“No,” she says, pointing at the paper and showing it to me. “Your mother has Larsen as her surname and Collins as her maiden name, but your dad’s surname is Ashdown.”
“What?!” I spit out, snatching the paper from her hands and looking at it properly myself. “Who the hell is Daniel Ashdown?” I ask, more to myself than anyone else.
“Well, he’s your dad. It says right there,” Tahlia says, pointing to the paper again.
“No. My dad is Oliver Larsen. This guy doesn’t even live in Australia. Look – his address is in the UK.” I jab at the page, indicating his address at the time of my birth. “There’s some sort of a mistake. I’m lining up again,” I tell her, heading back to join the queue
She grabs my arm to stop me. “Paige. They don’t make those kinds of mistakes. Has your mum ever been to the UK?”
I think back to a time when my mother was being unusually talkative towards me. She told me about how she had been in London for work and hadn’t realised she was pregnant. Her morning sickness hit her on the flight back to Australia. “It was the worst 24hours of my life,” she’d said, smiling to herself over some distant memory before mumbling, “I should have just stayed.”
I remember watching her walk away from me and being grateful for the conversation, but confused as to what it was about.
“Yeah, she has,” I tell Tahlia. “She was there for a couple of months or something, and she was pregnant with me while she was there.”
“She was already pregnant? Or did she get pregnant while she was there?”
I frown, trying to recall the details about the conversation. “I don’t know. I think she said she didn’t realise she was pregnant before she went. The morning sickness hit her on the way home.”
“Paige, by the looks of things, she got pregnant while she was there – to that guy,” she points out, poking at the paper again.
I mull over this information as we make our way to the train station. Suddenly, it all becomes clear. No wonder I don’t look like them. I have a different father. I must look like this Daniel guy.
“Oh my god!” I exclaim, slapping myself on the forehead and stopping where we are on the footpath.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I just figured out why I got kicked out of home.”
“You mean it wasn’t for being a misfit?”
“No, Tahlia. I was never a misfit. I just didn’t belong.”
I tuck the paper away as my mind runs over the details of my life. Finally, it all makes sense. It didn’t matter what I did, they would never love me. I was the child of another man.
“Do you know what this means Tahlia? It means that all along it wasn’t me that was the problem – it was them.”
“I could have told you that. Nice people don’t kick their daughters out of home. Simple as that.”
Chapter Nine
Today is my sixteenth birthday. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, looking at my new learner’s permit and scrutinising the odd expression on my face in the picture printed on it.
“Happy Birthday!” Tahlia starts singing as she walks over to the table with a chocolate cake that she has made.
It’s a little lopsided, and the icing is dripping down the sides. I love it. I’ve never had someone make me a cake. It’s always just been a dried-out sponge cake brought on clearance from the grocery store. So a real, freshly baked cake is a gift all of its own.
I can't keep the grin from my face as she places the cake in front of me. A few months ago, I thought I would be spending this birthday on the streets. Wondering how I was going to eat, and what l was going to do if I needed to pee in the middle of the night. The fact that l have a roof over my head, and someone who cares enough to make me a cake is phenomenal.
"Alright. Make your wish," she tells me.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, wishing to always have a place to stay. When I blow out the candles, she claps her hands before presenting me with a small black jewellery box.