The Truth

For two whole weeks Annabelle Robinson had been on edge. The mailbox obviously needed oiling. Every time the mailman delivered the post the mailbox made a high-pitched sound like nails scraping on a chalkboard. She was alone in her house on Thursday the 21st of May. Her mother was at a meeting for the annual Lismore Ladies Long Lunch, her father, a police officer, had left in the early hours of the morning, and her socialite siblings were out gallivanting around the town.

Annabelle didn't find the homely wooden walls of her bedroom as comforting as usual. The morning sun illuminated the anxious worry lines on her forehead. She could just glimpse the family portrait, which hung in the hallway outside her room. The photograph was taken when Annabelle was five. That was when she first began to notice the barrier between her and her family.

"Get in line please. You, stand over there near the light!" The photographer commanded the Robinson family. Annabelle, a small five year old, was standing next to her poised mother Diane. Her mahogany brown hair and eyes the colour of rich soil stood out against the family of blondes. Standing on the edge, Annabelle smiled broadly hoping to blend in. "Say cheese!" said the photographer and he snapped the photo.

Annabelle could hear the sound of children playing cheerfully in the street. She could see the parents contentedly watching their children from their front porches. They were a family. There was resemblance between them and their children. Annabelle wished there was something that could identify her as being a Robinson other than her surname. The children threw a football high into the air.

Annabelle, now fourteen, had been sent to collect her sixteen-year-old brother for dinner. As she entered the park, the cool evening breeze caressed her skin and the rustling of the leafy trees greeted her ears. She spotted him throwing a football through the air with his friends. As she approached, slightly stumbling over the fallen branches of the trees, her brother's loud friends noticed Annabelle first. "Is that your secret girlfriend?" they teased her brother. "That's my sister!" he snarled in disgust. Annabelle's cheeks flooded with embarrassment as she glared at his obnoxious friends. She knew they looked and acted nothing alike but there had to be some similarities there, right?

Annabelle's eyes roamed over the artistically cluttered walls of her bedroom. Masses of dark paintings monopolised everything else on the walls. Each painting seemed to represent her dark uneasy feeling of obscurity. All she wanted was to belong. The sickly sweet smell of her sister's perfumes wafted in from the bathroom and irritated her nose.

"Don't touch that! I don't want you to break it!" Annabelle's sister frantically pulled Annabelle away from the perfume bottles. Her sister was getting ready for a date and wanted Annabelle's advice on what to wear. Annabelle, now fifteen, had managed to knock over a chair and trip on a shoe rack in her sister's bedroom. Her sister moved gracefully around the room, pulling out mountains of clothes. "Just sit down, clumsy," her sister said ungraciously, "I don't want to clean up any more mess." Annabelle wished she were more like her sister. She wished she could be elegant.

Annabelle's gaze reached her scattered art supplies littering her worn desk. Her art was her only refuge. The only way she could create the sensation of belonging was through her art. No one could understand her immense passion for drawing vivid images from her imagination on the rough surface of a canvas. Her family, not the least bit creative, had never set foot in the art studio where Annabelle spent all her time.

"Annabelle, hurry up! We're going to be late!" Annabelle's mother shouted against the pelting rain. Annabelle appeared in the entrance of the small run down art studio. Her paint-splattered appearance was unacceptable in her mother's world and her bag was overflowing with substances that would wreck the precious car. "How you spend all your time in that dingy place messing up your clothes is beside me," Annabelle's mother said, exhaling through her nose as they drove out of the parking lot.

Annabelle's eyes drifted, at last, to the formal envelope in her hand. When Annabelle had secretly applied to receive her original birth certificate from the Births, Deaths and Marriages Department of New South Wales two weeks ago, she had not expected to feel sick with anticipation and angst. But there she was, sitting on her unmade bed, chewing her fingernails nervously. This one document could change her whole life. She ran her fingers over the grainy paper of the envelope. She had spent years wondering. Deep down she had come to terms with what she already knew to be the truth. Nevertheless, confirmation would still be a revelation.

The document was a weight in her hand as she slowly, carefully pulled it out of the official envelope. Her heart pounded and her hands shook as she prepared herself. She closed her eyes in a moments hesitation before drinking in the words of her original birth certificate. Her Birth mother was Marie Edwards. Annabelle's breathing halted and her eyes widened. Who was Marie Edwards?