It was hard to sit in front of the flames without thinking of him. She could almost feel his touch, the slide of his warm fingers down her arm, the rasp of his unshaven jaw on her breasts as she lay in his embrace.
She sighed as she poked at the fire once or twice. She’d have to learn to live without him, that was all.
She woke to the dawn chorus and her own low spirits. The sun was a pale imitation of its usual self, which did nothing to lift her low mood. The old house seemed to creak around her with every step she took within it, as if it were asking her, Where is he? Where is he?
In the end, she gave up and went for a long walk along the beach, striding with a vigour she couldn’t feel through the heavy sand. The thunderous waves pounded at the shore in great lashing strokes, trying to soak her feet as she went past. The air was fresh with sea spray and the hoarse cries of the gulls echoed the silent cries of her heart as she faced the prospect of a future alone.
When she got back to the house she picked at some scraps of food she’d brought with her with little enthusiasm. Everything she touched reminded her of Connor. She saw his smile reflected in the glass of the windows, tasted his kiss on the afternoon breeze against her lips, felt his presence in the big bed when she lay down and tried to force herself to sleep. He was everywhere; she couldn’t escape, for she’d brought him with her in her heart.
Some time during the night something woke her. At first she thought it must have been a possum on the roof but when she sat up to listen there was no sound except the soft brush of the branches of the old elm tree outside the bedroom window.
She watched the play of moonlit shadows on the ceiling for a while before finally giving up on the whole notion of further sleep. She threw back the bedcovers and, wrapping herself in the bathrobe Connor had left behind, made her way in moonlit darkness to the library to find something to read to take her mind off her worries.
The library floor creaked in protest as she stepped into the room. The rows of books seemed to have developed accusing eyes as they looked down at who had disturbed their solitude.
Jasmine gave herself a mental shake and switched on the desk lamp, but the sensation of being watched remained.
She reached for the book nearest her, which happened to be a family Bible, its spine encrusted with gold. Pulling out a chair and tucking her feet underneath her, she sat with the Bible in her lap and began turning the yellowed pages with careful fingers.
A single photograph fluttered to the floor as she turned from Genesis to Exodus. She reached down and, picking it up, turned it over and froze.
It was a photograph of her.
The heavy Bible slipped from her knees as she unfolded her legs, her startled eyes still on the photograph in her shaking hands.
She knew the photograph well. It was exactly the same as the one in the photograph album her mother had made her for her tenth birthday. She was a few months old, lying on a rug in a garden she didn’t recognise, rosy cheeks and her wide, mostly toothless, smile.
How had it come to be between the leaves of this particular Bible? A host of questions flew around her brain, but none of the answers she needed.
She picked up the Bible and began leafing through the rest of the fragile pages, past Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and then on to Joshua and Judges. Another photograph was pressed between the pages of Ruth. This time she was a little older, a year or so, and the garden she did recognise as that of her childhood home.
There was another photograph of her in 1 and 2 Chronicles, one in Proverbs, a school photograph in Hosea and her confirmation photograph in the New Testament section between Acts and Romans.
She put the Bible back down and leafed through the collection of photographs in her trembling hands, her mind whirling with a magnitude of unanswerable questions.
After what seemed hours, she suddenly sprang to her feet, tossing the photographs to one side. She stared at the rows of books in front of her for a moment, before she began pulling them at random from the shelves, her fingers searching through the pages of every single volume.
She found a lock of curly chestnut hair in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. She stared at it for endless minutes, her brain darting off in all directions but unable to make sense of it.
She put the lock of hair to one side and ran her eyes along the top shelves where the last books remained.
Only one book along the row had no gold-embossed title on its spine.
She reached for it with nerveless fingers, somehow not all that surprised to find it was a diary.
She sat on the dusty sofa and, taking a painful breath, turned the first page.
It was addressed to God.
I saw her today.
She came to the house on her way to the beach. I wanted to call out to her but, as you know, I gave up that right a long time ago.
At least I have the photos. She looks so like me, which I suppose is a rough sort of justice. How that must annoy your avid disciple!
You’d better look after her while I’m gone. She’s the only thing I’m proud of in my life. The one thing I did properly. I would have loved to have kept her but I was told you wouldn’t approve.
As for me, I’m not so sure…
Jasmine sat in the quiet stillness of the old house, cradling the diary in her hands, her eyes moving over the various entries to find out the identity of the owner but to no avail—the diary was as anonymous as the ‘disciple’ referred to within it.
She knew she could put it off no longer; the creeping shadows of doubt could not be contained any more. She had to know the truth, even though she knew it was going to be painful.
She knew she had to visit her parents and ask them who would be watching her from afar, entering details about her in a nameless diary, for who but they was likely to know?
With that resolution in mind she tucked the photographs and diary beneath her pillow and shut her eyes, willing herself to sleep.
Her mother answered the door first thing the next morning with her hair still in the soft rollers she customarily wore to bed.
‘Jasmine!’ She put her hand to the plastic assortment on her head in what Jasmine knew to be a nervous gesture.
‘Hello, Mum.’
‘Darling, you don’t have to knock,’ her mother chided as she ushered her inside. ‘Just because you’re married now doesn’t mean you’re not our daughter any more.’
Jasmine couldn’t have asked for a better opening.
‘But I’m not your daughter, am I?’
Frances Byrne visibly blanched.
‘I…I don’t know what you mean, darling.’ She recovered quickly. ‘Is…is everything all right between you and Connor?’
‘I’m not here to discuss my…Connor,’ Jasmine said firmly. ‘I’ve come to discuss these.’ She handed her mother the small clutch of photographs but kept the leather-bound diary in her bag.
Frances took the photographs with an unsteady hand. Jasmine watched as she turned each one over, her expression clouding as each image was revealed.
There was a hollow silence.
After a few moments her mother handed her back the photographs, carefully avoiding her eyes.
‘I can’t imagine where you found those,’ she said, dusting off her hands.
‘Can’t you?’
Frances disturbed the neat perfection of her coral lipstick with her teeth.
‘Darling, your father will be very sorry he missed you and, as you see, I’m getting ready to go to church and—’
‘I want to know the truth,’ Jasmine said. ‘The gospel truth.’
‘Darling—’ her mother’s hands fluttered near her throat ‘— I’m not sure I can handle you in this mood.’
‘I’m not leaving here until I have the truth,’ Jasmine said implacably. ‘And if you won’t speak to me here then I’ll have to go to the synod gathering and have it out with Father there.’
‘Oh, dear Lord, don’t do that!’ Desperation crept into her mother
’s voice.
‘Why ever not?’ Jasmine asked. ‘He’s my father, isn’t he? Surely I should be able to call him out of a meeting to speak with me?’
The silence this time was agonising.
‘Darling—’ her mother’s face was pale with anguish as she wrung her hands ‘—your father and I—’
‘Leave this to me, Frances.’ Elias Byrne’s voice sounded from behind Jasmine.
She spun around to find her father standing in the open doorway.
‘I hope you’ve got a very good explanation for coming here and upsetting your mother like this.’ He closed the door behind him with an ominous click.
Jasmine refused to be intimidated.
‘I want to know the truth. Surely you owe me that?’
‘We’ve taught you the truth since you were an infant but you’ve wilfully and rebelliously refused to acknowledge it.’
‘Not that sort of truth!’ Tears smarted in her eyes. ‘Why must you always preach at me?’
‘You’ve got a defiant streak, Jasmine. We’ve done all we can to school you out of it but it seems you’re determined to ignore our admonitions.’
‘I didn’t come here for a sermon.’ Jasmine’s tone was cold. ‘I want you to tell me why those photographs of me were in a family Bible in the old house next to the shack at Pelican Head.’
Her parents exchanged glances.
Elias’s face drained of colour and her mother’s hand fluttered back to her string of pearls.
‘I’m not leaving until I know the truth,’ Jasmine added determinedly.
After a stretching silence her father appeared to come to some sort of decision. He straightened his spine and met her defiant grey-blue gaze with the cool ice blue of his own.
‘All right, then.’ He ignored the choked sound from Frances beside him. ‘I’ll tell you the truth but you must promise me it is to go no further than the four walls of this room.’
She hated having to make such a promise but she needed to know so desperately. She nodded her head, her stomach churning as she waited for him to continue.
Elias disturbed the neat comb-over he’d perfected that morning with a nervous flick of his hand.
‘It’s true that you’re not our biological daughter,’ he said. ‘Your mother and I adopted you when you were six weeks old.’
Jasmine stared at them both.
‘We would have told you but when Samantha came along a few months later you both looked so alike and we thought it best for all concerned to retain the secrecy. Of course, now you and the girls are all grown up the differences between you are more marked than we would have liked, but—’
‘So sorry not to have fitted in as you wanted,’ Jasmine put in bitterly.
Her father’s brows drew together in a frown.
‘Your propensity to speak before you think is one of those differences. It got your mother into trouble too, which is why we offered to take you in.’
‘Who is my mother?’
‘Your mother is dead.’
Jasmine’s stomach hollowed.
‘I still want to know who she was.’
Elias and Frances exchanged glances once more.
‘Your mother was a rebellious drug addict who found herself pregnant. She gave you up and soon after disappeared. We’ve since heard that she had passed away some time ago.’
Jasmine felt as if the world was spinning out of control within the confines of her head.
‘What about my father?’ she managed to ask through the cold stiffness of her lips. ‘Who was he?’
‘We were never told his name. Your mother wouldn’t say.’
She absorbed this information for a moment or two in silence.
‘As for the photographs, I have no idea how they came to be where you said they were. Perhaps it’s one of those coincidences that just happens from time to time,’ Elias offered.
’A coincidence?’ Jasmine frowned heavily.
‘Of course—’ he was obviously pleased with his explanation ‘—perhaps someone bought the Bible at a second-hand store or church fair and didn’t check inside.’
‘You surely can’t expect me to believe in that sort of coincidence?’
‘You have always shown a deplorable lack of faith in the miraculous,’ Elias pointed out. ‘But I have no idea how the photographs were obtained, do you, Frances?’
Frances shook her head, her eyes bright with tears.
Jasmine took out the diary and handed it to them both.
‘What’s this?’ Elias frowned.
‘It’s a diary,’ she said.
‘Whose diary?’ He turned a few pages with fumbling fingers.
‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ she said.
She watched as his throat moved up and down in an agitated swallow and assumed he’d come to the ‘avid disciple’ entry.
Elias handed the diary back, meticulously avoiding her eye as he did so.
‘I realise this has come as somewhat of a shock to you but you must believe us when we tell you we kept the details of your birth quiet with the very best of intentions. You had no future with your mother; she was beyond redemption. We took you in as our own. Your mother—Frances, I mean—’ he gave his wife a brief glance ‘—had not long had a miscarriage and was feeling low. You were a wonderful solution to her unhappiness and brought us much joy in those early years.’
But not in latter years. Jasmine filled in the rest in her head.
‘Darling, no one else needs to know about this.’ Frances was struggling to hold back her emotion. ‘It would upset your sisters terribly if they were to find out at this late stage.’
‘What about me?’ Jasmine’s own tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Am I not allowed to be upset?’
‘It’s understandable under the circumstances, but—’ Elias began.
‘You don’t mind upsetting me because I’m not really your daughter, but we mustn’t upset the girls because they are? How unfair is that? Don’t you understand how this is for me?’
‘Of course we do but surely you must understand how difficult this is,’ Frances said. ‘Your father and I—’
‘Don’t call yourselves that!’ Jasmine almost screamed the words at them. ‘You’re not my parents.’
‘Darling, please—’
‘Jasmine, control yourself. You’re a married woman now, not a teenage girl. Go home to your husband and be grateful for the life you’ve had; it was a whole lot more promising than your birth mother had to offer.’
Jasmine wrenched the front door open and slammed it behind her, almost stumbling down the front steps with blinding, bitter tears. She drove away with a squeal of tyres she knew would annoy her father—no Elias Byrne, her adopted father, she corrected herself with another choking sob.
She drove around in circles, not sure whether she should go back to the old house or drive straight to Connor’s place. So many questions were leaping in her head, each one vying for her attention, but she could barely think straight let alone attempt to frame any answers.
As she did another round of the block she recalled the cryptic comment Connor had made when he’d shown her the library at the old house for the first time. She’d told him the old books were very likely priceless and he’d said, ’I’m sure one or two will prove to be so.’
She gnawed at her lip, trying to decipher the meaning of his words. Had he known something? Had he stumbled across the photographs and diary himself or had he known the previous occupant of the house? She had to know, even if it meant facing him again, which she wasn’t sure she wanted to do right now.
Her curiosity got the better of her. She turned the car at the next roundabout and tracked back across the flow of traffic to make her way to Woollahra, determined to have it out with him.
When she arrived, she was relieved to find Connor’s car in the garage and made her way to the front door, mentally rehearsing what she wanted to say. She went to unlock the door but before she could put the key in the lock it opened a
nd he stood before her.
‘Jasmine, I need to talk to you.’
She brushed past him to enter the house, not sure she wanted to pick up the threads of their last conversation just yet; she had more pressing things on her mind.
‘I want to apologise.’
Her head came around at that. He sounded genuine but she wasn’t quite sure what he was apologising for. Was it for not telling her the truth about his mother’s estate or for his abrupt manner when he’d stormed from the house the other evening?
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t see.’
She followed him into the sitting room, where he proceeded to pour two generous shots of brandy. She took hers but didn’t lift it to her mouth, simply cradling it in her hands as she faced him.
He ran a hand through his already disordered hair.
‘I was out of line the other night,’ he began. ‘I had the mother of all headaches and when you threw the issue of my mother’s estate in my face, I lost it.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘I didn’t lie to you.’
‘You expect me to believe you?’
‘Yes.’ He thrust his own glass aside untouched. ‘I’d like to explain about my mother’s estate.’
‘Please don’t put yourself to any bother.’ Her tone was laced with scorn.
‘Jasmine, I know you think the worst of me right now but I can explain.’
‘Go right ahead.’ She gave him the floor with a theatrical sweep of her hand. ‘God knows I could do with another good story after what I’ve already heard today.’
‘What have you heard?’
She turned away. ‘Nothing that’s relevant to this conversation.’
‘Jasmine, there’s something you should know—’
‘Why did you lie to me about your mother’s estate?’
‘Until a few days ago I didn’t even know my mother’s estate no longer existed.’
She wasn’t sure she wanted to believe him but something in his tone suggested he found the task of speaking about it difficult, so she stayed silent.
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