In Bed With...Collection

He looked so keen. Her heart jiggled painfully. “It’s...it’s a good suggestion, Beau. I’d like to try it...but...it just isn’t possible.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

She flushed at the hopelessness of a situation he probably couldn’t comprehend. “Apart from the bank account Vivian organised for me with his accountant, for my salary to be paid into, I have nothing to prove who or what I am. Vivian and Mr. Neville were referees for me to the bank manager because I didn’t have any of the usual forms of identification. But that won’t do for a passport.”

“You have your birth certificate...”

“No. I don’t. I tried to get a copy once but the registry wanted information I didn’t know,” she confessed. “And it’s no use looking for the answers. No one would admit anything now. I may not have even been registered.”

She turned her gaze out to the harbour, once more awash with the helpless feeling of a dislocated person with no roots and nothing to steer by. I’m like a piece of flotsam on the water, she thought, but at least I’m still afloat. Better than being submerged in hopelessness.

“Maggie, let me help you with this. There must be people who know...”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Beau. It’s not there anymore. They’ve gone. If there were records, they’ve gone, too.”

“What’s not there, Maggie?” he asked quietly.

She’d said too much. It was really better not to say anything. People didn’t—couldn’t—relate to something so far outside their experience. She remembered telling a workmate once. It made the woman look at her differently, as though she were some kind of freak.

“Are you afraid of...whatever’s gone?” It was a soft, tentative question, sensitive to her feelings.

She had no reason to be anymore. No one could take her back to that life in the compound. She’d been free of that fear for many years, but the sense of having a big chunk of her life stolen and used for the supposedly higher purposes of others never left her.

“Maggie...will you trust me with this? You can stand on judgment of me right now. I want to help, to move forward with you.”

She heard the plea in his voice and it touched her. The father of my child, she thought. Was it right to drop the shield with him? If she did, would they move forward or would he back off?

Best to know.

“All right.”

She shifted to the comer of the balcony, instinctively putting distance between them before she turned to face him. A challenge like this required space. He stood side on to the balustrade, watching her, waiting, maintaining an air of confidence that encouraged her to unburden herself on him.

Maggie put the past at a distance, too. It was easier to pretend it had happened to someone else, a part of her that she was now separated from, a different person. She knew it wasn’t really true but the disconnection allowed her to speak more objectively.

“I was brought up in a kind of commune. There were about fifty children. Different ages. Eight to a house with a housemother in charge. None of us knew who our real parents were or if we had any at all. None of us had any memory of a life outside the compound.”

He didn’t show any shock at all. “You were always kept inside it?” he asked, gently inquisitive.

“Yes. The idea was...we were the innocent children of God and we were to be kept pure from the world. It was a cult thing. I guess you could call it a social experiment.”

His face tightened but he nodded for her to go on.

“We were taught to read and write but had no formal schooling or examinations as I later discovered the children outside took for granted. Music was a big part of our daily routine, singing and playing hymns and good songs. If you didn’t question anything, it wasn’t a bad life. Very regimented, very disciplined, very...stifling.”

“It was a prison to you,” he said softly.

She winced, aware of having given that away too tellingly to refute. “There was no freedom...for anything. No privacy except in your own mind. I escaped when I was fourteen.”

He looked surprised. “That young?”

“I was tall. I could pass for older.”

“Where was the compound, Maggie?”

“Northwest New South Wales. Deep country. It’s been abandoned.”

“How long ago?”

“Eight years. I was twenty when the news of its existence broke. I don’t know who or what tipped off government officials but the compound was raided and the children were taken away and put in the hands of welfare people to sort out. Those who were in charge of the compound—they were called The Inner Circle—destroyed whatever records they’d kept and skipped the country.”

“They weren’t pursued?”

“Traced to Hawaii, but they disappeared from there. There was a flurry of investigative journalism. More sensational than helpful. Problems with the children being assimilated into normal society. The older ones found it most difficult, wanting to go back to the safety of the compound.”

“You didn’t think of coming forward at that time and telling your story?”

“It came out in the newspaper stories that there were professional people—doctors and lawyers—who’d helped the Inner Circle get children who were given up for adoption. Abandoned babies. I didn’t trust the people in power. I didn’t know what they might do to me. Besides, I was making my own way. I didn’t want what they might think of as help.”

“Fair enough.” No criticism. He seemed to understand the dilemma she’d faced. “Did you tell my grandfather any of this, Maggie?”

“Yes. But not for a long time. It’s hardly a subject I care to bring up. To begin with, when he wanted to know my bank account, which I didn’t have, I just told him I’d always worked for cash in hand and most of that went in day-to-day living.” She shrugged. “It was the truth. There was no other way to avoid the paperwork I had no answers for.”

“He didn’t press you about your lack of official status?”

“Why should he? The accountant made me official enough to cover Vivian’s requirements. The question of a passport never came up.”

“I see,” Beau murmured, then looked at her quizzically. “When did you tell him what you’ve just told me?”

She paused for thought. “He was talking about family lines. He wanted to know my...my background. It would have been about two months before he died.”

Beau heaved a sigh that seemed to hold both relief and satisfaction. “Thank you for confiding in me. It answers a lot.”

Maggie didn’t want to ask what it answered. If he was now seeing her in a different light, it didn’t show. It didn’t seem to be affecting him one way or another.

“Will you come with me to Europe, Maggie?’ he asked.

“I told you...”

“I’ll get you a passport. I’ll get you all the official identification you’ll need for anything, whether you come with me or not.”

“But how?”

“Believe me, I have the power and the resources to do it.”

She stared at the resolution stamped on his face and felt something hard and cold inside her start to warm and melt. “You’d do that for me?” Her voice was a bare whisper.

“Yes. I’ll put it in motion at once.”