[In this bite-sized chapter, we meet Zoe Thomas who makes a discovery that will change her life and unbeknown to her at the time, unearth a more than 40-year-old mystery. This will ultimately open the proverbial pandora’s box and cause chaos to a number of now-settled individuals and their families. In future episodes, this revelation, for our Detective Inspector Dan Hooper, will add to his workload as the chief investigating officer, and force his partner in crime-fighting, Eloise Delaney to cut short her long-service leave and return to work.]

Who do ya think ya woz?

Monday January 17, 2022, 10:00 hours

Huon Valley, Tasmania

Zoe Thomas

While the mourners and well-meaning well-wishers and the like gathered in the church hall, loading their plates with condolences and their mouths with egg sandwiches, Zoe Thomas slipped out. Unnoticed, she slid around the corner away from the toilets and then leant up against the whitewashed wall warmed by the summer sun.

‘Oy!’ her dad called. ‘Y’ all right?’

She sighed. ‘Yeah, fine for a girl who’s just lost her mother, if you could call her that.’

‘What do ya mean by that?’ Dad rolled out a cigarette, flicked his lighter to flame, then cupped his hands to gently start the smoking ritual. Then with the cigarette hanging from his mouth said, ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead.’

‘You’re not my father, so how do I know that she’s my mother?’

‘Oh, what makes you think that I’m not ya pa?’

Zoe pulled a folded piece of paper, a computer printout, from her little black handbag. She opened it up and while he puffed away, she held it in front of him. ‘This says that a Francis Renard is my closest relative, my father, most probably. How do you explain that, Dad? I mean Greg.’

Greg blanched. ‘Oh, yes, well.’

‘Well? Did mum have a fling with this Francis Renard forty years ago? In 1981?’

Her father looked away before taking another drag on his cigarette. ‘She said neva to tell ya this. Ova ‘er dead body, she did. Well, now the bosses gone, I need to get somethink off me chest.’

‘What?’

‘Ya mutha woz not ya mutha.’ Greg coughed, a hacking cough.

‘What are you saying, Dad?’ She punched Greg softly on the arm. ‘You need to quit smoking before it…I don’t want to be staring down at you in a coffin or organising your funeral so soon after mum’s.’

Her dad cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, I know. Must give up.’ Then in a husky voice. ‘You woz adopted, luv.’

‘Oh, that explains it. You don’t mind if I chase up my birth parents, then? Which adoption agency did you go through?’

‘We didn’t. You came out of the apple orchard, ‘n paid for like.’

‘Huh? Come again?’

 ‘The truth woz, you wozn’t exactly a legal adoption.’ Greg sighed. ‘More like an arrangement between friends. Well, what I mean to say is that we ‘elped a girl who got ‘erself into trouble, out of ‘er trouble.’

‘For her financial benefit,’ Zoe said.

‘Yeah, but please don’t tell anyone. The missus, your mum didn’t want any trouble for us or the girl. She had a sad life and we just wanted to make sure she got off on the right foot and could make a go of it. And well, we couldn’t ‘ave children, so it was well, an arrangement that suited both parties.’

Zoe looked at Greg. ‘Do I know my birth mother? Did you stay connected with her?’

Greg shook his head. ‘It’s a long time ago, pet. Mum thought it best we didn’t. We didn’t want the townsfolk asking too many questions or the cops getting involved. And losing you.’

‘What was her name?’

Greg shrugged.

‘Do you know where she came from, at least?’

‘From the mainland, I think.’ Greg threw the spent stub on the pavement and ground it with his foot. ‘Came here for the apple picking season when we ‘ad the orchard in the Huon Valley. Stayed on in a caravan in the paddock till you woz born.’

‘You must’ve got to know where on the mainland?’

Greg rolled another cigarette. ‘All I know woz, she had a posh accent, like from England. It was a long time ago, luv. A long time…all under the bridge, now.’

[…continued next Friday fortnight]

© Tessa Trudinger 2024

Feature Photo: Sleeping Beauty over Huon River © L.M. Kling 2016

***

Sometimes characters spring from real life,

Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction.

Sometimes real life is just real life.

Check out my travel memoirs,

And escape in time and space

To Central Australia.

Click on the links:

The T-Team with Mr. B: Central Australian Safari 1977

Trekking with the T-Team: Central Australian Safari 1981

Or for a greater escape into another world…

Check out my Sci-fi/ dystopian novel,

And click on the link:

The Lost World of the Wends