‘Okay, but the least you can do is entertain me while I do it. What’s the story with your family?’
‘Just never really fitted in. How about you?’
Kim said nothing.
‘Weird thing about conversation is that it’s a two-way thing,’ Leanne said.
‘I don’t talk about family.’
‘Neither do I normally, but as I’ve got my back to you, I’m actually conversing with your oven.’
Kim smiled as she removed the outer casing of the toaster. It was a bit more complicated than she’d thought.
Leanne sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll share first. I was adopted and I always felt that way.’
‘My mother tried to kill me and my twin from the moment we were born. She finally got my brother when we were six.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘For fuck’s sake, Stone, you always gotta win?’
Kim laughed. For some reason it was easier to like Leanne when she wasn’t having to look at her.
‘You were adopted?’ Kim asked.
‘Yeah. As a baby, so I shouldn’t have felt like I didn’t belong, but I did.’
‘Is it because you were told?’
‘No. I didn’t know until I turned twelve, but I felt it way before then. I have two older siblings, brothers. My mum couldn’t have any more and she’d always wanted a girl.’
‘What made you feel different?’
‘You know, it was nothing big. I wasn’t beaten and kept in the cellar. I wasn’t fed the scraps that my brothers didn’t want. It was a subtle thing like Mum asking the boys what they wanted for tea before me. I was always third if that makes sense. It’s not something where I can recite a hundred examples. It was something I just knew.’
‘Did you share this with your mum when you found out?’
‘Hell no, it would break her heart. I know she loves me, but I also know that it’s in a slightly different way to my brothers. To them she’s bonded by blood, and to me it’s by a signature.’
‘I don’t think every—’
‘I’m not speaking for every adopted child. For me the piece of paper my parents signed didn’t equal conception and birth.’
Kim digested her words. Her only experience of parental love was from two strangers who had not been bonded to her either by blood or a piece of paper.
Given the solitary nature of the job Leanne did, Kim wondered if she’d ever felt part of any kind of team in her life.
‘My mother is dying and I haven’t told a living soul,’ she blurted out. It was easier talking to the back of someone. She wasn’t waiting for any kind of response. It was almost like talking to yourself.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’ll all tell me the exact same thing. Go see her, forgive her.’
‘Why?’
Kim shrugged as she removed part of the element.
‘I don’t know. Apparently, forgiveness is in these days and it will help me heal.’