When Rebecca walked into the kitchen after her last piano lesson on Monday afternoon, she found Hugh chopping up vegetables as onion sautéed in the frying pan. Her stomach rumbled at the alluring aroma, but she didn’t dare to assume she was included in his dinner plans.
‘Good evening.’ She cringed at her overly polite tone, her heart halting as she waited to see if he would deem her worthy of a reply. If so, it would be the first time he’d spoken to her since walking out on Friday morning, reeling from the shock of her revelation. He’d been sleeping in the spare room ever since and although she’d tried to talk to him a number of times, he’d shut her down, making it clear she was alone in this situation. In all their years of marriage they’d never gone this long without talking to each other—until this week the record would have been a couple of hours max, and even that had been rare.
How she’d managed to get through three hours of lessons, she had no idea. She’d thought it might help to have something to focus on other than the whole Josie-adoption-Hugh-angry-Robbie-missing situation, but she’d been kidding herself believing she could think about anything else.
‘There’s a letter for you on the table.’
Rebecca almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of Hugh’s voice.
‘Thank you,’ she said, recovering only a moment because when her eyes came to rest on the plain white envelope with the government symbol in the corner, her heart shot into her throat again. Even without opening it, she could tell what it was and she stared at it long and hard.
‘You going to open it?’ he asked eventually, his tone making it clear he’d already guessed what it was as well.
Rebecca swallowed, then slid her finger beneath the seal and fumbled to remove the letter. Her heart flopped about in her chest as she read:
Dear Mrs MacRitchie
Thank you for your enquiry. The departmental records have been searched and …
Her gaze skipped over the preamble to the important bits.
Name: Josephine Maria Van Dijk
Born: Swan District Hospital, Western Australia
Date of birth: 9 April 1983
The rest of the information blurred on the page as her eyes grew hot and the world began to spin. She steadied herself on the kitchen table and then sank into a chair. She’d known in her heart Josie was her daughter but seeing the truth written in black print was still a bloody shock and she was helpless to stop the flood of tears down her cheeks.
Over the last few days crying had become as much a part of her day as eating, sleeping and breathing. After leaving her parents’ place she’d driven aimlessly for a while, not knowing who to turn to in lieu of Hugh and her thoughts had found their way to the father of her baby. To Robbie. She’d felt so affronted that all these years she’d thought she had a boy that she suddenly had an irrepressible urge to let him know the truth.
But she’d gotten much more than she bargained for. Not only had Robbie’s ex-wife told her he was missing but Clara had also delivered some unsavoury truths about Rebecca’s parents. Now, in addition to her thoughts about Josie, she couldn’t get Robbie out of her head. She’d been so consumed she’d almost missed her dialysis session on Friday afternoon.
What if questions haunted her day and night.
What if her parents hadn’t intervened? Hadn’t taken it upon themselves to play God? Would she and Robbie have stayed together? Raised their baby together? Her heart squeezed at the thought. As confronting as it had been to hear about the threat her father had made to Robbie, it made more sense than anything in her life ever had before.
Robbie hadn’t abandoned her of his own accord.
And this realisation had brought all her hurt and pain from that time back to the forefront. It broke her heart to think he’d been hurt as much as she had and never truly recovered—at least she’d managed to have a relatively happy life with Hugh and Paige. Robbie hadn’t achieved anything like that and now he was missing. Possibly dead. And, from the way Clara had spoken, she didn’t care and neither did the police.
A lump formed in her throat again and another barrage of tears followed. Her parents had a lot to answer for. Her mother had tried to call her numerous times over the weekend, but it was a good thing neither of them had shown up at the house, because the way she felt right now she thought she might be capable of physically harming her dad.
‘Here.’ Hugh’s shadow fell over her as he pulled out a chair and sat, offering her a box of tissues as he did so.
‘Thanks.’ Rebecca tried to pull herself together, not meeting his gaze as she snatched one up—she’d never been self-conscious about crying in front of her husband before but now she worried he’d think her tears were an attempt to manipulate him into sympathy.
‘Can I see?’
She pushed The Letter towards him.
Moments later, she heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘So, you did have a girl, after all?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, trying to halt her tears and not mentioning that if he’d bothered to listen to her over the weekend, he’d have known this. ‘Mum and Dad lied.’
And then, because he was still sitting there and she was desperate to talk to someone, she spilled the rest as well. There didn’t seem any point in hiding anything now. She told him about her parents’ feeble excuse for their lie and how she’d gone to look for Robbie. She relayed her conversation with Clara, her father’s inexcusable manipulations to keep Robbie out of her life, the news that Robbie had disappeared, and watched his eyebrows creep closer and closer to his receding hairline as she did so.
‘How old was Robbie when all this happened?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘I don’t think he’d have been charged. You might have been underage but you were both at school. The most he’d have got was a rap on the knuckles.’
Even if this was the truth, it wasn’t any consolation. If anything, it only made her father’s actions—his abuse of power—worse.
Hugh pushed back from the table and stood. Was that it? End of conversation? She couldn’t bear it if he continued to push her away. She’d always had Hugh’s unwavering support, his love and his friendship. And now that was on the line. Paige might not have noticed yet, but it wouldn’t take long before she picked up on the disharmony between her parents. Not only would the rift break Paige’s heart, but she’d demand answers and wouldn’t rest until she got to the core of the crisis.
‘I’m sorry, Hugh.’ She grabbed onto his arm. ‘I don’t want this to come between us.’
His whole body stiffened, she felt his muscles clenching beneath her touch. ‘Let me get us dinner and then we’ll talk.’
Dinner? Rebecca wasn’t hungry anymore and she didn’t want to give him time to change his mind, but she also couldn’t refuse the closest thing to an olive branch that had been offered so far. ‘Okay. What can I do to help?’
He stepped away so her hand fell off his arm. ‘Nothing. I’ve got this.’
The next half an hour was excruciating. She took a shower, fed the dog and then sat in her bedroom and read the letter over and over.
In addition to the other information, such as Josie’s birth weight and length, it had the names of her adoptive parents. When every word and line was imprinted in her head, Rebecca opened her laptop and searched Josie’s maiden name. Whereas the earlier searches for her married name had come up almost blank, pages and pages appeared for Josephine Van Dijk, most of them from theatres in London where she’d appeared in a number of famous musicals.
‘Oh my.’ Her nerve endings tingled as she clicked on the first image and came face to face with the woman Paige had become friends with. If there’d ever been any doubt that this was her Josephine, there could be none now. She was so beautiful and the knowledge that she’d been a performer like her dad, that a love of music was something the three of them shared, brought tears to her eyes.
Among the websites, she also found an obituary from two years ago for a Natalie Van Dijk and a Facebook page with a number of holiday photos of her widower, Maarten Van Dijk. She wasn’t sure what to think of the news that Josie’s adoptive mother was no longer alive.
Would that make Josie more or less open to meeting her?
The final line of the letter read: As of today, Josephine Van Dijk has not requested to be put on the Contact Register.
Rebecca’s heart sank. Surely if Josie had any desire to find her birth parents, that would have been the first step.
Finally, Hugh called her to dinner and Rebecca sat at the table, feeling more like she was eating with a stranger than the man she’d spent almost every day with for the past thirty years.
‘This is delicious,’ she said, taking a mouthful, despite still having next to no appetite.
‘Thanks,’ he grunted and then shoved a forkful of pasta into his mouth.
Silence followed a few long moments until Rebecca could handle it no longer. ‘Is this going to break us?’
He took his time finishing his next mouthful, laid his fork down in the bowl and let out a long, slow breath.
‘I don’t know, Rebecca. I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact you’ve lived with a massive secret all our married life. I keep asking myself why. What does it say about us? Didn’t you trust me? Was this the root cause of your postnatal depression?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I have so many questions. And all before I even start to think about what happens now you’ve found your other daughter and what that might mean for our family.’
‘I almost told you before we got married. But Mum warned me against it. She and Dad brainwashed me into believing it was better to forget and that talking about it would only bring back painful memories. They made me feel ashamed, made sure I knew how stupid I was to have gotten myself in that predicament, and I didn’t want you to think badly of me.’
‘Do you really think I would have? I loved you and I wouldn’t have held something that happened in your teens against you.’
Rebecca couldn’t help but note his use of the past tense. He wouldn’t have. But did he now?
‘I don’t know,’ she said, working hard not to cry again. ‘I was young. I felt shame, guilt, hurt and regret. Not talking about it made sense. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but all I can say is I thought it was the right thing at the time.’
Now, as she said this, she couldn’t believe she’d been so easily led—she despised herself for not putting up more of a fight at every point in the journey.
‘Did you ever think about telling me? We’ve been married thirty years. You grew up in that time.’
‘Yes. Of course I did. In the nineties the laws changed regarding adoption privacy in WA, I totally freaked out—it meant when adopted children came of legal age they had the right to request identifying information about themselves, about their birth parents. Even with adoptions which were previously closed, like my baby’s. I decided then and there to tell you, but then your father died and you were so sad I didn’t want to upset you even more. There were still a few years till my child would have been old enough, so I figured I had time, but of course the right moment never came. Something always got in the way as if fate was trying to hold me back. The year my child would have turned eighteen, you had your heart attack …’
She shook her head, the time for excuses was long gone. ‘I can’t change the past, Hugh. All I can say is I’m genuinely sorry about keeping this from you.’
‘I’ve never liked your father,’ he said.
She blinked. ‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘There was something about him from the first time we met. I didn’t like the condescending way he spoke to you and your mother and there’s always been something else, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.’
She laughed—perhaps they could bond again over the shared hatred of her dad. ‘Well, that makes two of us.’
But Hugh wasn’t laughing. ‘I’m hurt, Rebecca, however the fact that your parents lied to you—first about Robbie and then about the gender of the baby—makes me realise just how much they orchestrated this. I can see you’re the victim here, not me, and I want to support you. That’s what I want, but I think it’s going to take time.’
‘I understand.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘Between us?’ She was hoping he’d stop sleeping in the spare bedroom for a start.
‘No, I mean what do you do with this information? Do you want a relationship with Josie? And Robbie? How do you feel about him now you know it wasn’t his choice to abandon you?’
Rebecca’s head hurt with all Hugh’s questions. Him not talking to her all weekend had given her plenty of time to think about these things but she hadn’t come to any conclusions. And until she’d had the official confirmation, she hadn’t felt she could do anything. Part of her wanted to drive over to Josie’s place right this moment, throw her arms around her and declare herself as her mother, but she knew she might not be well-received.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t want to upset her and finding out about Robbie’s alcoholism and his disappearance might do that. Even if you can forgive me, maybe it would be best just to bury this again. Josie’s thirty-five and has never come searching for me—she’s not on the contact register, which makes me think she doesn’t want to open that box.’
‘And you think you can live with that?’ He sounded sceptical.
Rebecca swallowed, emotion welling in her throat again. When she’d sent off for this information, she’d thought it would be good to know that her baby was doing okay, what he (well, she) did for a crust and if he had a family of his own, but that was before she discovered that not only had she actually had a daughter, but that she already knew her. ‘I’m not sure. It will be hard seeing Josie, knowing she’s my own flesh and blood while trying to act normal and pretend she isn’t. And then there’s also Paige to consider. Does she have a right to know?’
How could Rebecca chastise her own parents for lying to her if she then perpetuated the lie by not telling her own daughter? She wanted whatever was best for both her daughters, she just had no idea what that was.
‘Hmm,’ Hugh mused.
‘What does that mean? Do you think I should tell Paige?’
‘I think you know my stance on secrets—I think Paige deserves to know she has a sister. It’ll be a shock, but she’s got her head screwed on, she’ll cope. However, I don’t know Josie, so I can’t predict how she might feel or react.’
Rebecca sighed. Why couldn’t anyone just tell her what to do?