Lost Without You

by Rachael Johns

  ‘Nah, course not.’ She led Josie through the house and into the kitchen, where they found the dog—face pressed up against the glass door begging to be let in.

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ Josie said as Paige opened the door and Molly rushed over to investigate the visitor.

  ‘She’s a pathetic guard dog, but yeah, she’s pretty special. Can I get you a tea or coffee?’

  ‘Aren’t you a beautiful girl?’ Josie looked up from where she was rubbing Molly’s neck and making smoochy noises. ‘After the day I’ve had at school today, I could murder a coffee.’

  ‘Coming right up, but just warning you Mum doesn’t have a fancy machine.’

  ‘That’s fine. As my mum used to say, as long as it’s hot and wet, it’s perfect.’

  Paige laughed, then grabbed the kettle to fill at the sink. ‘So what was so terrible about your day?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual, kids complaining about …’

  But Paige didn’t hear the rest of Josie’s sentence. Between the kettle and the sink, lying on the kitchen bench, was a letter. At first she didn’t think anything of it and was simply about to move it out of the way in case she spilt anything on it, but as she picked it up, she couldn’t help taking a closer look. It was from the Department for Child Protection Western Australia and it was about an adoption.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Paige’s heart crashed into her chest.

  Josie looked up from where she was still lavishing affection on the dog. ‘Are you okay?’

  But Paige seemed to have forgotten how to speak. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the letter in her hand.

  ‘Paige?’ Josie came up beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Paige looked into her new friend’s eyes, still in shock. ‘This piece of paper says my mum adopted out a child. When she was a teenager.’

  Josie’s eyes grew wide. ‘Seriously? And you never knew?’

  ‘No.’ The shock stimulated her tear ducts and she swallowed to try and stop a flood of them. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  Without thinking that her mum might not want someone she barely knew looking at her private paperwork, Paige passed the piece of paper to her friend.

  Barely before Josie’s eyes had dropped to the paper, she too gasped. ‘That’s me.’

  Paige was unable to comprehend Josie’s words. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m adopted,’ Josie told her. ‘And before I married Nik my surname was Van Dijk. That’s my birthdate and that’s the hospital I was born in.’

  ‘Josephine.’ As Paige said the word goosebumps painted her skin. She’d only ever known Josie as Josie and had been in such shock when she’d first seen the letter that she hadn’t even realised the baby on this paper shared the same first name as her friend.

  ‘Yes.’ The letter was shaking in Josie’s hands.

  ‘That makes you and me sisters.’ She swayed a little and tears threatened at this joyful but shocking news.

  ‘Half-sisters,’ Josie said, her tone terse. ‘I’m sorry, Paige, I’ve got to go.’ Then, she grabbed her handbag from where she’d dumped it on the floor near Molly and hightailed it out of the house.

  Only after Paige heard Josie’s car reversing out of the driveway, did she realise she’d taken the letter with her. She was deliberating whether to chase after her when she realised her car was still at the café where she and Josie had met earlier to discuss her involvement with the picture book projects. Chat had somehow digressed from how Paige would assist the kids to wedding talk and Josie had mentioned she’d love to see the photos from Rebecca’s wedding. They’d decided to carpool, which meant Paige was stranded.

  But in lieu of what had just come to light, this seemed the least of her issues. There had to be some kind of mistake.

  The kettle whistled and Paige whirled around to switch it off; in the time it had taken to boil, her whole world had changed. And a cup of coffee didn’t seem nearly adequate for dealing with this revelation. She yanked open the fridge, relieved to find an unopened bottle of wine on the bottom shelf. After pouring herself a large glass, she sat down at the table—a lot of things might not make sense right now but at least one thing suddenly did. She hadn’t been imagining her mother’s weirdness around Josie. Had she known the connection when she’d been asking all those questions? How long had she had this information? And did her father know too?

  He had to, otherwise her mum wouldn’t have left the letter lying around in the kitchen. That felt like a double betrayal. All these years she’d thought them a tight-knit team of three and yet they’d been keeping this ginormous secret from her. She understood that maybe it wasn’t the kind of thing you told a child, but she’d been an adult for almost a decade now. And who was Josie’s father? Could it be a boy from the band her mum had been in in high school? It had to be—she remembered her mum mentioning the group a few times and her grandparents had always shut the conversation down pronto.

  Dammit, who else was complicit in keeping this from her?

  She was about to call Solomon and fill him in, when she heard a key in the front door. She and Molly met her dad in the hallway. He took one look at her and his face fell.

  ‘Honey? What’s wrong? Have you and Sol had a fight?’

  Paige snorted. Right now Sol was the only person she knew she could rely on not to let her down.

  ‘No. I found the letter about Mum’s other daughter.’

  Rebecca

  Rebecca was surprised to see Paige and Hugh sitting at the kitchen table when she arrived home late that afternoon—she hadn’t been expecting her daughter for dinner and her car wasn’t out the front. She looked at the half-drunk wine bottle sitting between them, then noticed Paige’s eyes were red, her lashes damp and her cheeks blotchy as they always were whenever she’d been crying.

  She looked from Paige to Hugh and then back to Paige. She knows.

  Rebecca’s knees almost went out from under her. ‘You told her?’ Yet even as her voice rose to ask this question, the answer dawned. The letter.

  ‘Don’t blame him,’ Paige said tersely. ‘I found the letter. I can’t believe you’ve lied to me and Dad all these years.’

  Rebecca eyed the wine. Surely one small glass wouldn’t hurt. Hugh and Paige wouldn’t approve but then she was already in their bad books anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry, Paige,’ she said, resisting the urge to grab a glass. She took a seat at the table instead, and not a moment too soon—she felt more than a little dizzy.

  ‘That’s all you have to say for yourself?’ Paige’s tone made Rebecca feel more like the child than the mother here and she wasn’t sure she had the mental energy to defend herself. At least she no longer had to work out how to tell Paige about Josie—three hours in dialysis, she’d been rehearsing different speeches in her head all that time and she hadn’t been sure about any of them.

  Now she only had Josie to worry about.

  Rebecca took a deep breath, hoping oxygen would slow the spinning of her head. What exactly did Paige want her to say?

  ‘What if I was a lesbian and had fallen in love with Josie?’ Paige screwed up her face. ‘The two of us could have been intimate and—’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re not a lesbian so that’s an unhelpful line of thought.’

  Hugh raised an eyebrow at her and she knew what he was thinking, that until recently she’d thought she had a son and it could have been a problem if Paige had fallen for him.

  ‘How much did you tell her? Did you tell her about Mum and Dad’s underhanded behaviour?’ Paige had always been closer to Rebecca’s parents than she was herself but she should know what kind of people her grandparents were. ‘Did you tell her no one ever gave me a choice? Did you tell her about their lies?’

  Paige shook her head in obvious disgust. ‘You always have a choice, Mum, and anyway, we’re not angry about the fact you had a baby, it’s the fact you chose to hide it from us all these years.’

  Hugh nodded. Paige’s anger
and indignation seemed to have rejuvenated his, just when she’d thought he was beginning to forgive her.

  ‘When were you planning on telling me?’ Her rage was unrelenting. ‘When were you planning on telling Josie?’

  ‘Soon. Very soon. I’ve spent all afternoon trying to work out how. I know you’re angry but I had to consider how Josie might feel when she finds out. As far as I know she’s never tried to look for me, so I need to approach this with sensitivity.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  Rebecca’s heart ground to a halt. ‘What?’

  ‘She was with me this afternoon. We found the letter together.’ Paige held her chin high, her expression smug as if she was kind of proud of this fact.

  Rebecca was winded a few moments, and then, ‘How did she react?’

  ‘How do you think she reacted? She was bloody shocked. She’s probably wondering why you’ve suddenly decided to find out about her now.’

  ‘Because,’ Rebecca said, ‘facing your own mortality is a sobering experience, it makes you—’

  ‘She might be a match!’

  For a moment Paige looked full of hope and Rebecca felt heartened by the fact that deep down her daughter obviously still cared about her health, about her, but she couldn’t allow her to go down this path.

  ‘That is not why I requested that information,’ Rebecca said forcefully. ‘Even if she is a match, I would never ask her of that. And I forbid you to either.’

  ‘Instead, you’re happy to let my fiancé sacrifice his kidney? That’s why you suddenly agreed, isn’t it? So you could find Josie without her thinking you wanted something from her.’ Paige shook her head again. ‘Well, you can forget using Solomon’s kidney now. It’s been withdrawn.’

  Rebecca couldn’t win and her usually sweet daughter’s rage had her stomach squeezing. Was it possible to feel any more worthless? She looked to Hugh for some support but he remained irritatingly silent.

  ‘By the way, who is Josie’s father?’ Paige asked, almost giving Rebecca whiplash with her quick change in direction. ‘There wasn’t a name for him on the letter. Is he one of the guys you were in that band with?’

  ‘Yes,’ was all she decided to say right now. No matter how angry Paige was, Josie definitely deserved to hear these answers first.

  ‘And do you know where he is? Have you spoken to him? Does he know you’ve found Josie?’

  At least she could honestly answer this, ‘No. I have no idea where he is these days.’ The thought of Robbie lost filled her with sadness—if only he were here right now; at least there’d be one person happy with this revelation.

  ‘Well, do you at least have a name?’

  Rebecca forced breath into her lungs. ‘I’d rather be the one to tell Josie that. Could you please give me her phone number?’

  Paige looked incredulous. ‘I’ll call her and let her know you want to talk to her. I’m not about to hand over her number without her permission.’

  Rebecca had never felt more like slapping her daughter as she did in that moment, yet at the same time, she couldn’t afford to anger her any more. Paige too was hurt and in shock. ‘Okay, I understand.’

  Silence filled the room a few long moments and Rebecca found herself saying, ‘Are you going to stay for dinner? Maybe we could order takeaway.’ She wasn’t hungry but if her daughter was fed, maybe she’d be in a more amenable mood to listen to Rebecca’s side of the story.

  Paige and Hugh exchanged glances and then she pushed back her seat. ‘Dad, can you please give me a lift home?’

  ‘Sure, honey.’ He stood as well.

  ‘Are you right to drive?’ Rebecca asked, gesturing to the empty wine glasses on the table. ‘I could drive her instead.’

  She heard the desperate hope in her voice just as strong as the scorned disbelief in her daughter’s reply. ‘I’d rather risk my luck hitchhiking than ride in a car with you right now.’

  Rebecca looked to Hugh—was he going to let her speak to her in that manner? She waited for the old ‘Don’t you speak to your mother like that’ but instead he shrugged and grabbed his car keys from the hooks on the wall.

  As her husband and daughter headed for the front door, Rebecca slumped back in her seat. This whole situation was breaking her heart.

  It was time to stop being a coward and start trying to clean up the mess she’d created.

  Josie

  After leaving Paige’s mum’s house, Josie made a beeline to the nearest bottle shop.

  ‘Have a nice night, sweetheart,’ said the bloke behind the counter as he handed over two wine bottles in a brown paper bag. Somehow she managed not to whack him with the package.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And actually can you give me a small pack of Winfield Silver and a lighter as well, please?’

  It was illegal to drink while driving, but it wasn’t illegal to light up, so she paid for her cigarettes, went outside and did exactly that. She wasn’t supposed to be drinking or smoking but these were extenuating circumstances. It wasn’t every day you found your biological mother and in the very few times Josie had contemplated the possibility it had never been like this. She’d imagined them connecting through one of the adoption registers, getting to know each other via phone calls or emails first and then finally, one day, maybe meeting in person. And she’d never contemplated the possibility she might meet a half-sibling first.

  As she drove, she glanced over at the handbag sitting on the passenger seat as if it were a ticking bomb about to explode—inside was The Letter. What did it even mean? Pausing at traffic lights, she yanked the paper from her bag and stared down at the date. Last week. It had only been sent last week. Josie knew enough to know that Rebecca could only have requested the information recently. But why? Why after all these years had she suddenly decided to do something? And was she planning on confronting Josie?

  Someone behind beeped their horn, signalling their annoyance that the lights had gone green and she hadn’t moved. Josie turned her attention back to the road and drove as fast as she could. Once home, she kicked off her boots and headed for the kitchen where she retrieved the largest wine glass they owned and filled it to the brim. Then, she took the letter, her drink and the rest of the bottle into the living room and sank down onto the couch. She absent-mindedly picked up the remote and turned on the TV.

  Just when she’d finally been starting to feel a little better, life had gone and thrown this at her. Oh how she wished her mum were here right now to call for advice. She thought about phoning her dad, but immediately decided against it—this wasn’t something she wanted to land on him over the airwaves.

  A tear snuck down her cheek and she brushed it away.

  There were so many questions whirling in her head. If Rebecca was her mother, who was her father? Maybe she was the product of rape? Bizarrely, the thought had never crossed her mind before but there was no biological father named on the birth certificate.

  A whole other glass of wine was required for that thought. This was exactly what she’d feared all her life—that if she dug into her past she’d uncover things she didn’t want to find.

  Eventually, after almost a whole bottle of wine, she stumbled into the kitchen for a snack. Two-minute noodles were the easiest option and were something her mum often made her when she came home from school; the perfect quick comfort food. Josie put water into a saucepan, drank another half glass of wine while she waited for it to boil and finished the bottle as the noodles cooked to perfection.

  When they were done, she grabbed a drainer, carefully—so as not to burn herself—poured the noodles into it and then set the saucepan down on a chopping board. A glass chopping board she realised as it instantly shattered. It was like a bomb going off in the kitchen. Tiny shards of glass sprayed everywhere. She dropped the drainer and the noodles all over the floor as she instinctively reached out to retrieve the saucepan. Somehow in doing so, she not only managed to burn her hand on the pan but wedge a large piece of broken glass betw
een two of her fingers.

  ‘Shit, ouch, shit, ouch,’ she yelped, bouncing around on the shattered glass. Thank God she was still wearing thick winter socks, which offered a slight layer of protection.

  Of course Nik chose that moment to arrive home. She cringed as she heard the door open—not even Mary Poppins would be able to clean up fast enough.

  ‘What have you done to yourself?’ he asked as he appeared.

  ‘And a very good evening to you too,’ she retorted, then glanced down at her hand to see she was dripping blood all over the floor. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt.

  She followed Nik’s eyes from her hand to the empty wine bottle on the kitchen bench. ‘Don’t even start. I found my mother today. Or at least I found out who she is.’

  At this declaration she burst into tears.

  ‘What?’ He looked momentarily shocked, then he launched into action, grabbing paper towel. ‘Let’s get you out of this mess,’ he said, ushering her out of the kitchen and into the adjacent, small dining room they rarely used.

  ‘It’s your fault for making me give Paige the dress,’ she sobbed as he gently took her hand in his and surveyed the damage.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s get you fixed up and then you can tell me.’ He stuck his tongue out, concentrating hard as he tried to remove the glass from her skin.

  ‘Youch!’ she yelped as he succeeded in plucking it out—it was more the visuals than any pain. Her hand felt numb and she hoped it was the alcohol, not that she’d severed an artery or anything.

  Nik shoved a wad of paper towel between her fingers. ‘Is that a burn too?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She’d forgotten about that. Guess it must be the alcohol numbing the pain after all.

  ‘You’ve really done a number on yourself, haven’t you? Hold this,’ Nik told her, gesturing to the paper towel, before rushing over to the fridge—the glass crunching beneath his shoes—and grabbing an ice-pack. He wrapped it in more paper towel and then pressed it against her hand. ‘Cold water would be better, but I think stopping that bleed is more important.’