“You’ve got no rights at all. None. Why the hell should I tell you anything? You left me and stole my daughter, then you got your ugly cow of a mate to steal the papers from my desk. I owe you nothing. Sweet nothing.”

Val clenched the receiver, trying hard not to lose her temper. “Can’t you just tell me what was in the box? He was my dad, after all.”

Tony gave a harsh laugh. “A dad you didn’t speak to for seventeen years. Give me back my papers and I might consider telling you.”

She had never loathed any human being as much as she loathed him at that moment. “Oh, yeah, and thanks for keeping it secret that I’d had a letter from my mom. Were you planning to tell me about that anytime?”

“I should have burned it,” he said. “Careless of me. Anything else that comes in the mail for you will go up in smoke—just like our marriage.”

“You can sing for the papers in that case. And don’t think I’m going to let you see your daughter anymore. You’re not safe for a child to be around.”

Before she hung up, she heard his mocking laughter down the line. She slammed the receiver so hard that the bank man came to check it wasn’t broken before ushering her out.

* * *

Val was badly shaken by the afternoon’s revelations, but she had to calm herself before collecting Nicole from school. As she drove back, she took deep breaths, watching the women in the street outside and wondering if their lives were better than hers. Was that one with the long kaftan and the frizzy red hair happy? How about that plump woman in the too-tight jeans?

She always tried to find something interesting to do with Nicole in the three hours after school before her shift at the office block started, feeling guilty that her little girl had to spend every evening, from Monday to Friday, in such a dull environment. Sometimes they went to a museum, or baked a cake, or visited the library to choose new books. It was their special time. Her hands were shaking and she was still arguing with Tony in her head, but she stretched her lips into a smile and forced her voice to sound cheerful.

“What did you do today?” she asked, and listened to Nicole’s long explanation about printing colored patterns on a wall chart with a map of Australia.

There was a travel agent on Darling Street, and Val decided to drop in and ask about the cost of flying to China. Nicole happily flicked through the display of brochures, picking out photos of hotels with turquoise swimming pools and asking, “Can we go here, Mom? Or here? I like this one.”