by Diane Wood
“No, that’s got nothing to—”
Putting his hand up to stop her objection, he continued, “I need to know about it…because it’s greatly affecting the judgments you’re making about yourself. There’s a marked difference between our first session and the last two.”
“I’m not here for that, Dieter,” she insisted. “I want to know about the nightmares and lost memories.”
“It’s a process, Nathalie,” he said gently. “And when you’re ready, I’ll look at hypnosis as an option, but I don’t believe you’re ready, and whatever is going on right now is going to interfere with that process.”
How close she’d come to not continuing. Yet she needed to talk, and ultimately she wanted to know her own secrets—wanted to understand why going to sleep was so painful and dangerous.
* * *
A week after Nathalie had seen Belinda, George rang. “I thought you’d finished with us,” he stated coldly without introduction.
“I want to know what you meant when you said you weren’t my brother.”
“Then you’ll have to meet me.” His voice was cold and flat, but she could feel the tension.
They met at a club, taking seats in a quiet corner away from everyone. George’s handsome face looked tired, his eyes betraying his fragile emotional state. She’d never seen George anything but immaculately groomed, now his clothing looked less than perfect and there was just a trace of stubble on his chin.
“So, talk to me, George,” Nathalie said, sipping bourbon. “What did you mean about me not being your sister?”
“Mother’s very angry,” he stated, ignoring her question. “The cards are telling her that she’s being betrayed by someone close, that she’ll be forced to defend herself.”
“So what else is new? Isn’t that the supposed reason she came back here?” asked Nathalie impatiently. “If it wasn’t the persecution delusion, it would be some other event that the cards predict. But I don’t care. I want to read Mother’s journal.”
“I’m scared of her, Nat. Really scared.”
“Our birth certificates are forged.”
There was no surprise in his eyes, no questions, just a calm acceptance.
“You knew?” she accused.
“I think we were both born in America,” he answered quietly. “I remember leaving what I think was the US a while before you started school.”
“Why do you think this?”
“I have memories of being in California, I think. Then we traveled on a plane, I believe to the UK. Then we came here a bit later and moved into the old house. And for a long time Mother never let anyone come to the house. But I didn’t know why then.”
“And you do now?”
“It’s in the journal.”
“Have you brought the journal with you?” She knew he hadn’t, unless it was in his car.
“I’ll tell you about some of it,” he said quietly. “But it’s too dangerous. If Mother was sure you’d read it, she might…”
“Might what?” Nat asked when he trailed off into silence.
“Nat, she’s so much worse than…maybe it’s not true, but the things she says she’s done…” He was rambling and pale, his eyes darting around the room as if expecting Mother to walk in at any moment. Then he’d focus back on her and try again. “The journal’s hidden,” he declared, watching her face. “But I know you’re not my sister. She kept you after your mother died. That’s why she left America and went into hiding in that terrible house we grew up in.”
“What…what do you mean she kept me?” Shaking her head, she said, “George, you have to show me this journal. Does it say that in there? Are you saying she’s definitely not my mother?”
“Yes,” he muttered.
Disbelief, relief, confusion, bitterness all fought for priority. “Is she yours…your mother?”
Nodding yes, he added, “I think she might have been your mother’s friend. The journal says she loved someone, it rambles a bit, but I presume it was your father. So she kept you after…when your mother died.”
“Why? Where was my father, why didn’t he look after me and why would she leave the country?”
“He was also dead. Sometimes the journal is hard to understand; it’s like she was having a breakdown. Also a lot of what she refers to obviously happened before she started writing this particular journal.”
“Then I have to read it!”
“Never, Nat—you can’t ever read it, ever. I’ll destroy it first.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s my mother and it’s my job to protect her…and to protect you.”
“Protect her from what? You just finished saying you were afraid of her.”
He wouldn’t answer, and she wanted to hurt him—somehow force him to tell her. But it wouldn’t work. Nothing scared him more than Charlotte Silver—except perhaps losing Charlotte Silver.
“Then tell me what you know about me, George. I want to know who I am—who my mother was? Suddenly I’m not Nathalie Duncan, you’re not my brother and Charlotte isn’t my mother. I know who I’m not, but I need to know who I am.”
“The journal doesn’t really say,” he conceded. “A lot of it is her feelings about people…things.”
“Why did she leave America?”
“I think she was running away. I don’t think she was supposed to take you out of the country. She called this person…I assume your father…the love of her life.”
“Was he her lover?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes it sounds like it, other times not.”
“Did she mention either of their names?”
“Olivia was your mother.”
“Olivia,” she repeated quietly as if trying to invoke her presence. Sadness and a sense of overwhelming loss flooded her, making it difficult to focus. But she showed none of it.
“Mother only ever referred to him by his surname—Duncan.” George continued with a shake of his head. “There were rambling declarations of love and jealousy, followed by anger and bitterness. A lot of it didn’t make sense.”
“Where did we live in America? Did she mention that?” It was obvious there was so much he wasn’t telling her.
“No, but she did mention London—things that happened in London.”
“So, couldn’t we have come from England instead of America?” she asked desperately. “If you remember flying here, it could have been from England?”
“Maybe,” he answered carelessly as if bored with the subject. “But I don’t think so. It’s good though, isn’t it?”
“What is?” she replied, trying to keep up with him.
“That we’re not brother and sister?”
“God, George—”
“It means we weren’t doing anything wrong all these years,” he offered eagerly.
Shaking her head, she tried again. “If you won’t let me read the journal and won’t tell me what I need to know, then I’ll have to confront Mother,” she responded angrily. “I have to know who I am…who my parents were, and I don’t have time to play mind games with you.”
“I’m trying to help you,” he whispered aggressively. “But you don’t seem very grateful. Mother always said you were ungrateful and she’s right.”
“So remind me, George—what is it I should be grateful for again?”
“She saved you,” he said defensively. “She said so in the journal and she brought you up as her daughter.”
“Saved me from what?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted sullenly. “She doesn’t say.”
“What does she say?”
“That she was risking everything to save you and keep you with her.”
“This is useless,” snapped Nathalie, getting more frustrated by the minute. “I need to read the journal for myself. All of it.”
“I can’t let you, Nathalie,” he said, standing. “You’d take it to the police and we’d all be finished. And nobody would understand. While she doesn’t know where it is w
e’re all safe, that’s the way it is. I’m protecting you, so don’t make me out to be the bad one here.”
“Don’t you want to know who you are?” she asked, trying to keep him talking. “Your name’s not George Silver. What if she’s not your mother either?”
“Jesus, Nat, I know I’m not as bright as you, but even I can see how much I look like Mother and how she treated me so much better than you.”
“Better! She abused us both and worse, let everyone else do it as well. She’s a monster.”
“I’m…I’ve got to go,” he finished. “It’s just better that you don’t know what was in the journal. Christine read it and…and then she died.”
“What does that mean,” she demanded, following him to the car park.
“She’s after you, Nat,” he mumbled, turning and pulling her toward him. “She’s scared of you, and I’m scared for you, but with the journal I can make her leave you alone. I’m going to tell her I’ve got it and that it will end up in the hands of the police if anything happens to you or me. I’ll try to protect you.”
Without another word, George stepped into his car and slamming the door, pulled onto the street.
* * *
It didn’t matter how hard she tried, Alex couldn’t get Nathalie out of her mind. She took her mother away for a week to the South Coast, and they walked and talked and visited old churches and plant nurseries, but the ghost of Nathalie was as constant as that of her sister.
“I just don’t understand it,” she divulged to her mother one evening after a quiet meal and plentiful wine. “I want to be with her so much, I want to talk to her and find out what was happening during those years…what she’s thinking now. I want her to tell me that she was beaten and forced to do what she did, so that I can find a reason to forgive her. But why do I even care?”
“Only you can answer that,” Norma replied quietly. “If you weren’t emotionally involved and this was a scenario a patient came to you with, what would you suggest?”
“Talking to her, I suppose…or leaving the country. God, Mum,” she confessed after a moment’s silence, “I’ve tried to be detached and think about it logically, but I’m all over the place. I want Chris’s death to be someone else’s fault because it stops me thinking that there was something I could have done. Then I revert to not having a clue how I feel.”
“You know, for a long time I blamed myself for Chris leaving home,” Norma stated in a small, flat voice. “And I still think I could have paid her more attention. I know she was devastated by her father’s death and me returning to work. I know she hated leaving the old neighborhood, yet I know that other kids go through much more without coming off the rails.”
“But how could we have missed those early changes?” Alex queried. “If we’d have acted early on, she might never have stayed with the Silvers.”
“Chris was always good at deception and sometimes quite willful.” Norma shrugged. “Because she looked so young and innocent, we forgot she was a teenager with teenage desires and a teenage need for acceptance. I believe that we didn’t see the early changes in Chris because basically she was happy with the freedom and acceptance she got in that house. By the time the decline was noticeable she’d moved right out of our lives and turned her back. All the fighting to win her back was a waste until it was what she wanted. If she had lived, maybe she’d have cleaned up and forged a life, but we can’t know that.”
“How could she clean up?” muttered Alex angrily. “She was kept drug dependent to serve the Silver family’s purposes.”
“Perhaps…although Michael, Nathalie and George didn’t take that route,” Norma argued. “Michael got away when he’d had enough, and to an extent so did Nathalie.”
“Oh God, Mum, don’t do this,” whispered Alex. “It sounds like you’re blaming Chris for her own death.”
“You mean instead of Charlotte, George, Nathalie or you and me?” she questioned.
The silence gave them time to absorb the thoughts they’d both finally verbalized.
“Perhaps Dieter was right,” Norma said eventually, “when he said during one of my sessions that maybe Chris died because of how she chose to live or because of an accident or because she had the type of personality that chose to run away and chose drugs. Maybe we weren’t the perfect family for Christine, but does that make us responsible? Because she was living with George and living that horrible lifestyle, does that make them responsible? I’ve thought a lot about that over the years. Now perhaps you need to as well.”
* * *
Nathalie waited fifteen minutes after George left, unsure what to do. And then she left too, assuming he was returning home.
Did George really expect her to just accept his decision about the journal? She had to know what it said, who she really was and what happened all those years ago. When she arrived at the house, though, the garage was open and George’s car wasn’t there. Mother’s hire car was also missing and the frustration threatened to boil over.
It was late and there was work tomorrow, but instead of going home Nathalie rang Bella.
“Come over,” Bella invited when Nat let her frustration pour down the telephone line. “I’ve got a drink with your name on it.”
The house seemed even gloomier tonight and something about it reminded her of the awful place she grew up. An unpleasant feeling of déjà vu settled over her, but Nathalie shrugged it off. It was irrelevant to everything that was happening in her life.
“So you still don’t know much more,” Bella commented when Nathalie relayed her conversation with George. “Except that your mother’s name was probably Olivia. Did he say how she died or when? Perhaps we could find a death certificate.”
“I have no choice but to confront Mother…Charlotte,” she corrected, momentarily confused. “I have the right to know what happened. Why I ended up with her.”
“What you need is the diary,” remarked Bella. “Then you’d have something more to base your questions on. But your broth…George obviously isn’t going to part with it easily.”
They talked at length with Bella assuring Nat that she’d put a rush on her Immigration inquiries, but now it was going to be more difficult because it was highly unlikely Charlotte Silver brought them into the country in her own name—if her name was even Silver.
At the end of the conversation, Nathalie was even more convinced that the only way she was going to find anything out was through George, the journal or by a direct confrontation with Charlotte, none of which offered a great deal of hope.
Having had a few drinks, Nat stayed the night. The spare room comprised a single bed with stale sheets that smelled unused, a single ancient bedside table and a very ugly old lamp. Homemaking definitely wasn’t Bella’s forte.
There were no nightmares that night, because not even the alcohol could put her to sleep. The revelation that Charlotte wasn’t her mother or George her brother had left her reeling. Everything that had been her life, bad as it was, was suddenly gone and with it came a thousand questions. If Charlotte had lied about her origins and George being her brother, what else was a lie? Was Abraham Duncan, whoever he was, really her father? And was he still alive? Presumably Charlotte hadn’t legally adopted her, or if she had, why flee? There were too many questions and too many possibilities.
At three in the morning she decided a hot drink might help and wandered to the kitchen.
Bella’s house was set out with the main bedroom opposite the lounge in the front of the house, and the other two bedrooms, a study, kitchen and dining room at the back. All the rooms were small with a door between the front and back areas. Nat shut this door, hoping she could avoid waking Bella.
With hot black tea in hand, Nat started mindlessly wandering the back rooms where the doors were open. The third bedroom was actually larger than the one she was in, but it was full to the brim with a double bed, two old wardrobes and a large chest of drawers. Piled on the drawers and on top of the wardrobes were boxes of all differen
t shapes.
The study was the only room that had been modernized, and although small, it contained a state-of-the-art computer, good quality desk and chair, a bookcase full of law books and law articles and a lockable filing cabinet. Down-lights had replaced the old open light shades and, incongruously, on the computer table sat a pile of soapy-style women’s magazines.
Lifting one to take back to bed with her, Nat accidentally bumped the pile, causing the lot to tumble and slide to the floor. Annoyed at her clumsiness and embarrassed that she might be found scrounging around in Bella’s personal areas, she hurriedly tried to gather them up, only to spread them even wider across the floor.
As she made her second attempt to pick them up a small slim-line address book slid from the pile. Picking it up and automatically replacing it on the computer table, she finished piling the magazines beside it—only then glancing at the intertwining initials RY embossed in gold on the black cover.
For a moment it didn’t register. Then, curious that they weren’t Bella’s initials, she picked it up and opened it to the first page. The words were written in red ink—Property of Renee Young. Please return by phoning 0402 671 379.
The words flashed in her brain. They meant something important. Suddenly she was ice-cold and unable to think. Was this another nightmare that she’d wake up from at any moment?
“What’s up?” The voice sounded sleepy and concerned, but that quickly changed when Nat turned around with the address book open in her hand.
“Jesus, Nat,” Bella gasped. “What the fuck have you done?”
The words wouldn’t come. How do you ask a friend what she’s doing with a murder victim’s missing address book? For what seemed an age, but was only seconds, Nat stared at the awkward-looking woman in the flannel pajamas.
“This is Renee Young’s,” she accused quietly, shaking her head in confusion.
The color drained from Bella’s face, but she was wide-awake now and the tension poured from her. “You need to pretend you never saw that,” she whispered, straightening her shoulders and taking a defensive stance. “You need to put that back, go back to bed and never mention it again.”