‘I’ll rub him down myself,’ said Sam.
Brodie gave her a lascivious look. ‘Sure you don’t want a hand?’ He chewed on a piece of straw. It dangled limp from the corner of his fat lips.
She slammed the stable door in his face, startling Pharaoh. Brodie mooched off. Sam hung up the hay net, stuffed it full of the horse’s favourite lucerne, and kept some hay aside to make a wisp. Her deft fingers twisted the leafy stalks into a long, thin rope. Then she gathered the top end into two loops and wound the remaining string back through, to form a solid pad of hay. ‘Ready, Pharaoh?’ The big chestnut lent his body towards hers. ‘One, two three …’ She began to strap his neck with long, regular slaps. The tempo increased as she found her rhythm. Pharaoh tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed, in time with Sam’s movements, and she slipped into a kind of meditative trance. The horse was not the only one to benefit from such an isometric workout. By the time she’d worked her way along his back and buttocks on both sides, girl and gelding were spent.
Sam sighed in satisfaction. Summer was just a week away, and life was good. Her eighteenth birthday and the endless exams of Year Twelve were behind her now. The future stretched invitingly ahead – a future where her mother wasn’t in charge of every aspect of her life. Since Dad had taken up his overseas posting a couple of years ago, it had been just her and Mum, rattling around in their big old house together, getting on each other’s nerves. A white Christmas and a month with her grandparents in France was just what the doctor ordered. Fingers crossed Dad could talk Mum into going back to Dubai with him. The prospect of coming home alone was too perfect to contemplate. She’d be able to spend each spare minute with Pharaoh, preparing for the summer dressage trials. And maybe, without Mum interfering all the time, she might even find herself a social life.
‘Samantha?’ Her mother peered over the stable door. Whatever was she doing here?
‘Just a minute.’ Sam hid the wisp so Pharaoh wouldn’t eat it, and went out into the stable yard. Her mother’s always-pale complexion had turned ivory, and her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. But that was impossible. She never cried. ‘What’s wrong, Faith?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It’s not natural.’
Sam was ready with a smart remark, then thought better of it. Her mother seemed genuinely distressed.
‘Get cleaned up, Samantha. We need to talk.’
‘You can’t talk to me when I’m dirty?’
Faith heaved a great sigh. ‘Don’t be difficult, darling. Get changed and meet me at the car. We’ll do lunch.’
Sam was starting to worry. She was already halfway through her mushroom risotto, and Faith had barely said a word. Her salad lay untouched. Sam reached across and stole a cherry tomato and an olive from her mother’s plate.
‘Mum? You said we needed to talk.’
Faith gave a tremulous sigh and met Sam’s gaze. ‘We do. There’s no easy way to say it, so I’ll just say it.’ A dramatic pause. ‘You mustn’t hate me, Samantha.’ What on earth was she on about? ‘Promise me?’
Sam wanted to argue the absurdity of making a blind promise, but her mother’s expression silenced her. ‘I promise.’
Faith’s clasped hands trembled, just a touch, where they lay on the white linen table-cloth. ‘Samantha.’ A deep breath. ‘Your father and I adopted you as a newborn.’ Odd shivers fluttered like moths across Faith’s shapely neck. ‘We couldn’t have children, you see.’ Her eyes lost focus for a moment and she corrected herself. ‘I couldn’t have children.’
It felt like all the blood had drained from her head and formed a sickening pool in her stomach. Sam’s chest grew tight. Why was her mother saying this? Was she sick? Delusional? Sam had known for a long time that something was wrong. She’d found pills in Faith’s upstairs bathroom and looked them up on the internet. Antidepressants. But this? It didn’t make any sense. ‘I’m sorry for calling you Faith,’ Sam said, struggling to understand her mother’s words. ‘Instead of Mum. Some girls at school were doing it with their mothers. I suppose they thought it sounded more grown-up, or something.’ Sam gave an encouraging smile. ‘Of course you’re my mother.’
A brief ripple of relief flitted across Faith’s face. She reached for Sam’s hand with icy fingers. ‘Thank you, darling.’ Her voice was taut. ‘You’re right, I am your mother, in every real sense of the word. Your birth certificate says so, doesn’t it?’ She paused, and tears tracked down her pale cheeks. ‘But I didn’t actually give birth to you, I’m afraid.’
Sam withdrew her hand and placed it in her lap. She examined her mother’s face. There was no trace of artifice. She tried the adoption hypothesis on for size, dared to examine it. Plenty of times as a teenager, she’d imagined she didn’t belong to her parents, had even hoped that she didn’t. But that was just wishful thinking. Wasn’t it?
‘What do you mean? Where did I come from, then?’
Faith took a very deep breath. ‘Your birth mother lived in a small country town in the north-east of the state. Currajong. She was unmarried, Samantha, and of little means. She relinquished you as an act of self-sacrifice, to provide you with a better life.’ Faith fanned herself with the menu. Beads of sweat appeared on her flawless forehead. ‘She was just a girl … only seventeen.’
Faith fixed Sam with cool green eyes. Sam had always envied her mother those startling green eyes. Her own were the same dark brown as her father’s. Tea arrived, and Faith poured herself a cup, her hand steadier now. ‘This is extraordinarily difficult, darling. You have no idea.’
Sam gasped for air. Faith had always skirted around the story of Sam’s birth, protesting that it was something she didn’t like to talk about. ‘I can’t explain it. Quite an out-of-body experience. It felt like somebody else was giving birth to you.’ There was a lack of physical resemblance between them. It had always bothered Sam, but she’d put it down to taking after her father in a big way. Faith was petite and fair. Sam was tall and leggy, with the slender strength of a natural athlete. Her sable hair always threatened to escape its tie and fall in unruly waves around her shoulders – quite a contrast to Faith’s neat blond bob. These differences seemed suddenly imbued with a dreadful significance. Sam fought against a rising suspicion that her mother was telling the truth. ‘I had a right to know all this a long time ago,’ she said in a faltering voice.
‘Please, Samantha. I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’
The ground shifted beneath Sam’s feet and a million questions raced through her brain. ‘I need to know everything,’ she said. ‘Times, dates, places … people. I can’t promise I won’t be angry. I deserve to be, if I want to be.’ Sam heard the high panic in her voice. ‘Who am I?’
Faith looked around uneasily. ‘Darling, you’re making a scene.’
So that’s why Faith had brought her to this popular restaurant for lunch. There’d be less chance of any histrionics. It was like a public dumping. ‘I want to go home,’ said Sam. ‘To talk. But first, answer me this. Why are telling me now? Why is it suddenly the right time?’
Faith looked unsure again. She clung to the edge of the table, like it might somehow anchor her to safety. Several times she opened her mouth to speak, then wavered. ‘There’s more,’ she said at last. ‘You are … you’re a twin.’
A twin? Now this was plainly ridiculous. They were back in the territory of delusion. Sam wondered if she was asleep, and began to run through the techniques she used to wake herself from conscious dreaming.
‘Apparently,’ continued Faith, ‘your sister is very ill and wants to see you. Her mother – your birth mother – contacted me.’ She spoke too fast, as if the words were loathsome, or poisonous, and she wanted to spit them out before they killed her. ‘You don’t have to do this, Samantha. We don’t even know these people.’
The sharp sting of impending tears stabbed Sam’s eyes, her nose, her throat. It was like she was seeing her mother for the first time. ‘And whose fault is that?’ She grabbed her bag from under the table and ran out the door.