Lou’s parents hadn’t said a word to her since they had arrived home. Her dad’s jaw had been clenched as the doctors at the hospital explained that she’d been flown off Rottnest by the emergency helicopter with alcohol poisoning after being found half-naked in the bush. Her mum had just stared at her as if she didn’t even know her. When they got home, her dad had looked at her with shame burning off him. Lou had said she was sorry, over and over, told them that she couldn’t feel any worse, but he’d shaken his head, tears in his eyes, and walked away. Lou’s throat felt raw from where the emergency staff had intubated her to make sure she could breathe, her muscles ached and she still felt nauseous.
Lou had lain on her bed for what felt like hours, wishing her mum would come and knock softly on her door, maybe bring her some sweet tea and hot buttery toast as she used to when Lou was sick, but no one came. Eventually, she had stopped crying, her eyes stinging, her head thumping. Now, she realised she was hungry. She lay curled on her side under the blankets, until she heard the TV in the living room go off. After a few more minutes, she slowly opened the door of her room and stepped into the hallway, hoping her parents would now be in bed so she could get some food. But no: they were talking quietly in the kitchen. She heard the grating noise of someone unscrewing the biscuit jar and the bubbling of the kettle; she crept forward, hoping the floorboards wouldn’t creak, and strained to hear their conversation, which had a well-worn air of words often repeated.
‘I thought she was getting better, and now this happens!’ said her mum. ‘What have we done wrong?’
‘We haven’t done anything wrong, we’ve done our best. It’s not our fault, love.’
‘We should have told her! Maybe if we’d told her from the start … Ross said, you know, that kids pick up when something’s not right. The research says it’s better to tell them early, but —’
‘There’s no point thinking like that now, though. We didn’t. We did what we thought was right.’
A teaspoon clinked against a cup. ‘We did what was right for us, not for Louise. Were we really thinking of her? I wasn’t! I was thinking of myself, delaying the day when she’d look at me and know the truth! Jesus, how can we tell her now? I can’t help but think sometimes that we should never have done this, any of it! We’ve been thinking of ourselves from the very beginning —’
‘Don’t be stupid. Then we wouldn’t have Louise.’
‘But what have we done to her? She’s a mess.’ Her mum’s sobs were muffled; Lou imagined her dad holding her to his chest.
‘Stop it, love, it’ll be OK. It’s not the end of the world. She’s not the first kid to get drunk.’
‘Drunk?’ Her mum’s voice was loud again. ‘This wasn’t just being drunk! She was airlifted by an emergency helicopter and ended up in intensive care —’
‘It was just a precaution.’
‘I don’t care! No one else’s daughter was on the bloody news as an example of what’s so terrible about teenagers! No one else’s child ended up gravely ill in hospital – she could have been raped, for all we know! Or choked on her own vomit, died from hypothermia. Don’t you see?’ Her mum paused for breath, then spoke more quietly. ‘There’s something wrong with her, with us, with our family … I thought she was getting better, I don’t know what else I can do!’
‘We’ll tell her, then.’
‘But what if she rejects us – me? I don’t want to lose her.’
‘We won’t, darling.’
‘But she’s so fragile, I don’t know if she can cope with it.’
‘You heard what Ross said, it might help, in the long run.’
‘I know …’
Lou’s heart was racing, the familiar buzz of fear in her ears. She didn’t want to hear any more. She went back into her room and closed the door. She wanted to scream, to kick the door and punch the walls and bang her head on the floor and gouge at her eyes. What the hell was going on? She’d had enough of everyone: her parents for all the lying and hypocrisy; Theo for not looking after her; her so-called friends, who hadn’t bothered to interrupt their holiday to make sure she was OK. Her parents had just confirmed exactly what she’d always thought: that she was a big disappointment to them, a mess. Lou felt the pressure building inside her, but knew she had to hold it together. If she fell to pieces, her parents would drag her back to hospital and have her locked up.
But she couldn’t go on like this. They were keeping something from her. She had always known that there was something wrong with her family; it was a feeling that she’d been pushing away for as long as she could remember. Now, she needed to find the answer.
Lou didn’t have to wait long for her opportunity. The following weekend, on Saturday, her parents were getting ready to take her grandparents out for lunch. Lou had been surprised that it had only taken a day or two for her parents to thaw and start talking to her again. She suspected they’d called Ross for advice, or were feeling guilty for hiding this secret from her. The secret that she needed to uncover.
‘You sure you don’t want to come, Lou?’ Her dad put a coffee capsule in the machine, then reached up into a cupboard to hunt for his travel mug. ‘We’ll go up to the Boat Harbour, have lunch on the water there.’
Lou finished her mouthful of cereal and dropped her spoon into the bowl. ‘No thanks.’
He put his travel mug under the spout and switched on the machine. ‘It’ll be fun ….’ He smiled, raising his eyebrows.
Lou laughed. ‘You wish you could stay here too?’
He sighed. ‘Oh yes. But then your mother would kill me.’
‘I’m going to sort out all my school things, see what I can throw out now I’ve finished.’
‘Ah, so you’d rather tidy than come for a lovely lunch with your family. That says a lot.’ He winked.
Her mum came into the kitchen. ‘All right, time to go.’ She walked over to Lou and kissed the top of her head. ‘You’re sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Yes, Mum!’
Lou saw the hesitation in her mother’s eyes, the battle between trusting her and the fear that she shouldn’t, before she smiled and nodded. ‘OK. We won’t be more than a couple of hours.’
Her dad took the car keys from the table. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Have fun!’ Lou waggled her fingers. Her dad rolled his eyes, and then they left.
Lou listened to the car drive off. She waited another five minutes to make sure they weren’t going to come back for something they’d forgotten, then she went to the front door and put on the chain. If they came back to find it locked, she’d say that she’d heard a noise outside and been frightened. She took a deep breath. Did she really want to go looking? Part of her didn’t: what if she found something terrible? Then she could never go back. But it was already too late; there had always been a secret floating in the whispers around her. It was already between them all, and inside her, and she needed to know the truth. It was something to do with that photograph of her as a baby with her aunt.
Lou hesitated at the door to her parents’ room, then gently pushed it open. The bed was unmade, and her mother’s clothes were strewn across the rumpled blankets. Two pairs of her mum’s shoes were discarded on the floor; Lou stepped around them, careful not to move anything. She picked up the novel on her mum’s bedside table and flicked through it, but there was no photo tucked inside, just dog-eared pages. She kneeled down and looked under the bed; there was a single thong of her father’s, and a couple of socks, but nothing else. She stood up again, then walked to the built-in wardrobe and slid open the mirrored doors. The rails were stuffed with her dad’s business shirts and her mum’s dresses. There was a set of shelves at one end of the wardrobe. The lower shelves were filled with shoes and bags; the upper shelves were where her parents used to hide the birthday and Christmas presents. Lou peered up at the top shelf. She could see the brim of a straw hat, and the shimmering grey of a silk scarf. She stretched up and felt around the edge of the shelf with her hand. There, under the soft fabric, she felt something angular.
Her heart began to race. She dropped her arm and stood for a moment, clenching and unclenching her fists. It could be anything, she told herself, another shoebox. She walked over to the armchair in the corner of the room, noted its position exactly, then dragged it across to the wardrobe. She stepped up onto it, holding her hands out for balance as her feet sank into the soft seat cushion. Looking at the shelf, she could now see that the scarf was draped over the edge of something slightly larger than a shoebox. She slid the scarf aside. On the shelf was a box covered in turquoise fabric, its corners a little frayed and grubby. She’d never seen it before. On one end of the box was a small silver frame with a cardboard label. The black writing had faded, but it was still easily legible: Louise. She lifted the box out and sat down on the chair; then, before she could change her mind, she opened the lid.
The photograph was on top, of her aunt holding the baby. It was possible that it was Harry, Charlotte or Violet, and not herself at all; Lou had noted how similar the four of them looked in their baby photos. But she was certain that her first instinct was right and the baby was her. Anyway, the box had her name on it.
There were more pictures: one of Lou with her aunt and mum together, photos from a Christmas at her grandparents’ place when she was a tiny baby – probably her first Christmas. Nothing unusual. She picked up some dark strips of photographic paper with white pixelated images: ultrasound scans. She smiled. In some she had no idea what she was looking at, but in others she could see the outline of a face – it must be her own – in the womb. She’d never seen these before; they were amazing.
She put the scans down on the floor and kept looking through the box. Below the photos was a clear A4 plastic sleeve stuffed with papers. Lou slipped her hand inside and drew out the bundle. There was a birth certificate, folded into thirds. She’d seen her birth certificate plenty of times, she was sure of it. She had needed it when she applied for a passport for a school trip to New Zealand. She unfolded it anyway, then held her breath as she realised there were two, folded together. With trembling hands, she held the documents side by side. Both had her name on them. On one, in the spaces for the parents’ names, was written ‘Nadia Jane Boyd’ and ‘Edward George Boyd’. On the other, the names were ‘Zoe Mary McAllister’ and ‘Lachlan William McAllister’.
Lou stared in disbelief. How could she have two different birth certificates? And what were her aunt and uncle’s names doing on them? Lou rummaged frantically through the papers, no longer caring about keeping them in order as the whole messy truth was finally displayed before her. One letter from the plastic sleeve was headed ‘The Family Court of Western Australia’. Lou held it in both hands to try to keep it still as she read; then she let it fall.
She finally understood.