ISBN: 9781460752388
ISBN 10: 1460752384
Imprint: HarperCollins – AU
On Sale: 20/05/2019
Pages: 352
List Price: 29.99 AUD
BISAC1: FICTION / General

WHO IS LIZZY?

Lizzy is an Aussie gal, formerly a journo, now a mother of two and ‘trailing spouse’, transported from the sunny shores of Sydney town to the colder climes of Somewhere, USA, via Elsewhere, Canada, and Overdaire, Ireland. She’s mostly enjoying the experience – even if it has left her feeling a little disoriented.

Writing this blog is a way to ensure that Lizzy’s communications skills stay honed. It also keeps her sane.

THE PARENTAL BOGEYMAN GOES TRICK-OR-TREATING

Surely, C insists, she’s old enough to go trick-or-treating without me. After all, she’ll be twelve in a few weeks. And twelve is a teenager, practically a grown-up. We’re on our front porch (where so many of these boundary-setting negotiations seem to take place), just about to join a small troop of neighbourhood kids as they head out into our tree-lined suburban street in search of treats.

Up until this year, Halloween has been a family affair: sometimes a school friend might join us, but usually it’s just been our little trio – C, her older sister, L, and me. D stays home, ready to appease any visiting demons with candy. This arrangement suits me – I’ve always found Halloween slightly disturbing, one of America’s stranger traditions. I mean, why would anyone choose to send their babies out alone on the one night of the year when the Hellmouth, as they call it in the Buffyverse, is most likely to be wide open? And frankly – those grinning pumpkins freak me out. That orange glow makes every house, even my own, seem sinister.

But this year is different: L is trick-or-treating with a friend, and C and I have planned to join up with the neighbourhood kids. It’s different in other ways too. Instead of the usual cutesy parent-approved outfit, this year C has devised her own Halloween costume. She’s a zombie: which means her face is plastered white, her undead eyes have been blackened, and there are frighteningly lifelike gashes of red at her temple and around her mouth. She’s rather terrifying to behold.

‘It’s lame, you coming,’ she says. ‘Everyone else gets to go on their own, without their parents. Every year. And they’ve all survived.’

‘So far,’ I say darkly, trying hard not to think of all the possible ways they might not survive.

The look she gives me is murderous (admittedly her emotional range is limited), and she stamps down the stairs and out the gate. I follow slowly, clutching my pumpkin-shaped bucket, my devil’s ears headband, the little red tail that clips onto my jeans pocket.

I Google on my phone as I walk: At what age should children trick-or treat without an adult? One mother with the same worries as me – and a few others I hadn’t considered – volunteers online that she reluctantly let her eleven-year-old out alone, conceding that the constantly hovering parent may be the biggest bogeyman of all. I swallow my anxiety. By the time I meet C, who has joined the small tribe of monsters gathered at the park across the road, I’m almost ready to give in.

One of my neighbours, a grade-school teacher with three kids, all younger than C, waits with them in the gloom. Her T-shirt is embossed with a luminous skeleton; her hairclips are shaped like witches’ hats. ‘Are you going with them?’ I ask, hopeful.

‘Oh, no.’ She looks shocked. ‘They’d hate that. Parents worry too much.’ I nod, give a weak smile, think about abductions, LSD-laced Twinkies, paedophiles. Guns.

‘Actually,’ her son, a boy aged around ten who is dressed as Captain America, pipes up, ‘some really gruesome stuff has happened to kids at Halloween.’

‘Oh?’ I try not to sound too interested.

‘We had to write about the meaning of Halloween at school, and I found this cool site with all the Halloween murders on it. There’s heaps and heaps,’ he smiles with ghoulish enthusiasm. ‘One time all these girls were kidnapped, and there was this kid that was shot. But the best one was this dad who actually poisoned his own kid. He put cyanide in all the kids’ Pixy Stix, but his son was the only one who died, which was actually what he wanted because then he could get the life insurance.’ Captain America shudders with delight.

His mother beams. ‘Jackson just loves his history.’ She pats him on the head proudly.

‘So,’ says C, clearly reassured by this conversational turn, ‘you’re not coming, right? I can go on my own?’

I mutter, look vague.

The captain’s mother gives a cheery wave. ‘Off you go, then. Be good.’ She offers me a smile, heads back across the road.

I wait until she’s tripping up the stairs to her orange-lit porch, then pick up my bucket, clip on my tail, straighten my ears. Parental bogeyman? There are worse disguises.

Original Extract Here.

ISBN: 9781460752371
ISBN 10: 1460752376
Imprint: Commercial Women’s Fiction – AU
On Sale: 23/01/2017

Prologue

I am forty-four years old. A happily married woman. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this. But if anyone were to ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing, I’d tell them that it’s something that I have to do. That me being out at this time of night – way past my bedtime – drinking myself silly with this virtual stranger is not only inevitable but necessary. That although I’m letting him run his hand down and then up my thigh, and imagining falling into a bed, or onto a table, or being pushed up against a wall, imagining being fucked by him some- where, anywhere, wherever, before the night is over, the situation is more complicated than it seems. I’d have to explain that despite appearances it’s not just base lust; that this is all about fairness, about paying a debt, about redressing past wrongs. You see, in my head this is all about the past. It’s about Angie, about Rob and about Mick, too, in a strange way.

But what if I’m wrong? What if this isn’t about them or whatever the hell went on in the past? What if it’s just about me? About my life now? What then?

Jane, May 2010

How good would it be if each moment of a life could be contained somehow? If each moment could be made separate, discrete, could be quarantined from the rest. So that there’s an end. An over.

Take this particular moment in time, an ordinary morning. Jess, my daughter, twenty-three – grown-up, but a fledgling still in the way twenty-three-year-olds are these days, constantly crashing into the sides of their suddenly-too-small nests – a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand, coffee in the other, hunting for her sunnies, her handbag, her bus ticket, running late for some class or meeting. Rob, dear Rob, coffee in his left hand, newspaper in his right, oblivious to our daughter’s noise, her habitual chaos. And there’s me: Jane, mother, wife, enjoying my cup of tea and the warmth of the early-morning sunshine that’s streaming through the kitchen window; me, looking forward to the busy day ahead, excited about the future, content with my lot, monarch of all I survey.

At least that’s how I like to remember it. But it’s a funny thing, memory. What if it wasn’t really as I recall? What if I wasn’t quite as content as the picture makes out? If I were to think long and hard and honestly (though who wants to do that, really?), perhaps I was already feeling vague stirrings of discontent, murmurs that were soon to become something far louder, more insistent, until they became a deafening, all-encompassing roar. And perhaps some of what happened in the next few months would have happened, regardless.

There’s no way of stopping the past rising up and making its claims on an already complicated present. If only there were. And maybe there’s no such thing, despite what we might hope, despite what we may wish for, as a new beginning.

It’s Jess who brings the whole thing back into our lives, who stirs it all up again. It was inadvertent of course – there was no way that she could have known what had happened, or what was to come. How could she? None of us were warned; and none prepared. This particular morning Jess has said her goodbyes, banging out the front door in her usual last-minute panic only to rush back into the kitchen seconds later, breathless, eyes wide.

‘OMG, Mother! I nearly forgot. There’s this woman – I can’t remem- ber her name, she gave me a card, but God knows where that is. Anyway, she’s, like, this producer, and she wants to talk to you about the Angie thing for a radio documentary. Some crime program she’s doing. I told her you wouldn’t mind. She’s going to call you at the shop – or maybe she said she’d call in at the shop. I can’t remember. I thought that’d be best – didn’t think you’d like me to give out the home phone number. You don’t mind do you?’ She offers her sunniest smile, gives a regal wave, and dashes back down the hall without waiting for a reply, slamming the door behind her again. It takes me a full minute to process what my daughter has just told me. To think up a suitable response. And by that time Jess is long gone.

The Angie thing.

Well, what did I expect? That was how we’d wanted her to regard it. All of us: me, Rob, Mum and Dad, Mick. Like it was no big deal. As if it was something we didn’t need to dwell on, to make too much of. Of course we’d given Jess the bare facts, she knew the story – it’s not as if we’d ever hidden it from her. She’d read through the collection of yellowing newspaper articles, sighed over the unimaginable awfulness of it all. But to Jess, it was just an old story – a tale she’d tell her friends occasionally. The grief and the terror were all vicarious, thank goodness; it was over well before she was born, long ago, if not far away.

The Angie thing.

But thirty years isn’t really all that long ago. Not for the rest of us, anyway.

I’m just about to close the shop when the woman walks in. I’ve spent the best part of the day attempting an inventory for the auctioneer, and although my effort has been half-hearted, I’m feeling exhausted, and more than ready to go home.

At first I mistake the woman for one of those painful customers who hurry through the door, defiantly within their rights, at 5:29 p.m., wander aimlessly for ten or fifteen minutes, then saunter back out, not once making eye contact. I have a few things to do after closing – a prescription to pick up before the chemist closes, library books to return, food shopping – and for a moment I seriously contemplate telling the woman to piss off, thereby flouting my twenty-odd years of dedicated customer service. But of course I don’t do that, can’t. Instead I offer her a cool but polite greeting as she approaches.
‘Are you Mrs Tait? Jess’s mum?’ The woman’s voice is low and smooth.

‘Yes. Is she okay?’ My panic is immediate and primal, if irrational: the woman is quite clearly not a police officer, nor any sort of official. ‘Oh,’ the woman says. ‘Well, I assume so. I mean, I’m not actually here about Jess.’ I relax, wait for an explanation. The woman is not a customer, that much is clear, she hasn’t so much as glanced around, but I can’t place her. She’s slight, compact, dressed plainly, all in black – jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, low-heeled boots. Her hair is dark, cut short; her smooth pale skin bare of makeup. She might be my age, but she could be much younger, in her mid-thirties, perhaps.

‘I’m Erin Fury.’

‘Oh?’ The name offers no clues, though she is clearly expecting me to recognise it. I wonder for a moment if the woman is some sort of celebrity, if I’ve been selected (via Jess, no doubt) for some dreadful reality TV show.

‘I met Jess at TAFE yesterday. I’m doing a documentary on murders and their aftermath – focusing particularly on the effect on the victims’ families. Jess said there’d been a murder in your family years ago – that you wouldn’t mind being interviewed.’

‘Ah.’ The penny drops – Jess’s radio producer. ‘Jess did mention something this morning, but I —’

‘She gave me your work number, but I was in the area. I thought a direct approach might be better.’

‘Oh, well. Actually, I don’t really know that I’m all that comfortable with the idea. It was a bit naughty of Jess to say anything without asking me first.’

‘Oh, that’s a pity. I had a bit of a google and your family’s case is particularly interesting because there wasn’t just the one crime. We’re a bit short on these sort of crimes – serial killings – they’re pretty rare here in Australia, so you’re a bit of a find.’ The woman’s gaze becomes intense, her dark eyes fierce.

‘Well, I’m not sure that —’

‘Look. I know it’s probably not something you like to talk about, and I understand it could be very painful, remembering such a dreadful time, but I’m not doing some sort of sensationalist hatchet job or anything. It’ll be a serious radio documentary; I’m currently talking to the ABC and SBS. It’s designed to be used as a resource, as well, for other families who find themselves in similar situations. I’m hoping to sell it on to Compassionate Friends and other counselling services.’

‘Oh. It sounds very . . . worthwhile. But, to be honest, it’s not so much that it’s painful, it’s just that I’m not sure how helpful I can be. I was very young. I only remember bits and pieces. And I’m, well, as you can see, we’re in the process of closing down the shop —’ I gesture towards the chaos. ‘It’s a bit of a crazy time for me. I don’t know when I’d find the time.’

The woman looks around her, as if noticing where she is for the first time. ‘Well, why don’t we start now? This seems like as good a place to do it as any. You’re about to close, aren’t you? So it’d be quiet, we wouldn’t be disturbed.’ She takes a little red device, no bigger than a mobile phone, from her handbag and waits on my answer – expectant, determined.

For some reason – some reason I will never fully understand, some latent desire to poke around in the past, or maybe just curiosity or even simple boredom – I don’t say no. I don’t tell this woman that I’m busy, that I’m tired, that I still have an hour of errands ahead of me, and that all I really want to do is to go home, pour myself a long, cold glass of sav blanc, turn on the television and let the exhausting tedium of the day fall away. Instead, I look at my little gilt carriage clock, which has been keeping perfect time since 1910. Twenty five to six.

‘Why not?’ I walk to the front door, click the lock and turn the sign to closed.

The woman makes her way to a little reproduction mahogany Queen Anne dining suite in a dimly lit corner of the shop. It’s the sort of suite that’s become increasingly difficult to sell over the past few years; lovely to look at, but completely impractical – the French-polished timber easily marked, the chairs uncomfortably upright and a little wobbly, the satin upholstery cold and slippery. But somehow the woman seems quite at home in such a setting. She even appears rather therapist-like, in an old-fashioned, clichéd way: calm and focused, slightly distant. I resist the urge to recline on a nearby chaise longue, and sit across from her at the table. The woman’s preparations for the interview are methodical; her recorder, notebook and pens, a small bottle of mineral water, are all arranged carefully. Close up, the woman is not plain, as I’d first thought, but beautiful – her eyes large and dark, mouth full, cheek- bones high. I wonder whether she’s deliberately made herself appear plain, bland. And why.

She clears her throat then speaks quite formally, as if she’s reading from a script.

‘I’m going to ask you some questions. I will be recording your answers. I’ll then make a full written transcript, which I can supply to you if you like. Our conversation will be edited for the documentary, but I’ll get your approval before anything’s made public. There are actually a few legal documents that need signing, release forms, permissions, that sort of thing. You can go over them now, if you like, or I can give them to you to take home and read.’

‘Oh.’ It was too much to take in, all at once. ‘I’ll read through it later, if that’s okay.’

The woman looks relieved. ‘Good. Let’s get started then, shall we?’

ISBN: 9781921901058
ISBN-10: 1921901055
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 280
Published: 26th February 2014
Country of Publication: AU
Dimensions (cm): 23.0 x 15.3  x 2.1
Weight (kg): 23.0
Edition Number: 1

Extract

Jodie was surprised by Angus’s response. She had imagined he would have been hurt – not by the infidelity itself, how could he be – but by her failure to confide in him, a betrayal of a far more serious kind. The two days of awkwardness, with Angus a polite but cool stranger, the separate sleeping arrangements – this is what she had expected. But his almost airy dismissal of the events, his determination to leave the past in the past, though a great relief, had been thoroughly unexpected. And though she’d had to stifle an initial urge to laugh, she’d found Angus’s awkward avowal of unconditional support and steadfast affection incredibly moving. They had made love that night – more fiercely than they had for years – and had talked, though not about anything in particular, nothing serious, until the early hours of the morning. Angus had eventually drifted into sleep, had turned on his side, away from her, snoring gently, but Jodie lay rigidly awake, trying not to think, not to remember. Wishing there was some way she could un-remember – or even better, some way to undo the whole thing – to make it untrue.

But the past looms larger than the present, larger than Angus likes to imagine, throwing its shadow over everything, like some sort of terrifying temporal eclipse.

The act itself was singularly meaningless; indeed, she has so little memory of it that she would be hard-pressed to remember more than a few disconnected details about the man – the boy – himself. Was his hair brown? Or was it reddish? He was dark, rather than fair, surely? His hair was long, of that she’s fairly certain, held back from his face in a ponytail. She thinks he may have been tall and thin – but no, she might be thinking of someone else. He could just as easily have been short, stocky – even slightly pudgy. Oh, God. He had been a boy, that’s all she really remembers. Just a boy. She thinks of her daughter’s male friends: at sixteen, seventeen, even eighteen, the boys’ features are still not quite defined; they seem closer to their toddler selves – their brows smooth, jaws soft, eyes clear – than the men they’re on the brink of becoming. And that’s what he had been: just a boy, a long-haired, denim-clad, beer-drinking boy she’d sat next to in the pub. That he was the father of her child, the father of any child, was simply unimaginable.

She’d gone out that night with her flatmate Sharon. Angus had been in London then for more than two months and in all that time she’d dutifully stayed at home on weekend nights, watching videos, reading, or writing long, forlorn letters that she could never bring herself to post. Sharon, impatient with Jodie’s shyness, her excuses, had finally talked her into coming out to the pub.

‘Oh, come on, Jodie, you’re like a bloody old woman. You’re eighteen, aren’t you? Not eighty. You need to get out a bit, see some life. I’m sure your Angus won’t give a shit. You don’t really think he’s staying home night after night in London, pining for you, do you? Come out and have some fun.’

And so she’d gone with Sharon to some pub in Newtown, not expecting fun, not expecting anything much, really. It was the Sandringham, she thinks, and there’d been a band, a bit of a crowd, and he’d been there – was it Gibbo or Hendo or Sheppo or Stevo? A friend of a friend of a friend of Sharon’s, up from Melbourne or over from Adelaide or down from Brizzie. He’d bought her a drink, two, three, six, and they’d danced – it had been some sort of a punk outfit as she recalls, though they were already at the tail end of that particular musical scene. What she does recall is the sense of risk – it wasn’t the sort of place Angus would have taken her: the pub was dark and seedy, hazy with cigarette smoke, smelling of dope and dirty carpet, crowded with long-haired students, half of them stoned out of their brains, all of them pissed. And Jodie, despite everything, had found herself enjoying it. The dark, the dirt, the heat, the pounding music, the sense of being out of it, being out of herself. She had found herself embracing, for once, the sensation that nothing more than the here, the now, was of any consequence.

And she’d drunk more, and he’d drunk more, and they’d gone outside to share a surreptitious joint – not quite her first, but still, to Jodie a joint was daring, forbidden, vaguely indecent. As the night wore on she’d lost track of Sharon, and had eventually staggered back to the flat, accompanied by this boy, after closing, in the early hours of the morning. They had clutched one another, giggling and swaying, in order to stay upright, had climbed the stairs and collapsed onto her bed. And so they had fucked – drunkenly, clumsily, not out of any real desire, but almost as a matter of course. Because, in those days (and in these days too, she supposes) that’s what you did.

Jodie remembers nothing of the sex, really; the only detail she can summon is her dope-induced wonderment at the way a starburst of small black freckles adorning the boy’s scrawny shoulder kept dilating and contracting in her vision as he juddered above her.

And that was the end of it. They’d lain there together for a while, not touching, not talking. He’d lit a cigarette (you did that, too, in those long-ago days), ashed on the floor, and then, muttering something about having a train to catch, had pulled on his Levis and his T-shirt and left. He’d gone without so much as a goodbye or a thank you, let alone a telephone number, a name. Jodie had fallen asleep and hadn’t woken until late in the afternoon – sick as a dog, vaguely regretful. It was only later that the regret had sharpened into disgust, a mild self-loathing at her weakness, her betrayal of Angus, but she’d resolved that it would never happen again. And it hadn’t.

The one thing she does recall quite clearly, all these years later, is that the disgust, even the guilt, though real enough, had dissipated almost immediately. The encounter hadn’t really touched her, had left no lasting impression. It was a no-strings-attached sexual experience – unexceptional for a girl of her age, her generation, her culture. There’d been no intent, no preparation, not even a condom in those reckless post-pill, pre-AIDS, abortion-on-demand days of her youth.

So, it was a one-off. Some fun, a notch on her bedpost, perhaps, if she was the type to mark such events, but eminently forgettable. And there was no reason that Angus, that anyone, would ever have to know, was there? No need for confessions, recriminations. There was no need for anyone to get hurt, ever.

december, 1986

‘Is there someone you want me to phone?’ Sheila asks. ‘I’d be happy to call for you if you’re too exhausted.’

Jodie would like to sleep, but somehow sleep won’t come. She still feels suspended, disoriented – even the discomfort in her buttocks, her lower torso, the muscular ache in her thighs that feels as though she’s run a marathon, seems distant – as if her body isn’t back yet, isn’t quite her own.

Sheila seems reluctant to leave her alone, has brought flowers left by some discharged patient, is arranging them fussily. ‘There must be someone, sweetie. It’s a huge event, a baby. Maybe the biggest in a woman’s life. There must be someone you want to tell. What about the father? Your parents? Shouldn’t you let them know?’

‘I don’t want it.’ Jodie is amazed to hear her own voice – so certain, so substantial – is surprised that there are still words, and a way to say them.

‘Eh?’

‘I don’t want it.’ More confident, louder; this time there’s no mistaking what she’s saying.

Sheila’s eyes widen. She stands still for a moment, considering, then goes back to rearranging the flowers, casually. ‘What do you mean you don’t want it, sweetheart?’ The woman’s words are careful, quiet, unstressed. ‘I thought you said you had a fellow, that your parents knew all about this?’

‘It was a lie. There’s no one.’ Jodie’s voice is flat and expressionless. ‘I don’t even know who its father is. And I don’t want it. I was on the pill – none of this should’ve happened. If I’d known earlier, I would’ve had it . . . aborted.’ It seems slightly obscene to utter that particular word here, in this place created to welcome and nurture new life.

‘What about your parents? Won’t they support you?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a hard thing, lovey, having a baby when you’re so young and all alone, but you know, there are ways, these days. It certainly wouldn’t be impossible. There are pensions – not much, I know, but it’s possible to live. You’d get help with rent and all the services. I’ve seen girls younger than you take their little ones home and make a go of it. Often as not, they make wonderful mums.’

‘No. I can’t have it.’ She swallows, steels herself. ‘I really need to talk to someone about having it taken away. I want to – to give it up for adoption.’

Jodie glares defensively, trying to conceal her wretchedness, and fearing the woman’s objections, her judgement. But her expression hasn’t altered.

‘Well, it’s not a simple decision – not one a girl as young as you should be expected to make so quickly.’

‘But who organises these things? I need to find whoever it is that can arrange things.’ Now that the words are out, the idea made concrete, Jodie is beginning to feel the air fill her lungs again; her limbs seem as if they might be attached to her body, her body to her mind. ‘Isn’t there something I can do, something I can sign? I know there are people desperate to adopt out there. You hear all these stories about how hard it is.’ She speaks in a rush, as if that will somehow move things along faster.

The woman sits on the edge of her bed. ‘Now, Jodie. Hold up a bit. It’s not as simple as you think – they won’t just let you give the bub away like that.’ She takes hold of Jodie’s hand, almost absent-mindedly. ‘You’ll have to have some sort of social worker talk to you, and then she’ll refer you on to a psychologist to make sure it’s not an impulsive decision, or just a symptom of post-natal depression, for instance – something you’ll come to regret. They’ll want you to spend some time with the child now – to make sure. Then they’ll put the baby into foster care for a while, so you have an opportunity to reconsider. It might be quite a while before it’s all finalised. Adoption’s not something you can do lightly – there are consequences for both the mother and the child, you know. And it can come back to haunt you down the track. You need to take time and see how you heal, how you think later, when you’ve recovered. You might feel like there’s no way you can deal with it all today, but believe me, so many first time mothers feel just this way straight after they’ve given birth. You’re exhausted, terrified, can’t see how you’ll cope. What you’re experiencing isn’t unusual at all.’

Jodie pulls her hand out of the woman’s warm clasp, pushes herself up to sitting. ‘I’m not depressed, and I’m not terrified – well not in that way.’ She speaks slowly now, carefully, wanting the woman to believe that she is thinking clearly, that she means what she says, that it’s not spontaneous, a momentary consequence of pain and exhaustion. ‘I’ve had months to think about this, and I don’t want it. I really just want someone to take the baby away now. Can’t I just sign something and go home and get on with my life? I’m not going to change my mind. Truly.’

Sheila sits quietly, thinking. Jodie can’t read her expression. ‘Look, you’ve just been through something huge – even a straightforward birth is an ordeal. You need a good sleep, a proper meal. I’ll arrange to have someone come and talk to you then. You haven’t even seen your little girl, yet. You really need to —’

‘No. Please.’ Jodie’s voice is sharp with panic. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t need to see her. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to touch her. I want her – I want her to be gone. Oh, God.’ She turns away, closes her suddenly stinging eyes. ‘Isn’t there someone who can just make it all go away? This is like some sort of crazy nightmare.’ Then, like the child that she is: ‘I wish I was dead.’

The woman takes Jodie’s hand gently between her own again, rubbing them as if trying to warm her. ‘Now, it’s not that bad, surely?’

Jodie says nothing, pushes her face into the starchy hospital pillow, tries hard to swallow her sobs.

The woman sits quietly for a moment, then moves closer, strokes Jodie’s hair gently, her voice a soothing whisper.

‘There is . . . there may be something, if you’re quite certain you don’t want her. There might be some sort of private arrangement that can be made more quickly, without all the fuss.’ Her voice drifts, but Jodie, attentive now, waits for the woman to continue. ‘The rules for adoption are very . . . rigid, and there are sometimes good people out there who can’t adopt through the official channels. They might be too old, or not married – just some silly rule that means they’re deemed less suitable. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t make perfect parents, given the opportunity.’

Jodie turns to her now. ‘Does that mean . . . Do you think you can help me?’

‘Well.’ The woman is stroking her hand with a vague, unfocused tenderness, as if her mind is far away. ‘I might just be able to help you, sweetheart. I might be able to find a solution.’

The woman sighs, and lets go of Jodie’s hand, patting her on the shoulder. ‘Now, you just sit up and wipe your eyes. I’ll bring something to eat and then see if you can have yourself a good sleep.’ She plumps up the pillows behind Jodie’s back. ‘I’ll get them to keep the baby in the nursery for a while longer – make sure you’re not disturbed. And when you wake up, Sheila will have found you a solution. Is it a deal?’ She holds out her hand, and Jodie grabs it, clings on. It’s a deal.

ISBN: 9780143568568
ISBN-10: 0143568566
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 308
Published: 29th January 2014
Country of Publication: AU
Dimensions (cm): 20.0 x 12.8  x 1.9
Weight (kg): 20.0
Edition Number: 1

ISBN: 9781921401466
ISBN-10: 192140146X
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 252
Published: 1st February 2010
Country of Publication: AU
Dimensions (cm): 15.5 x 23.5
Edition Number: 1

ISBN: 99781921401190
ISBN-10: 1921401192
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 240
Published: 1st May 2009
Country of Publication: AU
Dimensions (cm): 12.9 x 19.8
Weight: 232g
Edition Number: 1

ISBN: 9781740513845
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 361
Published: 2008
Country of Publication: AU
Edition Number: 1

ISBN: 9781740513838
ISBN-10: 1740513835
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 351
Published: 2005
Country of Publication: AU
Edition Number: 1