by Nicole Trope
‘We have had many calls but none of them have led to the location of any of the child’s relatives,’ he told the press. ‘As a father myself I cannot imagine that this little girl’s parents are not concerned about her welfare. We would really like the family to come forward and we are prepared to offer all the help they need.’
* * *
Sydney Morning Herald
20 February 1987
Toddler to Be Given Permanent Foster Family
Asquith
A toddler found wandering on the Pacific Highway in Asquith in January will now be moved to a more permanent care situation. She will reside with a foster family, who will be able to keep her long-term. Police have once again appealed for the family of the child to come forward.
The final article is from a year later. Molly cannot help her tears as she realises that this last article means that all hope of finding her family, her real family, has been lost.
Sydney Morning Herald
21 February 1988
Abandoned Toddler Adopted
A toddler who was found wandering along the busy Pacific Highway in Asquith last year has been adopted by her foster family. The family declined to be identified but did say, ‘We are thrilled to be able to provide a permanent home for her. She is our child in every sense of the word and we look forward to watching her grow up.’
No one has ever come forward to claim the child.
Molly goes to her computer and tries to find more articles about her, but there is nothing else. ‘Where do I come from?’ she asks Foggy, who answers with his lopsided stare. ‘Nowhere,’ she says sadly, ‘I’m from nowhere.’
She looks up sites that help adopted children find their parents and parents find their children, but before she even begins to read about the process, she realises that her family wouldn’t be on the site. They didn’t want her then and they certainly wouldn’t want her now.
She shuts down the laptop and opts for a long shower. She has no idea what to do with the information she now has. Meredith from the blog told her that her sister died. It is possible that her feeling of familiarity with the story is simply because she went through a similar situation, not because that was her situation.
She wishes she could just leave the information alone now. What good would it do to try and find a mother and father who abandoned her? And if she is remembering her past when she thinks about the cupboard, how terrible were the people she lived with? Does she want to find them, to know them?
She steps out of the shower and studies herself in the mirror. Her breasts seem to be getting bigger every day, and her normally flat stomach now strains at the waistband of all her trousers. She rests her hand where she thinks her baby lies. She needs to know where she came from and who she is, if only for the child she is carrying. ‘I will find the truth,’ she promises the child inside her. ‘I will find it for you.’
Twenty-Four
22 January 1987
Margaret
* * *
The vodka only lasts three days and when she wakes up, already in withdrawal, Margaret realises that he has probably not come back to the house in that time. She knows he would have placed the two bottles under her bed before he left, making sure that she drowned the memory of whatever he’d done. It was easy enough to do; Margaret has been drowning memories for years. Stay gone, she thinks. Come back, she thinks. I’m thirsty.
Now she knows why Alice is the way she is. She didn’t know why, had seen what was going on, had not seen. ‘Turning a blind eye,’ is what they call it. Margaret isn’t that kind of person. Is she that kind of person? She is sure that once upon a time she wasn’t that kind of person. She closes her eyes, trying to erase the terrible images of what was being done to her daughter, to her child, her baby. He will keep doing it, she knows he will. He has all the power and she has none. He is aware that she cannot protect herself from him and so is unlikely to be able to protect her child.
She needs to do something, really needs to do something, but what can she do? Who can she tell? Who would help her? She is utterly alone. She tries to imagine going to the police but she can only conjure up judgement from those she would confess her failures to.
She drags herself out of bed to the kitchen, her empty stomach grumbling for something.
Alice is alone in front of the television with the blinds closed. The room is a suffocating oven. She is sprawled on the couch in a singlet and shorts, eating cereal out of a box with her hands. Margaret studies her chest where tiny breasts are beginning to bud. She is a child with the body of a child. Her child. Who goes to a child for such a thing? Was that his plan all along? Did he worm his way into her home in order to get at her daughter, and how could she not have known what he was doing? She is a failure. The worst kind of mother.
She believes grief and despair blinded her. She tells herself that this is the truth even though somewhere inside herself she admits that she has sacrificed her child to save herself from the reality of having to handle her life. She has betrayed her little girl.
She immediately longs for a drink, for something to wipe that truth away, to purge it from her brain.
The clock on the wall tells her it’s after five. ‘Where’s Vernon?’ croaks Margaret.
‘He’s been gone for three days,’ says Alice, her voice stilted and dry. Margaret can feel Alice building a wall between herself and the rest of the world. She doesn’t blame her. She wishes she could throw up some bricks to protect herself, wishes she wasn’t so weak.
‘You were sleeping. You’ve been sleeping and sleeping,’ her daughter says.
‘Where’s Lilly?’
‘She’s gone too,’ replies Alice. Her eyes are fixed on the television with its lurid colours and flashing lights.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Just that,’ Alice shrugs turning around to look at her mother, ‘she’s gone. Why don’t you go back to sleep?’
Margaret and her daughter lock eyes and Margaret shudders at the coldness there. She can’t blame her really. There’s only so much betrayal a person can take.
She stumbles back to her room and takes a comforting sip of the last mouthful left at the bottom of the bottle. There’s something she should be thinking about but she can’t quite remember. She’ll rest and then she’ll know what it is. She’s sure of it. She was hungry but now she’s not. She was going to get up but here she is in bed again. What is it? What is it? She really needs another drink. She closes her eyes and wishes for a drink and then she keeps them closed.
* * *
She wakes with Vernon shaking her violently. Her first thought is to smile because he will have a bottle for her but he doesn’t smile back.
‘Where the fuck is Lilly, you silly cow?’ he spits.
‘Lilly?’ she murmurs. ‘I don’t know, she’s asleep or outside. She must be with Alice.’
‘That silly little bitch won’t tell me anything. She’s my kid and I want to know where she is.’ He drags her out of bed and shoves her into the shower. ‘Get yourself together for fuck’s sake.’ He turns on the cold water, soaking her, stinging the places that are bruised and cut, only just starting to heal. When she tries to climb out, he shoves her back in. He stands and watches her.
‘Just pathetic,’ he says, his arms folded. Margaret doesn’t tell him that he should be the one to wash. He stinks as though he’s been living outside for the last three days. There is beer on his breath. It mingles with the smell of cigarettes and the stench of his body odour, and Margaret thinks she catches a whiff of something else as he manhandles her out of the shower and stands, feet apart, arms folded over his fat belly, watching her as she gets dressed into dry yet dirty clothes.
Perfume, she thinks, trying to place the cheap chemical smell. He’s been with another woman. Margaret feels her heart skip a beat. Maybe he’ll leave now, go and live with some other woman, but then she looks at him and she knows, she knows he’s not going anywhere. No one else would tolerate being tr
eated this way, and anyway he’s not really interested in women. She knows that now. Her stomach twists. It’s sickening, sickening.
She is shaking. ‘I need a drink.’
‘Not until you find Lilly. Get Alice to tell you, she won’t tell me.’
She looks up at him, meets his gaze for only a moment as the thought of defiance rises inside her. He takes a deep breath, his chest puffing out, slowly clenching his fists. She doesn’t think she will survive another beating, and that would be fine were it not for the daughter she would leave behind at his mercy. She is sober now, sober enough to feel everything. She drops her gaze to her feet and, shoulders rounded, she shuffles off to find Alice.
Alice is in the kitchen, one side of her face puffing up, the eye swelling closed.
‘Alice,’ begs Margaret, ‘you have to tell us where Lilly is. What happened to her?’
Her daughter is holding an ancient bag of frozen peas to her eye and Margaret wonders where she learned to do that. Then she remembers her daughter at five, getting hit in the face with a ball at school. Adam left work to pick her up because Margaret was feeling tired and needed to rest. When she woke up, she found the two of them in the kitchen, Adam gently patting a bag of peas on his daughter’s eye. ‘See,’ he said, ‘this will take the pain away and help stop the swelling.’
Margaret is cut by an anguish so deep she cannot stay standing. She slumps into a chair at the thought of not just everything she has lost but everything Alice has lost too.
‘Please, tell us where she is,’ she pleads.
‘Dead,’ whispers Alice harshly. ‘Dead, dead, dead,’ she repeats, the words getting softer and softer, and even though she is holding the bag of peas to her eye, Margaret watches tears trace their way down her cheek.
Vernon lifts his hand and swipes it across her face, grunting as he moves with the effort of the smack. Her little body flies off the chair she was sitting in, across the room, crumpling in a corner. ‘You’ll kill her!’ screams Margaret.
‘She doesn’t deserve to live, neither of you two do. What kind of a stupid cow of a woman can’t keep an eye on a two-year-old?’
‘Have you looked everywhere?’
‘I’ve been home for nearly a day, of course I’ve looked everywhere. Lilly isn’t here. Where is she, you little bitch? What have you done with my kid?’ He runs at Alice, slumped in the corner, and slams into her with a strong kick. Alice’s body moves a fraction but not much, as if she has given up. Margaret feels the pain of the kick ripple through her own body, feels the physical pull of her child. She tries to stand up from the chair, meaning to grab him away, meaning to tend to her daughter.
‘Sit the fuck down,’ he roars and Margaret’s bruised body obeys. It cannot stand another beating.
‘We should call the police,’ says Margaret, desperation making her throw the suggestion at him. ‘They need to help us find her.’
‘The police? Are you fucking kidding me?’ he asks. ‘What are the police going to say about all this then?’ He sweeps his arm around the squalid kitchen and Margaret follows where he points. The rubbish bin is overflowing onto the floor. Crusted pots and pans fill the sink and a putrid smell tells her a rat is dead somewhere. ‘We could clean up,’ she says lamely, ‘tell them we woke up this morning and she was gone. Maybe someone took her or she wandered off – I heard about that on the news… about a toddler wandering off… I think.’ Her whole body is shaking, fear and withdrawal combining to produce a sickening, suffocating nausea.
‘And what do we do about that, eh?’ he says, inclining his head towards the little ball of Alice.
‘You shouldn’t have hit her. It’s not her fault. She’s only ten,’ she whispers, wanting him to hear the words but terrified of what will happen if he does. Margaret bites down on her lip, opening the cut that has only just healed. She is only ten. What kind of a life is this for a ten-year-old? She believed that she had suffered because her parents were absent, but how much better off would Alice be if she and Vernon were gone? How have I let this happen? she thinks for the tenth, twentieth, hundredth time. She has never found the answer to that question and today it doesn’t materialise either.
‘You shouldn’t be allowed to have children, Maggie, you’re a useless piece of shit,’ he sneers. The same thing her mother said to her, more or less. They are both right. She should never have had children. ‘I’m leaving now. Sort this shit out yourself and find my fucking kid or I’ll come back here and kill you both.’ He stomps out of the house, unconcerned with Alice, and Margaret is pretty sure he doesn’t really care where Lilly is either. She feels a sharp pang when she thinks of the baby even though she hasn’t had much to do with her in a long time. Alice has been her mum, really. Margaret crouches down next to her daughter. ‘Alice, love, are you all right?’
Alice moans and Margaret summons all her strength to lift her up and take her back to her bed. She lies down next to her, sucks desperately at the bottle for the last drops and then they sleep together. Margaret finds she cannot recall Lilly’s face. It’s only been a few days but she has no idea what the baby looks like.
* * *
A day passes, heat soaks the house, it is night and then the sun burns through the curtains again.
Margaret worries that Alice won’t wake up. Alice sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and Margaret tries to stay awake to watch over her. She cleans her face, wiping away the blood. Her body glows with bruises. The bottle underneath the bed calls but is empty, no matter how many times she checks it. She shakes and sweats but she keeps wiping down her little girl.
Finally, the child wakes. Her eye is glued closed and she rolls off the bed like a frail old woman, clutching at her insides.
‘I should take you to a doctor,’ says Margaret.
‘No, Mum,’ replies Alice, her voice low and creaky.
Maybe Alice is worried that questions will be asked about Lilly. What has Alice done? Has she hurt Lilly? Margaret wouldn’t have thought it was possible for Alice to hurt her little sister. She loves her so much but then she remembers Alice’s dead eyes and the spitting anger when she talks. She thinks about what he does to her, wipes the thought quickly away, wishing he would return with something for her to drink. She hates herself for wanting him back, for needing the alcohol so much.
‘Where is Lilly, Alice?’ she asks.
But her daughter says nothing. She shakes her head and takes herself off to the bathroom.
She’s fine, Margaret reasons with herself. ‘I’ll make us some dinner,’ she calls, ‘and we can talk.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ replies Alice, which Margaret knows is a lie. She can’t have had a proper meal in days. She hears the shower start. In the kitchen, with trembling hands, she throws together what’s left in the fridge with a tomato sauce and makes a passable pasta dish. She nearly drops it when she takes it out of the oven because her hands are shaking so much.
‘Alice, dinner!’ she shouts, as though it’s something she does every night. As if she is a homemaker. She is surprised when Alice appears at the table, still clutching at her ribs with bruises yellowing on her face.
The house is quiet without the chatter of the baby. Margaret remembers screaming at Alice, ‘Shut that child up for God’s sake.’
I shouldn’t have said that, she thinks. Is that what Alice did? Did she shut Lilly up for good? Did Alice get rid of Lilly? She closes her eyes at the thought. Her ten-year-old daughter couldn’t have harmed her little sister, could she? That wouldn’t be possible, would it? But of course, anything is possible, Margaret knows that now. The very worst things in the world are possible whether you believe them to be or not.
‘Where’s Lilly?’ she whispers as she watches her daughter painfully spoon small amounts of pasta into her mouth.
‘I don’t know, Mum,’ says Alice, ‘where’s Lilly?’
Margaret shakes her head. She cannot eat, cannot even hold the fork she is shaking so much. She wishes for Vernon to return, bearing another apo
logy bottle of vodka.
‘I may just go lie down,’ she mutters to Alice.
‘Yes,’ agrees Alice, wincing as she chews, ‘that’s exactly what you should do.’
Twenty-Five
Now
Alice
* * *
I rearrange my pantry while I wait for Jack to call back. Even after all these years I still take comfort in the neat rows of tinned goods and different kinds of pasta. The bottom shelf contains cleaning products and I line everything up, noting things I’m running low on. My pantry is overstocked and overfilled so my boys never have to wonder if there is anything to eat. Finally, half an hour before I am due to pick up the boys, he calls back.
‘I’ve only got about five minutes until the next patient so I can’t speak for long but I’m glad you called. Is everything okay? Are you… okay?’ I can hear him rearranging things on his desk, can hear the click-clack of the balls of the Newton’s cradle as he shifts it from one side of the desk to the other.
‘I’ve been getting some strange emails and I’m starting to worry about them.’
‘Strange emails? From who?’
‘I don’t know and that’s exactly why I’m starting to worry about them.’ I should tell him about the frog, but the words stick in my throat.
‘What do they say?’
‘They have all mostly said the same thing: “I know what you did.”’
‘I know what you did? What could that mean? Perhaps it’s a scam email… you know, one of those where they ask for money or gift cards or something. Have they asked for money?’