in the city and they’ll be looking for somewhere to stay. Don’t tell me Mary Kelly can afford to pay for accommodation here in town.’
‘I don’t know if she can afford to or not. It’s none of my business, and even less of yours.’
‘As soon as they know I’m gone, they’ll work on you,’ said Faith. ‘That Mary is a gold-digger, you can see it a mile off. Try to take advantage … and with you so naive …’ Faith shook her head in disgust. ‘I wish you’d change your mind and come with me. We could take a later flight.’
‘For the umpteenth time, Mum, I’m not coming.’
Faith let out a great sigh.
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