She had to park miles away from the quayside, and by the time she arrived, the crowd was so dense there was no chance of getting near the front, but by standing on tiptoe she could see a tiny figure at a podium. Like her, the Queen was wearing pale blue: a sleeveless dress and matching hat, with white gloves. She was gripping the sheets of paper on which her speech was written as a brisk wind tried to rip them from her hands. Her refined voice echoed through loudspeakers, muffled by the sound of wind buffeting the microphone. Prince Philip sat behind her with some dignitaries Val didn’t recognize.

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.