She pulled out the drawers and searched behind them in case anything had fallen down the back, but there was nothing there. She was choked with disappointment not to find any information about her mom. This was the only place she hadn’t been able to search during those sad teenage years when she missed her so badly.

She took a deep breath and began to sort everything into piles. She wrapped up the pistol, along with its bullets, and put it by the door to be sent to an antique dealer for valuation. The icons went there as well, along with a silver samovar, a cloisonné cigarette case, and an old-fashioned camera with a concertina-style leather bag behind the lens that she spotted on a bookshelf. All the books were in Russian but Val had never learned the language, and didn’t speak a word of her mother’s Chinese tongue either. Her father had insisted that she was raised an all-Australian girl. She couldn’t think of a use for his Russian books but she would ask the dealer if they had any value.

Next she began transferring the papers from the bottom desk drawers into a cardboard box she’d brought with her. One file slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor, spilling its contents. Val swore and lifted it carefully, trying to push the papers back in the same order, and that was when she spotted an old envelope covered in sums in her father’s handwriting. He’d clearly been using it as scrap paper for some calculations. What interested her was that the back of the envelope gave an address in Harbin, Manchuria—and she knew that was where her mother had been born. She took it to the window to look more closely. The envelope was ripped so she couldn’t make out a name or any street number, but maybe a letter would still get there and someone would know something. She stuffed it in her handbag.

None of the other documents she found made reference to the fact that her father used to have a Chinese wife. Nothing was in Ha Suran’s name. She had been excised from history as cleanly as if she had never existed and Val had merely imagined she once had a mother.

* * *

Next morning, after Tony left for work, Val wrote to the address in Harbin asking if there was anyone there who had known Ha Suran Scott, who used to live in Australia. She explained that she was her daughter and wanted to get word to her of the death of her ex-husband, Irwin Scott. She gave her Croydon Park address and asked if they would kindly contact her if they had any information about her mother’s whereabouts.