by Lyn Denison
Her mother, the woman she’d accepted as her mother, had never been demonstrative. There were no hugs, no cuddles. Not like Em’s family.
Until Kat met Em when they started school together she hadn’t known family life could be so different. The Martins were touchy-feely to the extreme and after the initial shock when they’d wrapped her into their midst, she’d become intoxicated with the joy of it all. The fun. The laughter. The love. At every opportunity she’d escaped to the wonderful Martin home.
Em’s mother cooked, and the house was always filled with the divine scents of cookies or stews. The Martin children clattered noisily about the house like excited puppies. Em’s mother had accepted Kat into the family like another daughter. When Kat went home with Em after school, Mrs. Martin welcomed Em home with a hug. And then she did the same with Kat.
Kat still remembered the first time Em’s mother hugged her. Mrs. Martin was a short woman, slightly overweight—pleasantly plump, as she described herself happily. She’d pulled Kat into her ample bosom, holding her close, and she’d smelled of freshly baked cookies and the subtle hint of lavender. Kat had never felt such an overwhelming sense of safety. Then the flour on Mrs. Martin’s apron had made her sneeze, causing much laughter and a bustling search for tissues. And when Kat left for home there was another hug. Kat knew she’d stayed alert so she was always nearby when Em’s mother started hugging.
All this only served to make her own family life seem colder and, in the beginning, she’d been loath to invite Em to her own home. It was a small price to pay for the wonderful experience of Em’s family.
Of course, Em had eventually put Kat on the spot by demanding they go to Kat’s house to play. Nothing Kat could say would deter Em, and Kat had been sick with worry that her friend would find Kat’s home so awful she wouldn’t invite Kat back to hers.
Em had stood for a moment in the silent, dull house and then she’d asked Kat to show her her room. Kat had been mortified. Her room was a barren planet compared to the bright bedroom Em shared with her younger sisters. Kat had tried to explain that her parents might repaint the walls soon and that she was going to ask for the same color as Em’s bedroom. Em had smiled as though she was secretly pleased, but she’d assured Kat her bedroom was fine, that she just loved the quiet. She’d rolled her eyes expressively and told Kat that the Martins were just so loud, loud, loud.
Kat quickly told Em she loved the noise of the Martin house, only to be told by Em that if Kat spent every day with the Martins she’d soon be cured of that but she hadn’t been convinced. If Em had asked her there and then, Kat would have packed her bag and left with no regrets.
Although Kat knew she had it all in a better perspective now, she still felt a glowing warmth when she was with the Martin family. She’d always felt a slight sense of guilt that being with Em’s family had always felt more like home than her own had.
Kat frowned. There’d be no more feelings of guilt. Now she knew that the small measure of “home and family” she’d got growing up, well, even that had been fiction. A small voice of reason struggled to the surface, suggesting her mother’s revelations had at least answered a lot of Kat’s unanswered questions. Like why her mother had been so distant, so unmotherly.
Kat made a soft indignant exclamation as she added more paint to her roller. She wasn’t a stranger’s child. She was Ann Oldfield’s granddaughter, her own flesh and blood. Surely that would have counted for something, Kat reasoned. Yet how often had she heard her mother say that motherhood had ruined her career, that she could have been on the top of the corporate ladder instead of stagnating as a lowly office manager. Looking back Kat could see that dissatisfaction had always colored her mother’s life. Still, for all Kat knew it had been there before Kat was born, firmly entrenched in Ann Oldfield’s psyche.
Kat moved her focus to her father. He’d always been in the background, hidden behind a book or newspaper, silent and colorless and unsmiling. Her mother had talked at him, expressing her dissatisfaction, and if he’d ever retaliated Kat had never heard him. Perhaps he’d tried in the beginning before Kat was old enough to understand but Kat somehow couldn’t see it. Her father had simply been the dull, shadowy figure who went to work and came home.
And Beth. She tried to find a memory of her sister in the family equation and couldn’t. Her visits were rare and her interaction with Kat had been nonexistent. At least now Kat knew why.
What they did on the weekends Kat had no recollection. They rarely went out as a family. In fact, she couldn’t recall one time, apart from a confusing and solemn drive to attend the funeral of her only grandmother. Great-grandmother, she reminded herself.
Em’s father, on the other hand, always seemed to be there, playing cricket or football with his family in the large backyard. He helped with homework, mended broken toys, and he put his arms around Em’s mother. Often he’d kiss her, on her lips, right there in front of the family and Kat. The kids teased them, and one of Em’s brothers would whistle until Em’s mother shoved her husband away and told him to go mow the lawn or make himself useful getting in the washing. He’d go off laughing and Em’s mother’s eyes would follow him, a happy smile on her face. It had given a young Kat a funny feeling somewhere in her chest, a yearning for that in her own life. But she’d never seen her father so much as touch her mother.
With one last pass of the roller to finish the side wall, Kat straightened and flexed her stiff back muscles. She glanced at her wristwatch and told herself it was more than time for a break.
She finished cleaning her painting tools and went into the kitchen to set the kettle boiling. As she reached for her tea mug she heard a knock on the door. Jess. Her heartbeats did their Jess thing, and she walked around the breakfast bar to see a figure standing on the top step, silhouetted in the open doorway. Far too tall for Jess. Her heart sank ruefully. And far too thin for Em. Kat paused then took a couple of stiff steps before stopping in the middle of the living room as recognition dawned.
“May I come in?” asked a familiar yet strange voice from her past.
Kat swallowed, suppressing an urge to turn and run. She gave a small nod and turned to move closer to the breakfast bar, feeling the other woman move into the house behind her.
Taking a deep breath she turned to face Beth. She’d known on some level that this moment would come, but it was too soon for Kat. She made herself meet the other woman’s gaze.
Their eyes were the same color, Kat recognized, and they had the same shaped face. Kat had always known that, she reminded herself. Why did this particular fact come into her mind now. They were the same flesh and blood, sisters, after all. No, she admonished herself. Not sisters anymore. They were much more than that.
Unconsciously Kat registered that a rapid pulse beat at the base of Beth’s neck and she watched her swallow quickly too. Beth, it appeared, was as nervous as Kat. Then Beth looked away, her gaze taking in the partly renovated house. “Impressive,” she remarked. “Em told me you were renovating a house.”
Kat raised her eyebrows. “Em told you?” Kat didn’t recall Em mentioning she’d seen Beth, let alone spoken to her.
“I saw her in the city the week before last I think it was.” Beth explained and swallowed again. “It’s a big job on your own.”
“Yes. But I’m not exactly doing it alone. I have a great company doing a lot of it.”
“Oh.”
Silence fell between them, stretching uncomfortably as the tension rose. The kettle switched itself off with a click that seemed to reverberate around them.
Beth glanced past Kat towards the kitchen. “Perhaps we could… Can we have coffee?”
“Sure.” Kat agreed reluctantly before escaping around the breakfast bar.
Beth slowly followed Kat but kept the length of the breakfast bar between them. “White, thanks. With one sugar,” she said before Kat thought to ask.
Kat busied herself with the preparations, feeling Beth’s eyes on her. She flashed a
quick glance at the other woman and then examined the image.
Beth didn’t look all that different to Kat. It must be at least a year, maybe eighteen months since they’d seen each other, and it didn’t seem to Kat that Beth had aged at all in that time. And she must be, what, fifty years old. She was sixteen years older than Kat so she must be fifty.
Sixteen years older. The enormity of it all suddenly hit Kat. The woman before her had been pregnant and had a child at sixteen. Kat thought back to when she herself was sixteen and couldn’t imagine how she would have felt in the same situation, to know she was having a child, to have to tell her parents.
Reaching for the coffee jar, Kat glanced at Beth again. She surreptitiously studied the woman she had always known as her much older sister. No one would even suspect what had occurred in the past.
Beth was tall, taller than Kat, slim and very well groomed, every inch the successful businesswoman Kat knew she was. Her hair was the same dark brown as Kat’s, worn long and pulled back, not severely but tidily, into a loose chignon at the back of her head. Her makeup was flawless.
She wore a dark grey suit—jacket and skirt—with a pale dove grey shirt that coordinated beautifully. Small, bright studs glistened in her ears, and she had a matching pin on the lapel of her jacket. Beth wasn’t a stereotypically beautiful woman, but she was certainly arresting.
Fourteen years ago Kat knew Beth had bought the small company she’d been with all her working life. When the owners decided to retire Beth had taken over. The company had something to do with job training and was highly successful and well-respected. All Kat’s knowledge had come via Em and Em’s mother. And even if Kat hadn’t been estranged from her parents they would never have spoken about Beth’s accomplishments—or Kat’s for that matter. It wasn’t their way.
A couple of years ago Em’s younger sister began a job with Beth’s company and, according to Em, had high praise for Beth. She was firm but fair. So, if it hadn’t been for Em Kat would have known next to nothing about Beth’s working life. And Em had probably seen more of Beth in the past few years than Kat had. Kat felt a momentary pang of guilt. She made herself force it away. She had no need to feel guilty, Beth hadn’t sought Kat out either.
Kat frowned slightly as she poured hot water over the coffee grounds. Beth hadn’t really figured in many, if any, of Kat’s childhood memories. She had left home before Kat started school and she rarely came home. Kat chastised herself for not picking up on the signs. But why would she? She’d been a child. How would she have known? Kat knew she’d wanted to leave home as soon as she could do so. Why would it have been any different for Beth? And there had to have been the added incentive of knowing Kat was her child. If Beth had cared—
Kat added milk and sugar to Beth’s coffee, surreptitiously watching her walk over to the window to look out at the now opened-out veranda. Kat set the mugs on the coffee table and returned with a plate of cookies. She indicated the best chair for Beth and as she rejoined her, Kat handed her a coffee.
“Thanks.” Beth settled into the well-worn chair.
“I’m sorry the furniture’s a bit basic, but I’m sort of making do.”
Beth gave a faint smile. “Em told me you were all but camping out.”
“Em seems to have had a lot to say,” Kat said dryly.
“You know Em. She’d talk underwater.”
They both sipped their coffee.
“I always liked her,” Beth said and Kat raised her eyebrows. “Em.” Beth clarified. “You always seemed to have fun with her.”
“I did,” Kat remarked with sincerity. “It saved my sanity on many occasions.”
Beth’s gaze fell to her coffee mug. “I suppose it did.” She sighed. “It surely wasn’t much fun at home.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Beth carefully set her coffee mug on the table before looking across at Kat. “I suppose we should talk. About that. And other things.” She began to fiddle with her suit jacket, her fingers smoothing the lapels. “Dad told me Mum had, well…” She swallowed.
“Set the family skeletons jangling in the attic,” finished Kat flatly.
“That’s very poetic,” Beth said with a crooked smile. Then she sobered. “She shouldn’t have told you. There was no need, nothing to be gained by it. Not after all these years.”
Only the truth. Kat’s emotions swung like a pendulum as she tried to read the expressions that flitted across Beth’s face. Was she embarrassed that she’d had an illegitimate child? That that child had turned out to be Kat? Kat the ungrateful, the rebellious, the perverted—all the other words her mother had used in the past flashed into her mind with their usual negativity, leaving poisonous debris behind them to niggle away at Kat.
“Perhaps she just wanted to clear her conscience,” Kat put in, sounding heaps more gracious than she felt.
“I don’t believe Mum had a conscience,” Beth said softly. “She was a bitter, difficult woman before and when I…well, afterwards, it just made her worse.”
“Would you ever have told me?” Kat asked and Beth looked quickly at her and away just as quickly.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She shook her head slightly. “Probably not. I don’t think I ever wanted you to know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t see that it serves any purpose.” She made a fluttering gesture with her hand. “But that’s by the by now. Mum has told you, and I think we should discuss it.”
“You do?” Kat got the words out with difficulty.
“Yes. The longer we leave it the, well, more uncomfortable it will be?”
Uncomfortable. Well, it was certainly that, Kat reflected wryly to herself. She should just tell Beth to put it out of her mind, pretend her mother had continued to keep their secret. That would be the most comfortable situation for the emotionless Oldfields.
“I thought you might have some questions.” Beth shifted in her chair, smoothed her suit skirt over her knees. “Or something,” she finished.
Kat bit off a soft laugh. “You mean apart from why wasn’t I told?” Kat watched Beth’s gaze fall again. Her fingers ran along the seam of her skirt, and Kat noticed Beth’s hands were shaking slightly. It was Kat’s turn to sigh.
“Look, Beth, I’m sorry. I’m just finding it difficult to get around the fact that my shadowy older sister actually gave birth to me.”
Beth’s lips tightened, and a fleeting expression Kat couldn’t quite fathom passed over her face. Tell me on some level you cared, Kat wanted to say. But part of her knew she may not be ready for that particular truth on top of the other raw truth. She was far too vulnerable.
“Why not just tell me it isn’t true,” Kat suggested. “Tell me Mum was probably drugged, that she didn’t know what she was saying.”
“No, I can’t say that, Kat. I wish I could, but I’m afraid it is true,” Beth said without intonation.
“Then tell me what happened,” Kat probed, amazed that she suddenly wanted to know. At least she was sure that Beth would keep to the basics and wouldn’t get into the emotional. That was the Oldfield way.
Beth took another sip of her coffee, replaced the mug on the coffee table. “Just the usual story. It happens everywhere all the time. I got pregnant. Mum decided I was too young and that she should raise you.”
Kat gazed incredulously at her sister. No, her birth mother. “That’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
Kat expelled a loud breath. “I can’t believe that’s all you want to say, to tell me.” So much for unemotional, she chastised herself, while the conflicting part screamed at her not to push the issue in case Beth told her something she’d find too painful to hear.
“That’s the trouble, Kat. I don’t know what to say to you. I never have known.”
“Maybe you could start by telling me who my father was.”
Beth hesitated again.
“Mum said you didn’t know him very well.”
A frown gathered on Be
th’s brow. “That’s probably true on one level. We did spend a good deal of time together though, considering Mum’s restrictions,” she said and shook her head again. “But you can’t really blame Mum for saying that because it’s what I told her.”
Kat made no comment.
“As you know, Mum was strict.” She grimaced. “Unfairly so, I thought back then. She barely let me out of her sight. I tried to tell her I just wanted to have some fun, spend time with my friends. Nothing I said made any difference. Mum being Mum, she stood firm. I even appealed to Dad. As usual he deferred to Mum.”
Kat wasn’t surprised.
“Maybe I should have done what you did. Made friends with a good Catholic family.” She gave a bitter laugh. “You know, I was really put out when I saw Mum letting you spend time with Em. She certainly didn’t give me that latitude.”
“I think she was just pleased I wasn’t under her feet,” Kat said. “But I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be under her feet anyway.”
Beth held Kat’s gaze again but made no comment for long moments. “You know she—Mum—was engaged to someone else before she married Dad.”
Kat was more than surprised.
“Apparently he broke it off before the wedding. I overheard Mum and Dad arguing once. I think Dad paid for the shortcomings of her ex-fiance.”
Kat gave this some thought. “He could have said something. He didn’t have to let her belittle him all the time.”
“I know. It wasn’t as bad when I was a child. I think Dad, well, really cares for her.”
Kat gave an exclamation of disbelief and then remembered the drawn and fearful look on her father’s face when she arrived at the hospital. She drew her attention back to Beth. “So how did you manage to get out to meet this unknown donor?”
Beth flinched a little and Kat felt bad again. “I’m sorry. I just…I’m not sure I can call him my father, that’s all.”
“I started sneaking out at night. I climbed down that tree outside my bedroom window. And after school when Mum and Dad were at work we, well, had the house.”
“In your room?” Kat was incredulous. “But Mum sometimes came home from work early. Didn’t you think about that?”