The Valley of Lost Stories

  DEDICATION

  For my daughter and

  my mother

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1: Nathalie

  Jean

  Chapter 2: Emmie

  Chapter 3: Alexandra

  Chapter 4: Nathalie

  Chapter 5: Pen

  Jean

  Chapter 6: Emmie

  Chapter 7: Alexandra

  Chapter 8: Nathalie

  Chapter 9: Pen

  Jean

  Chapter 10: Nathalie

  Chapter 11: Emmie

  Chapter 12: Alexandra

  Chapter 13: Pen

  Chapter 14: Nathalie

  Chapter 15: Alexandra

  Jean

  Part II

  Chapter 16: Nathalie

  Chapter 17: Emmie

  Jean

  Chapter 18: Pen

  Chapter 19: Alexandra

  Chapter 20: Nathalie

  Jean

  Chapter 21: Emmie

  Chapter 22: Pen

  Chapter 23: Nathalie

  Chapter 24: Alexandra

  Chapter 25: Nathalie

  Jean

  Chapter 26: Emmie

  Chapter 27: Pen

  Chapter 28: Nathalie

  Chapter 29: Emmie

  Jean

  Chapter 30: Pen

  Chapter 31: Nathalie

  Chapter 32: Pen

  Chapter 33: Nathalie

  Chapter 34: Alexandra

  Chapter 35: Emmie

  Chapter 36: Nathalie

  Chapter 37: Emmie

  Chapter 38: Nathalie

  Chapter 39: Alexandra

  Chapter 40: Emmie

  Jean

  Chapter 41: Nathalie

  Chapter 42: Emmie

  Chapter 43: Nathalie

  Chapter 44: Nathalie

  Chapter 45: Alexandra

  Chapter 46: Nathalie

  Chapter 47: Pen

  Chapter 48: Will

  Epilogue: Pen

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Vanessa McCausland

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Mummy is lost. She never came down in the morning like the other mums came. All the adults had worried faces but happy voices. It’s a trick grown-ups always play but children can’t be tricked as easily as they think. They kept on saying she’ll be back, and she’s probably taken a little morning walk and got lost in the bush, but I could see by their faces that they weren’t sure. Police ladies even came. They were nice. They told all the kids not to be scared but they looked like I feel when there’s a thunderstorm and I can feel the thunder grumbling in my tummy, like I’m sick but not sick. What if there’s another thunderstorm? It was the worst one I’ve ever been in. Mummy said it was because we were in a valley and the thunder was echoing off the cliffs. I called out to her in the night because I was scared being in this big old, strange house, with the thunder so loud I could still hear it under the covers. And she came and did that thing where she pats my head but now there’s no one to come and pat my head when I’m scared. And now that she’s gone, I’m always scared.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  Nathalie

  March

  The lights caught her eye, drew her gaze like a lure, like a charm. A strange feeling came over her and her fingers flicked the indicator before she’d had time to think, to doubt. The hotel was luminous, its windows aglow, as though the world inside held something enchanting. Something she hadn’t felt for so long – hope, peace, rest. And then Nathalie was turning into the drive, leaving the rain-slicked city street behind. There were white-gloved hands ushering her in, and she was sliding down her window, acutely aware of the state of her car; the debris of life with small children. The snowfield of cracker crumbs, and apple cores browned and shrivelled like small dried hearts. She put the car in reverse. What am I doing? she thought. And then the door was opening for her and her legs were moving, and she was getting out.

  ‘Good evening, madam. Will you be staying for the evening?’

  Nathalie found herself nodding, even as her heart raced and her breasts throbbed, rock-hard with unexpressed milk.

  I could be a businesswoman, she thought. Just back from a late meeting in the city with clients. No one is going to know I’m a mother running from her life for the night.

  ‘Will there be luggage to accompany you?’ The gentleman had his head cocked politely.

  The tone of his voice suggested the man had somehow intuited that there would be no luggage. Nathalie knew she probably looked stunned. Even she couldn’t believe she was doing this. She glanced at her phone in her hand. It was 11 pm. On a Tuesday night. There were several missed calls from her husband. She wondered if the girls were asleep, but she knew Richie wouldn’t be. Her breasts told her that. You have left your newborn son. How could you?

  Guilt hit her in the chest like a punch. ‘Oh, I should–’ she turned back towards her car. What? Go home? Have to face him? Have to watch him try to lie? How would she even get the words out of her mouth? Her head throbbed. She needed another drink. The single glass of wine she’d had with her former colleagues had hardly even touched the edges.

  I have dreamt of this, she wanted to tell the man with the white gloves. I never thought I was capable of actually doing it.

  Instead she smiled at him as he took her keys and led her into the foyer. Stepping inside reminded her of opening a jewellery box she’d had as a child. When you lifted the lid soft tinkling music came out and a ballerina began to twirl before a tiny mirror. A sense that there was magic in the world, even for a moment. It smelled like freshly cut flowers and sweet, like vanilla bean ice cream. This was a place of order and quiet. There were solutions to problems with the flick of an elegant wrist. It was just as she’d imagined it on so many sleepless nights.

  I could have driven to the Gap, Nathalie wanted to tell the woman as she handed over her credit card. She watched her neat efficiency and was comforted by it. I could have ended it all and left them motherless. Instead I am taking one night. Just one night. To work out what to do.

  ‘Just one night please.’ Her voice sounded foreign to her, too high pitched. Not the businesswoman she was pretending to be. It sounded like the voice of a mother who had reached the point of hysteria. To calm herself she reached out and touched the petals of the pale roses in the vase next to her, their heads distended, obscenely beautiful. The flesh was soft between her fingers.

  ‘Check-out will be 10 am,’ the woman said. ‘Please sign here.’ The surety of the process of checking in reassured her. People did this all the time. There were women who had three children and jobs, who travelled. She had just forgotten because she hardly left the house. Even orchestrating for her husband to be home in time to feed and bath the kids so that she could go to dinner in the city had been almost impossible. And the only reason he’d agreed was that he thought maybe she’d get some useful ‘contacts’ out of it. He was deluded in thinking that she could work from home while raising three children, two under five. She laughed under her breath and took the key card. The woman gave her an odd look. I’m not even drunk yet, lady, she thought.

  Nathalie gripped the plastic card and headed over the plush carpet towards the lifts. Her phone had one bar left on it. She had no charger. As the lift ascended to the fourth floor, she considered whether she should text him and tell him where she was. So he wouldn’t worry. She thought about all the times she’d asked him to come home at a reasonable hour – begged him, really – to help her at witching hour when the girls were
screaming to be fed and Richie was inconsolable. And he routinely had a meeting, or an important function to attend, and sometimes he’d allude to her being the one who wanted three children, as though he played no part in it. Even though she had never wanted three. It had just happened. As life just happens and you live with it. As though he was removed in some essential way from the way their life was.

  Now she knew why. He’d been meeting this woman. In expensive city hotels just like this. The pain stretched freshly in her chest and the lift door pinged open. She switched her phone off. No. He could be a father for one night, feel the full weight of responsibility.

  She closed the heavy door behind her. Silence, pure and thick enveloped her like a hug. She kicked off her heels and lay on the king-sized bed. The bedding was clean and crisp against her skin. If she closed her eyes she could go to sleep right now and not wake for ten hours straight. It was so tempting. The tiredness was bone-deep. Instead she peeled herself off the bed and went into the bathroom to run the bath. While the water roared, she opened the bar cupboard and found a bottle of pinot noir. She poured herself a generous glass and took a sip. As soon as she swallowed the wine, she knew she’d made the right decision. She reached for her phone and switched it back on. She really should tell him she was here. He’d worry. Part of her said ‘let him’ but the other part ached for her children. For their uncertainty. She tapped out a message. I’m staying in a hotel tonight. I know about your lover. You forwarded the concert tickets to me instead of her. She thought about saying something vindictive, but found she didn’t have the energy. I might be back tomorrow. She pressed send and pressed her palms into her eye sockets.

  The bath was warm, and the wine had made her sleepy. Milk leaked from her breasts into the water in fine white lines, as though she were a sea creature. Tears squeezed from her eyes. Relief and guilt poured out of her and mingled so that she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. It would be so easy to go to sleep and never have to wake up. Never have to face everything. She hadn’t thought about ending her life before. But right now, it would be possible. The sadness felt like a whole sea, swelling inside her, taking up all the space.

  Hey Ruby girl, can’t wait to spend this special night with you. I’ve booked a hotel room for after. Her husband’s words – so full of an energy she hadn’t sensed in him for years – floated into her consciousness and she drained her wine glass.

  She turned the hot water up until her skin scalded, until the bathroom bloated with steam. In the white haze another life opened up in her mind. She was an academic about to travel to Paris on a 6 am flight. She could almost see it, this imaginary life, shimmering in her mind. Maybe it could have been her life if she’d chosen a different path. If she’d chosen a different man. If she hadn’t had three children. She could be heading to France for a conference at the Sorbonne, a small suitcase by her bed filled with chic business attire. This could have been her. She had been an academic seven years ago, in the Sydney University French department. Her desk had overlooked the city in the distance. She’d had time to read Camus and Sartre and discuss with her students their use of imagery and language.

  That language was almost lost to her now, like a dream. Un rêve bizarre. She spoke the words under her breath. They didn’t sound like her own. She turned off the taps and pulled herself up to sitting, pressed her forehead to her knees. Her skin glowed, the same swollen pink as those rose petals in the foyer, and the room spun. Why the hell couldn’t that be her life? She could book a plane ticket online right now, before her phone battery ran out. She could disappear. Start a new life. It was better than having to face him. It was better than dying.

  She stood and her equilibrium was gone. She found herself on the cold tiles without knowledge of having fallen. As she retched into the toilet bowl cool tears ran down her face. The lid of the enchanted jewellery box slammed shut. And she realised with equal parts relief and dread, that she could never, ever abandon her children.

  Jean

  1948

  The hotel glowed against the cliffs like a trick of the light. Music echoed through the still night air. They called it the grandest hotel west of the Blue Mountains. The staircase in the foyer was built from the finest marble. It was rumoured to have taken a hundred men to transport the slabs into the valley. At dusk white statues shone in the gardens and Jean would wonder about what life was like inside its halls, where the mining officials, the wealthy and the important stayed when they visited.

  The music called to her like a siren song. She would feel its stirrings in her belly, her body swaying unconsciously. That old muscle memory. She’d wonder which dance everyone was dancing. The Lindy Hop? The Balboa? The West Coast Swing? She used to know such things. She used to instigate such things. She used to be one of the women swirling in their full skirts, the filmy fabric catching the candlelight. The champagne, the delicacies, the fragrant haze of cigar smoke. She had known it all. And then she would shake her head and turn back to the task at hand. That wasn’t her life anymore. She wasn’t that person anymore. She’d tell herself the music had no purchase. She’d shut the windows and the doors against it, keeping her feet planted firmly on the ground. There was wood to chop and fires to light before the dusk ushered in the cold night and Robert would be hungry for dinner.

  But tonight was different. Tonight she could not resist the beat in her blood. The music had been louder, more insistent than usual. It had felt like a twin heartbeat in her chest all evening as they ate their meal and she read Liv a story before bed. She knew that she must glimpse inside that life, even just for a moment. Just a sliver, a taste would be enough to fill her up.

  By the time Jean reached the hotel by foot it was well after midnight. She could smell the chalky dust from the road on her dress. The music coming from inside was beautiful; mournful and slow. The kind of music to rest one’s head on a man’s shoulder. She had dressed in her best dress. Black because it was always elegant. Now it would just be dusty. As she looked through the window, she saw the women inside dancing and her heart sank. They were officers’ and town officials’ wives. Their hats were from Sydney’s top milliners. Their dresses had not been sewn by hand at machines on the kitchen table, they’d been purchased in department stores and wrapped in delicate tissue. The only way valley women could purchase a new frock was from a hawker who – rumour had it – sold clothing taken from a Sydney morgue. These women wore gloves that extended past their elbows and their lips were stained with expensive lipstick. Had she been so stupid to think she’d somehow steal into this place? She slept under a blanket sewn from sugar bags and wore the second-hand clothing of dead people.

  The hotel doors flung open and a woman tripped out. Her blonde hair was pinned into fashionable curls with exquisite red clips and she wobbled on matching red heels. She swung around, as though sensing Jean’s presence under the tall arched window.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t see you there.’ The woman’s gaze was hazy, as though she needed spectacles but wasn’t wearing them.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jean, feeling her face warm in the dark as the woman moved towards her. Her body swayed a little, but whether from languor or wine, she couldn’t tell. Jean herself had taken a glass of sherry for courage before sneaking out of the house.

  ‘Let’s sit out here and smoke, shall we? It’s so hot in there.’ The woman adjusted her long red satin gloves and perched on a garden seat, placed a cigarette between her lips.

  Jean looked around. The only other beings were the nymph statues in the garden, gleaming in the bright moonlight. Was this woman talking to her?

  The woman held out cigarettes. Jean moved towards her and took one tentatively from a beautiful silver case. She sat down next to her, acutely aware of her plain dress and cheap rouge. The woman’s nails were the exact same shade of red as the rest of her ensemble.

  ‘Oh, these parties are such a bore sometimes, aren’t they?’ The woman took a long drag and sighed out the smoke. ‘I just needed to get
some air. You know, it’s so beautiful out here. So quiet. Look at those stars. Those cliffs.’

  They both looked up at the stars salting the sky.

  ‘Oh, I feel rather ill doing that. I’m afraid I’ve had a little champagne. Sorry, I’ve been so rude, I’m Clara. Clara Black.’

  Jean took her hand and nodded politely. Should she give another name? Her mind was racing. ‘Jean,’ she said, wondering if the woman had even guessed that she was an interloper, with her poor dress and dusty shoes. She took a drag from the cigarette, which was much smoother than the ones she sometimes pinched from Robert.

  Clara looked at her. ‘So, how do you like life out here, Jean?’

  Jean paused, unsure of how to answer the question, unsure of whether Clara had pegged her as an intruder. ‘You mean in the valley?’

  ‘Yes, I mean, we’re so far from civilisation out here. It’s kind of an amazing place, don’t you think?’

  Jean was silent. Only an official’s wife could think this. Jean lived in a roughly constructed fibro house that sweltered in the heat, froze in the cold and had rats, and she was considered one of the lucky ones because she wasn’t still in a tent. Robert came home black with oil from the mines each night. She took a guess about Clara Black. ‘Do you live in the hotel?’

  Clara nodded. ‘Yes, they tell us there’ll be fabulous new housing built, but we just have to make do with living in a hotel for now.’

  Jean cleared her throat. The hotel had a winding marble staircase, long, cool corridors and food that came via wait staff out of an industrial kitchen, or at least that’s what she’d heard. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s a nice enough hotel, for these parts, you’d have to agree. But the rooms are very small, and we all have to share bathrooms, so it’s far from ideal. Where have they put you?’ Clara took a lipstick out of her purse and pressed it to her bottom lip.

  ‘Oh, I love that shade of red,’ said Jean, keen to steer the conversation away from living quarters.

  Clara passed her the lipstick. ‘Here, try it. It would suit your skin tone, too.’