‘Have you ever spoken to Amelia about it?’

Andrew slumped against the hospital corridor wall. ‘I’ve tried, but it just makes her go quiet. I told Mum, but she wouldn’t believe me. So now I just try to eat anything that has strawberries in it to keep them away from Melia.’

Remembering how close he had once been with his own brother, Jake could appreciate Andrew’s attempts to protect his sister in the face of adult obliviousness. And he now had a lead—but what to make of the association between strawberries and Amelia’s mental health?

All three of them looked up as Charlotte Murphy walked around a corner into the waiting room clutching a Styrofoam coffee cup.

‘Please excuse me,’ Jake said to Andrew. ‘I’ll talk to you more later.’

*

Charlotte blinked repeatedly as Jake sat in one corner of the waiting room interviewing her. He needed more background on both girls and whatever had happened at the home.

‘Mrs MacDonald was just telling me about Amelia’s first day at school, after she was adopted. Did you two go to the same school?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘I was excited to meet more kids. Amelia was too, I think. But some of the kids started calling us names at morning recess.’

He paused as two women in blue scrubs and stethoscopes ran past the waiting room, a gurney between them, yelling for more staff to assist.

‘What did they call you?’ he asked Charlotte.

‘Just “bad girls”’.

‘Do you know why?’

‘They wouldn’t say. I just laughed at them and told them they were stupid, but Amelia was really upset by it. Her mum kept her home after that.’

‘And did anyone else say similar things?’

‘I heard some adults talking about us at a party once,’ Charlotte said with an edge of resentment. ‘They didn’t realise I was in the pantry playing hide-and-seek.’

‘What did they say?’

They paused their conversation again as a team of paramedics slid a supine young man through the ED waiting area. He was screaming his head off—possibly because of the myriad lacerations on both his face and hands. He looked as though he’d gone straight through a plate glass window.

‘That they couldn’t believe our mums had chosen to adopt us.’ The hurt in Charlotte’s voice was tangible as they returned to their conversation. ‘One said she couldn’t understand it since there were boys available for adoption. And another one said “blood will out”. The way they talked about us’—Charlotte bit her lower lip—‘made me feel like I was … sort of … the yukky brown bit you find when you bite into a rotten apple.’

‘Do you remember who the adults were?’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘I didn’t know them. But I told Mum, and we never went back there again.’

‘And how did you feel about the girls’ home closing and coming to live with your new family?’

‘It meant everything to me! I got my own mum and dad and a nice house to live in, where I could be warm all the time. And I got to go to school, and I got a last name.’