The Lost Daughter Read online

  After the Queen’s speech, the royal party disappeared inside the building. Val wondered what she would think of the design. There had been much debate in the Australian press about the strange curved concrete shells protruding from a redbrick base, and the budget, which had soared way beyond estimates, but Val liked it. To her it was like a sailing ship about to drift out to sea on the next tide.

  The Queen and her husband appeared on a balcony halfway up to watch as, out in the bay, hundreds of boats, large and small, sounded their horns in a cacophony of noise. Reels of pinky-red streamers were released, then a host of balloons— “Sixty thousand of them,” the woman beside Val said in awed tones. The sky filled with pink, blue, green, purple, and yellow spheres, like a swarm of beautiful insects rising on the breeze. It was quite magnificent, and Val felt lifted out of herself. Her problems seemed insignificant in the midst of such a large crowd, watching such a beautiful sight. She felt proud to be there, in that moment; proud to be Australian.

  Chapter 9

  Sydney, October 21, 1973

  VAL DIDN’T TELL TONY SHE WAS PLANNING TO VISIT her father because she knew he would forbid her. He liked the fact that he and Nicole were her only “proper” family. His parents lived in Perth and they visited once a year, but Tony was always grumpy after they left, his ears ringing with their criticisms. Why hadn’t he been promoted at work? Why didn’t they have a bigger house? Why did it take Val twelve years to get pregnant with Nicole then nothing since? Why couldn’t she produce more grandchildren, as his brothers’ wives had done?

  Val had no answer to that; it was just the way it was. Until she was thirty years old she’d thought she must be infertile, but then her baby daughter popped out with a beaming smile and a happy nature, like an amazing gift from the universe. Gazing at Nicole’s peachy skin, the long eyelashes, the teeny fingernails, she knew that everything had changed in the most fundamental way possible. From now on, for the rest of her life, this little person would come first.

  Tony changed too. He cooed over his new daughter and took endless photos to post to his mother. He bought a set of Lego bricks, and Val didn’t dare tell him they were dangerous for a newborn, so she just kept a close eye to make sure Nicole didn’t stick one in her mouth. They grew closer as they admired their daughter’s wobbly first steps and giggled at her made-up toddler words. When Tony swung her in the air or let her clamber over him, his eyes all soft and affectionate, Val could almost love him again the way she used to before they were married. He’d kept his part of the marital bargain, getting a decent if dull job in finance, and buying them a house with a garden and a car apiece. If only it weren’t for his temper, and his desire to control her every move, perhaps she could have been content.

  Nicole chatted on the way to preschool that morning, asking food questions: “What do you like better? Chips or yogurt?”

  “Yogurt,” Val said.

  “Vegemite or ham sandwiches?”

  “Definitely ham. Poo-ee to Vegemite.”

  Nicole laughed. This was their little joke. Tony liked Vegemite but Val had to hold her nose while spreading it for him because she loathed the smell.

  “Apples or ’nanas?” Nicole persisted.

  She took the answers very seriously, cataloging them in her brain, and Val knew she would remember months later: “You said you like apples best, Mommy.”

  It seemed a miracle that Nicole had been born with a talent for happiness when neither of her parents was happy, but so it was. At preschool, she was greeted by a throng of little girls and trotted in after giving Val a quick hug, utterly confident in her own skin.

  Val turned the car toward Bondi Junction, and almost immediately hit a traffic snarl-up. It was a stifling day and gas fumes wafted through the open window along with the noise of some idiot leaning on their horn. Only now did she allow herself to think about the prospect of seeing her father after seventeen years, and it made her shudder. Even with dementia, she was sure time would not have mellowed him. Did he still drink as much? Did he cry crocodile tears for Mother Russia when he was drunk?

  She could barely remember what he looked like, apart from the perpetual scowl. He had dark bushy brows, and eyes too close together, but she couldn’t picture his mouth and chin or put the pieces together to make a whole face. She could remember his voice, though: thickly accented, harsh, tyrannical. She would never forget his unpredictable temper and the belt he used to hit her across her bare legs. She remembered him yelling at her school friends, accusing them of being sluts, scaring them so they would never come to her house and avoided inviting her to theirs. He used to embarrass her by using derogatory terms for anyone of a different skin color, especially Aborigines, whom he called “scroungers” and layabouts. It seemed personal, since her mother was Chinese and Val had her thick black hair, buttermilk skin, and almond-shaped eyes. Were they scroungers too? Did his Russian birth and pale skin make him superior?

  She remembered the tension of mealtimes after her mother was gone, when her father used to quiz her on general knowledge. What was the capital of Mongolia? How many feet in a mile? She’d done her best to answer, but seventeen years on, as she pulled into the nursing home parking lot, she felt her stomach clench with dread, the way it always used to do as a teenager.

  Why was she visiting him? Would he still be able to terrorize her? She was a married woman with a daughter; she must stand up for herself. People could only bully you if you let them.

  She walked down the spartan air-conditioned corridor, following a nurse in white uniform. The nurse knocked on a door and pushed it open, and there he was, in a chair by the window, recognizably him, although the bushy brows were silver and the posture was hunched.

  “It’s your daughter to see you,” the nurse said in a too-bright voice, and Val approached, stopping when she was six feet away.

  “Hi, Dad.” There was another chair, and she positioned it so she was out of arm’s reach before sitting down.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” the nurse said, glancing from one to the other, perhaps surprised that Val hadn’t attempted to hug or kiss him.

  “How are you keeping?” Val began. Her dad’s eyes were vacant, a paler shade of brown than she remembered, with spidery red veins. Hairs sprouted from his nostrils and ears, and the hair on his head was combed flat across a shiny skull. “What’s it like here?” she persevered.

  “You look tired,” he said, his voice croaky. “You’ve got shadows under your eyes.”

  Charming, she thought. “My daughter wakes me early and my husband keeps me up late. What can I do?” She tried for a lightness of tone, wondering if he would pick up on the fact that he had a granddaughter. He didn’t.

  “The food’s shocking. Just shocking.” He pronounced the sh like ch. Chocking.

  “Dad, have you heard from Mom at all? Ha Suran, your wife? Where is she?”

  He looked blank. “I don’t have a wife.”

  “You did have a wife. I’m her daughter. Where did she go?”

  He shook his head, and a tear trickled out of the corner of his eye. Val wondered if he was crying, but decided it was just his eye watering, because he didn’t seem emotional. There was a blanket on his lap and he rubbed the satin binding, back and forth. Val watched his hand with its funny raised scar like a red slug nestled between thumb and forefinger.

  “The nurse told me you keep saying ‘I didn’t want to kill her.’ Who did you not want to kill?”

  He turned to gaze out the window and mumbled the words. “I had no choice.”

  “Was it Mom? Is she dead?” She wanted to shake him, force him to tell her what had happened when she was thirteen.

  He shook his head. “There was so much blood. So much.”

  “Whose blood, Dad?”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Where is she then?”

  “There was so much blood.”

  “Did you stab her?”

  “I had no choice.” He shook his head sadly. �
��I didn’t want to kill her.”

  For a while they went around in circles, but he just repeated the same phrases over and over, without seeming to have any understanding of their meaning. Whatever memories had been in his brain had faded, like a blackboard wiped almost clean, leaving just a few traces of words but no sense of their context. They could have come from a movie he’d seen.

  “Do you know who I am?” she tried.

  “Of course. You’re . . .” He scratched his wrist. “You’re a visitor.”

  “I’m your daughter, Val.”

  “I don’t have a daughter,” he said. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  “Do you remember Ha Suran? She had shiny black hair, so long she could sit on it, that she wore piled up on her head.” Val demonstrated with her own hair.

  There was no sign of comprehension, not a twitch. Anything he knew about her mother’s disappearance was long gone. He was a senile old man, and Val became aware that he smelled of urine. Had he wet himself as they sat there? It hadn’t been obvious when she first entered the room.

  She tried to find a vestige of affection for the man who had raised her, but felt nothing but distaste. She wasn’t going to get any information out of him and suddenly couldn’t bear to stay a moment longer. She rose, hesitated. Should she kiss him goodbye? The thought made her feel sick.

  “See you, Dad,” she said, secretly hoping she wouldn’t.

  He didn’t reply, just gazed out the window, where a dog was crouched, bowlegged, scent-marking a spot on the lawn.

  * * *

  “I don’t think he’s a killer,” Val assured the nurse. “He was an obnoxious old goat when he was younger, but it wouldn’t have been in his character to commit murder. I think he’s just repeating something he heard.”

  “If you’re sure . . .” The nurse was relieved. They didn’t want the hassle of a police investigation. “Will you visit again?”

  Val made a face. “It’s difficult. We live quite far away—Croydon Park—and I’ve got a nipper at school. But you’ve got my number . . .”

  She had goose bumps on her arms and couldn’t wait to get back into the heat of the day. The stink of urine lingered in her nostrils as she drove across town to collect Nicole, feeling shaken by the encounter.

  It was difficult to accept that the helpless, pathetic creature sitting in a chair by a window was the same man who had menaced her during her teenage years. The monster had faded but the harm he had done remained, and she couldn’t forgive him. She had read enough psychology books, borrowed from the library, to understand why she had walked straight from a violent bully of a father into the arms of a violent husband. Human beings were attracted to what was familiar. The way Tony treated her must have triggered a feeling instilled in childhood that it was all she deserved. Sometimes she still felt that.

  During the years of infertility, Tony had called her a failure as a wife, a useless waste of space, and it was hard not to take the criticism on board. What was the point of her life? He wouldn’t dream of letting her get a job because it would make him look as though he couldn’t afford to support her, so she spent her days cooking and cleaning like a domestic robot. Her friend Peggy repeatedly urged her to leave him, but where would she go? What would she use for money? How would she pay for a roof over her head when she had no qualifications, having left school at Tony’s urging without taking her final exams?

  Her marriage was unhappy, but wasn’t everyone’s behind closed doors? Even Peggy moaned about her husband’s untidiness. Once Val had Nicole, everything else became bearable. Her daughter gave her all the love she needed.

  She pulled up at the preschool just as the staff began releasing the little ones onto the playground, braids flying. Nicole ran to her waving a painting in garish reds and blues, daubed so thickly the paint was still wet and lumpy. Val swept her up and hugged her tight, feeling her daughter’s ribs through the cotton T-shirt, smelling the sweet scent of her hair, not caring that she got paint on her blouse. The primal love she felt for this little person was so overwhelming that it made her want to cry out with joy.

  Chapter 10

  Sydney, November 1973

  I’M AFRAID I’M CALLING WITH BAD NEWS,” A WOMAN’S voice said down the line, and Val’s heart gave a lurch. Was it Nicole? Had there been an accident at preschool? Please, not her.

  “Your father died in the early hours of the morning,” the woman continued. “He had a cold that went to his chest, and he simply stopped breathing during the night. He won’t have felt a thing. I’m sorry we couldn’t alert you so you could be with him at the end.”

  “No worries,” Val said quickly. “I’m glad it was peaceful.” These were just words, the kind of thing you were supposed to say. In truth, she felt only relief that the phone call wasn’t about Nicole.

  “Will you come and collect his belongings? There are various formalities, and the funeral to arrange. We can advise you.”

  “Of course,” Val agreed. “Thank you.” As soon as she hung up, she rang Tony at the office. He would know what to do.

  “Does he still have that big house in Bondi?” Tony asked. “He must do. And you’re the sole heir, right?”

  “I suppose so. I don’t know what he’s been doing since I left home, but I’m pretty sure he won’t have remarried. Who would have him?”

  “Give me the address and I’ll drop in at the nursing home after work to pick up any paperwork,” he volunteered. “You don’t want to be bothered at a time like this.”

  From anyone else she might have thought it a kind gesture, but she knew Tony’s motive was greed, pure and simple. He would probably be on the phone to an estate agent to find out what the house was worth as soon as she got off the line.

  Suddenly she panicked that the nursing home would let slip she had visited her dad a few weeks earlier. That was the kind of thing that would make Tony fly off the handle. She picked up the phone to call and beg them not to mention it.

  * * *

  There were just three of them at the Russian Orthodox funeral: Val, Tony, and the elderly priest, Father Methodius. Three living people, that is: her father lay in an open coffin with a wreath across his forehead, a cross and the Trisagion prayer in his right hand. Val avoided looking at his pale features and thin strands of gray hair as they circled the coffin, while the priest sprinkled holy oil and recited from the Book of Psalms: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

  The smell of incense caught the back of her throat and the rhythm of the words tugged upon childhood memories that made her feel unbearably sad. As the casket was closed, sealing in her father for time everlasting, grief choked her and she sniffed back tears. Now there was no chance of her questions being answered. She would never understand what had happened to her mother, and what had made him such a bitter, angry man.

  If only there were extended family members—a cousin or a sibling, someone to share this with; but there weren’t any more blood relatives, not even any close friends. Tony had met her father a couple of times but only briefly, so he was unlikely to shed any light.

  After the funeral, the full weight of grief descended upon Val. It felt as if she were wearing a suit of chain mail that made her movements slow and difficult. She was tired all the time and often lay on the sofa while Nicole was at preschool, staring into space, nothing particular in her head.

  “You’ll have to clear the house,” Tony told her. “Make a pile of anything that can be sold and junk the rest. Sooner we can get it on the market, the better.”

  He didn’t notice her depression, wouldn’t have understood it if he had. Why should she feel grief for a father she hadn’t seen for seventeen years? She couldn’t understand it herself. Nicole sensed it, though, and climbed onto her lap for frequent cuddles, twirling Val’s jet-black hair around her little fist and offering kisses from her cherry-colored lips.

  Val had to steel herself to drive to the house on Penkivil Street, just fifteen minu
tes’ walk from Bondi Beach. It was Edwardian-style, with pillared balconies on the upper floor, stained-glass windows on the lower, and a grand archway at the main entrance. Once it had been smart, but now it reeked of neglect, with peeling paint and a garden wall that was close to collapse. She parked in the drive, walked across the overgrown yard, and turned the key in the door to be met with a smell that made her recoil. It clearly hadn’t been cleaned in ages, and the air was stale and sour, with an underlying odor as if some creature had died and was in the advanced stages of decomposition. Holding her breath, she ran from room to room on the ground floor, throwing windows wide and turning on fans.

  She quickly saw that nothing had changed in seventeen years. There were the same beige cabinets in the kitchen, sticky to the touch from years of built-up cooking grease; the pantry was buzzing with flies, and a rubbish bin contained something noxious that she quickly threw out the back door. The worn brown sofa and chairs in the living room had suspicious stains on the upholstery. Still there was no TV. As a teenager Val had begged her dad to get one, but he refused, and the only entertainment came from an old phonograph and a pile of sentimental Russian records. The dining room had a burnt-orange patterned carpet and a dusty twelve-seater table that to Val’s knowledge had never been used.

  Upstairs, she hesitated in the doorway of her old bedroom, which was just as she’d left it. She surveyed the pictures she’d stuck on the walls: a poster for The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, her favorite film at the time; a close-up shot of Bill Haley & His Comets on stage somewhere; an advertisement for Lustre-Creme shampoo, with the caption “Never Dries—it Beautifies.” The dusky rose-pink bedspread her mother had bought was still spread on the single bed, coordinating with the curtains and the frill around her dressing table. There was nothing she wanted to keep, no part of that teenage girl she felt nostalgia for.

  She popped her head into her father’s bedroom but drew back at the intimate smell of his body, still as strong as if he were around the corner in the bathroom, about to emerge in his camel dressing gown, newspaper in hand. She moved on quickly, past the spare room that was never used. There were some faded photographs of her in a niche in the hall, but no trace of her mother anywhere: no clothes, no makeup, no pictures. As far as Val could remember, they had only moved to this house after her mother disappeared.