‘No. It’s hard meeting people when you’re a single mum with no real family support, but it would have been nice. I always wanted a big family and would have loved more kids.’
A few weeks ago, this admission would have irritated Josie—at least Brenda had managed to have one child—but now she could sympathise; life had a habit of turning out completely different to how you expected or wanted it to.
‘I’m not sure Clara told you, but I met your son,’ Josie said, wanting to give Brenda something positive to hold onto.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. A couple of months ago, we met outside a pub and started chatting. He was a good listener and I poured my heart out to him. He was the one who gave me Clara’s number.’
Brenda smiled gratefully at Josie. ‘I try not to talk about him in front of Clara. The poor love did put up with a lot. She didn’t give up easily and she did her best; she got him into AA a few times but he never lasted. There’s nothing anyone else can do for people like Robbie. In the end, they have to help themselves. He’s a lost soul but he’s got a heart of gold beneath his problems. Such a shame, he was very musically talented, you know?’
This piqued Josie’s interest. ‘Really? Did he play an instrument?’
‘Oh, he played many, but his passion was singing and songwriting. His band did quite well for themselves for a while. There’s a picture up there on the wall of them if you want to see it.’
Josie got up and went over to look properly. ‘Oh my God,’ she shrieked. ‘Your son was part of One Track Mind?’
‘You know them?’ Brenda sounded surprised. ‘I thought they’d be long before your time.’
‘I was barely born when they were together but I love eighties music and I’ve actually got their LPs.’ There’d been two albums, but the first was the only one anyone remembered. ‘I collect them,’ she added.
‘Wow.’ Brenda looked chuffed by this.
‘I knew he looked familiar.’ She wanted to kick herself—she couldn’t believe she hadn’t worked out why at the time. Of course if she had, there’d have been no way she’d have spilled her guts to him; she’d have been too starstruck to speak.
‘Robbie collected LPs as well. Those boxes over there in the corner are full of them.’
‘Can I take a look?’
‘Of course. Go ahead.’
Josie crossed to the corner, opened the first box and began rifling through the records. It felt like Christmas as she oohed and ahhed over albums by Queen, Duran Duran, Pink Floyd and many, many more.
But, as she put a Dire Straits LP back in the first box and turned to start on the second, she glanced over to see Brenda’s smile had fallen. ‘It’s so nice to see someone else getting joy from Robbie’s things,’ she said with a sniff. ‘He might not be perfect, but he’s my boy and I miss him.’
Josie’s heart hurt for the other woman. ‘Don’t lose hope,’ she said, abandoning the record and going across to take the older woman by the hand. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up.’
She wasn’t sure of any such thing, but she hoped it was the truth for Brenda’s sake.
The movie forgotten, Josie held up the One Track Mind album she’d just found. ‘Do you have anything to play this on?’ she asked, thinking maybe Brenda would quite like to hear her son’s voice.
‘Robbie’s record player is over there, in the other corner. It might be a bit dusty, but I think it still works.’
Josie leapt to her feet, and carried the LP as if it were made of gold. She couldn’t believe she was holding Robbie Jones’s copy of one of her favourite albums. Why had Clara never mentioned who her ex-husband was? Her school friends had thought her obsession with eighties music crazy and a little embarrassing, but she’d always loved it way more than modern stuff. One Track Mind was a unique sound too. Not quite hard rock, but much rawer than pop.
After a little fiddling, she managed to get it to work and the notes of ‘Lost Without You, Baby’ filled the air. Brenda smiled again as Josie sang along.
‘Was that song about Clara?’ Josie asked, turning the music down slightly as the next song began.
‘No,’ Brenda’s one word came out as a whisper.
‘Was it about anyone?’ Josie would be disappointed to hear that there wasn’t some heartbreaking love story behind one of her favourite songs.
‘Yes.’ Brenda paused a moment, then, ‘It was about his son.’
Josie felt her eyes widen. ‘But Clara and Robbie didn’t have kids.’ And she was sure Clara had said the baby that had been stillborn was a girl.
Brenda rubbed her lips together as if unsure whether she should say any more. ‘It’s never been common knowledge but Robbie’s high school sweetheart had a baby. It was adopted out.’
Josie’s heart went cold. She’d sympathised with Rob’s alcoholism when she’d thought it stemmed from the stillbirth and miscarriages, but adoption … ‘How old was he?’
‘He was seventeen, but the girl was only fifteen. Under the legal age when she conceived. He was desperately in love with her, as much as any teenaged boy can be, but her parents weren’t having any of it. Her father was the local cop—there was rumours in Cobar he was corrupt, or at least a little rough-handed, especially with the Aboriginal folk that were unlucky enough to cross his path. Anyway,’ she shook her head, ‘let’s just say Robbie wasn’t given much choice in the matter. Maybe we both should have fought harder to take the baby, but I could barely pay the bills as it was. Robbie would have had to leave school, get a job—between that and being a dad he wouldn’t have had time for his music.
‘I thought it was the right thing at the time, but it changed him. When he met Clara and his band got the record deal, I thought he was going to be okay. But when they couldn’t have children … I think Robbie blamed himself. He figured since he gave up one child, he didn’t deserve another.’
A lump grew in Josie’s throat. ‘That’s so sad.’
Not only had Brenda lost a husband and a son, but somewhere she had a grandson she didn’t know as well. It made Josie all the more determined to take her under her wing.
‘All we can hope is that the baby found a good home, had a good life.’
And although it was something she rarely spoke about, Josie found herself saying, ‘I was adopted.’
Brenda blinked. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. And I landed on my feet with my parents. I bet your grandson did too.’
‘Do you know your real parents?’
Josie shook her head, trying not to bristle at the word ‘real’—she knew Brenda didn’t mean any harm.
When Josie was a kid the possibility of finding her ‘biological’ family—as was the term her parents used—seemed so far off in the distant future that she never gave it much thought. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. But as the day grew closer where legally she could start a search, she’d come to the conclusion that she didn’t want or need to know.
What if things changed when she found her ‘biological’ mother?
She was so utterly close to her mum and dad that she couldn’t bear the thought of their relationship being affected. And she’d read horror stories about adopted kids seeking their roots. Yes, there were some happy endings, but a lot of the time they didn’t like what they found.
What if her mum was a druggie? Or in jail? Would Josie feel obliged to help her? Or what if she still didn’t want anything to do with Josie? Whenever she thought about possible rejection, she grew so anxious she made herself physically ill. There were simply too many unanswered questions. And, if the woman who’d carried her for nine months wanted to find her, surely she’d come looking?
‘My folks always said they’d be okay with me finding them if I wanted to,’ she told Brenda, ‘but I’ve just never had that yearning. It was actually kinda cool being the adopted kid. Most of the other kids in my class came from boring two-parent-two-point-three-kid families and I used to love telling them that my parents had chosen me, whereas theirs didn’t have a
choice. I used to dream there was some kind of baby shop where childless couples went to select a baby from a whole bunch of wailing newborns. A little bit like the cabbage patch, which were where my favourite dolls came from.’
She chuckled and so did Brenda.
‘Did Robbie ever look for his baby?’ Josie asked.
‘He tried. He always wanted to find his son, but his name wasn’t on the birth certificate and although he and Clara did what they could to look for him, they never had any luck.’
Before Josie had time to digest this, the doorbell rang signalling the arrival of their dinner.
‘I’ll get it.’ She hurried to the door.
Brenda sniffed the air as Josie returned to the living room with the pizza and garlic bread. ‘Hmm, that smells good. I guess we’d better start that movie now too or it’ll be very late before it’s finished and, unlike you young things, I do need my beauty sleep.’
‘Good idea,’ Josie said with a smile. ‘You press play and I’ll go get the plates.’
September
Rebecca
When Rebecca walked into the kitchen after her last piano lesson on Monday afternoon, she found Hugh chopping up vegetables as onion sautéed in the frying pan. Her stomach rumbled at the alluring aroma, but she didn’t dare to assume she was included in his dinner plans.
‘Good evening.’ She cringed at her overly polite tone, her heart halting as she waited to see if he would deem her worthy of a reply. If so, it would be the first time he’d spoken to her since walking out on Friday morning, reeling from the shock of her revelation. He’d been sleeping in the spare room ever since and although she’d tried to talk to him a number of times, he’d shut her down, making it clear she was alone in this situation. In all their years of marriage they’d never gone this long without talking to each other—until this week the record would have been a couple of hours max, and even that had been rare.
How she’d managed to get through three hours of lessons, she had no idea. She’d thought it might help to have something to focus on other than the whole Josie-adoption-Hugh-angry-Robbie-missing situation, but she’d been kidding herself believing she could think about anything else.
‘There’s a letter for you on the table.’
Rebecca almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of Hugh’s voice.
‘Thank you,’ she said, recovering only a moment because when her eyes came to rest on the plain white envelope with the government symbol in the corner, her heart shot into her throat again. Even without opening it, she could tell what it was and she stared at it long and hard.
‘You going to open it?’ he asked eventually, his tone making it clear he’d already guessed what it was as well.
Rebecca swallowed, then slid her finger beneath the seal and fumbled to remove the letter. Her heart flopped about in her chest as she read:
Dear Mrs MacRitchie
Thank you for your enquiry. The departmental records have been searched and …
Her gaze skipped over the preamble to the important bits.
Name: Josephine Maria Van Dijk
Born: Swan District Hospital, Western Australia
Date of birth: 9 April 1983
The rest of the information blurred on the page as her eyes grew hot and the world began to spin. She steadied herself on the kitchen table and then sank into a chair. She’d known in her heart Josie was her daughter but seeing the truth written in black print was still a bloody shock and she was helpless to stop the flood of tears down her cheeks.
Over the last few days crying had become as much a part of her day as eating, sleeping and breathing. After leaving her parents’ place she’d driven aimlessly for a while, not knowing who to turn to in lieu of Hugh and her thoughts had found their way to the father of her baby. To Robbie. She’d felt so affronted that all these years she’d thought she had a boy that she suddenly had an irrepressible urge to let him know the truth.
But she’d gotten much more than she bargained for. Not only had Robbie’s ex-wife told her he was missing but Clara had also delivered some unsavoury truths about Rebecca’s parents. Now, in addition to her thoughts about Josie, she couldn’t get Robbie out of her head. She’d been so consumed she’d almost missed her dialysis session on Friday afternoon.
What if questions haunted her day and night.
What if her parents hadn’t intervened? Hadn’t taken it upon themselves to play God? Would she and Robbie have stayed together? Raised their baby together? Her heart squeezed at the thought. As confronting as it had been to hear about the threat her father had made to Robbie, it made more sense than anything in her life ever had before.
Robbie hadn’t abandoned her of his own accord.
And this realisation had brought all her hurt and pain from that time back to the forefront. It broke her heart to think he’d been hurt as much as she had and never truly recovered—at least she’d managed to have a relatively happy life with Hugh and Paige. Robbie hadn’t achieved anything like that and now he was missing. Possibly dead. And, from the way Clara had spoken, she didn’t care and neither did the police.
A lump formed in her throat again and another barrage of tears followed. Her parents had a lot to answer for. Her mother had tried to call her numerous times over the weekend, but it was a good thing neither of them had shown up at the house, because the way she felt right now she thought she might be capable of physically harming her dad.
‘Here.’ Hugh’s shadow fell over her as he pulled out a chair and sat, offering her a box of tissues as he did so.
‘Thanks.’ Rebecca tried to pull herself together, not meeting his gaze as she snatched one up—she’d never been self-conscious about crying in front of her husband before but now she worried he’d think her tears were an attempt to manipulate him into sympathy.
‘Can I see?’
She pushed The Letter towards him.
Moments later, she heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘So, you did have a girl, after all?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, trying to halt her tears and not mentioning that if he’d bothered to listen to her over the weekend, he’d have known this. ‘Mum and Dad lied.’
And then, because he was still sitting there and she was desperate to talk to someone, she spilled the rest as well. There didn’t seem any point in hiding anything now. She told him about her parents’ feeble excuse for their lie and how she’d gone to look for Robbie. She relayed her conversation with Clara, her father’s inexcusable manipulations to keep Robbie out of her life, the news that Robbie had disappeared, and watched his eyebrows creep closer and closer to his receding hairline as she did so.
‘How old was Robbie when all this happened?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘I don’t think he’d have been charged. You might have been underage but you were both at school. The most he’d have got was a rap on the knuckles.’
Even if this was the truth, it wasn’t any consolation. If anything, it only made her father’s actions—his abuse of power—worse.
Hugh pushed back from the table and stood. Was that it? End of conversation? She couldn’t bear it if he continued to push her away. She’d always had Hugh’s unwavering support, his love and his friendship. And now that was on the line. Paige might not have noticed yet, but it wouldn’t take long before she picked up on the disharmony between her parents. Not only would the rift break Paige’s heart, but she’d demand answers and wouldn’t rest until she got to the core of the crisis.
‘I’m sorry, Hugh.’ She grabbed onto his arm. ‘I don’t want this to come between us.’
His whole body stiffened, she felt his muscles clenching beneath her touch. ‘Let me get us dinner and then we’ll talk.’
Dinner? Rebecca wasn’t hungry anymore and she didn’t want to give him time to change his mind, but she also couldn’t refuse the closest thing to an olive branch that had been offered so far. ‘Okay. What can I do to help?’
He stepped away so her hand fell off his arm
. ‘Nothing. I’ve got this.’
The next half an hour was excruciating. She took a shower, fed the dog and then sat in her bedroom and read the letter over and over.
In addition to the other information, such as Josie’s birth weight and length, it had the names of her adoptive parents. When every word and line was imprinted in her head, Rebecca opened her laptop and searched Josie’s maiden name. Whereas the earlier searches for her married name had come up almost blank, pages and pages appeared for Josephine Van Dijk, most of them from theatres in London where she’d appeared in a number of famous musicals.
‘Oh my.’ Her nerve endings tingled as she clicked on the first image and came face to face with the woman Paige had become friends with. If there’d ever been any doubt that this was her Josephine, there could be none now. She was so beautiful and the knowledge that she’d been a performer like her dad, that a love of music was something the three of them shared, brought tears to her eyes.
Among the websites, she also found an obituary from two years ago for a Natalie Van Dijk and a Facebook page with a number of holiday photos of her widower, Maarten Van Dijk. She wasn’t sure what to think of the news that Josie’s adoptive mother was no longer alive.
Would that make Josie more or less open to meeting her?
The final line of the letter read: As of today, Josephine Van Dijk has not requested to be put on the Contact Register.
Rebecca’s heart sank. Surely if Josie had any desire to find her birth parents, that would have been the first step.
Finally, Hugh called her to dinner and Rebecca sat at the table, feeling more like she was eating with a stranger than the man she’d spent almost every day with for the past thirty years.
‘This is delicious,’ she said, taking a mouthful, despite still having next to no appetite.
‘Thanks,’ he grunted and then shoved a forkful of pasta into his mouth.
Silence followed a few long moments until Rebecca could handle it no longer. ‘Is this going to break us?’
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