Free Ricochet Baby by Fiona Kidman

beneath a central wrought iron dome covered with Mrs Herbert Stevens roses, their white petals like a fountain. The singers have attracted the day trippers around them.
    ‘I have asked myself questions,’ says Sarah. She hasn’t intended to say anything, but the madrigal singers are humming softly to themselves, like an orchestra tuning for a performance, and the women in their absurd costumes, the high sweet buzz behind their closed lips and the scent of roses unleash an unintentional torrent of words. ‘At night, when I was supposed to be asleep in whatever Godforsaken hole we happened to be in at the time, I would lie awake and ask myself what I would do if I was given away a second time. I was afraid of being on my own. I was scared of the dark, because people could hide in the shadows and take me away.’
    ‘Oh Sarah, not now dear.’ People around them are raising their fingers to their lips, signalling for them to be quiet.
    ‘You started it. At least let me tell you what I think. Let me tell you the questions I’ve asked.’
    The singers finish putting their song sheets in order. They begin to sing ‘Scarlet Ribbons’. Wendy eyes widen with longing.
    Sarah touches her own hair in a surprised way, as if she is discovering something, and begins to walk away, moving so quickly that Wendy has to lengthen her stride to keep up.
    ‘I thought I was so lucky to be chosen by you,’ says Sarah.
    ‘And now you don’t?’ They continue through an avenue of elms planted closely together, their pleached branches forming an overhead tunnel.
    ‘To tell you the truth, Wendy, the question I ask myself is, what authorities in the world would have given me to a barmy couple like you and Mac. That’s the real question, isn’t it?’
    Wendy sits down abruptly on a woodland seat, looking out towards the rolling farmland, her face drained of colour. She begins to burrow in her bag, searching for something. Already, Sarah has begun to regret her thin tirade, even though she believes that she has said what she means, that the question has been lying there waiting to catch up with them both, sooner or later.
    ‘Children think these things,’ she says lamely. ‘I’ve got kids of my own now.’
    ‘But you’re not a child, Sarah.’ Wendy produces what she has been looking for, one of the silver birds. The sight of it silences Sarah. The singers’ voices rise ever more sweetly in the summer afternoon: ‘If I live to be a hundred, I will never know from where, came those lovely scarlet ribbons, scarlet ribbons for her hair …’ It is like the setting of a period movie — the rustic seats, the splendid backdrop of trees, the country women’s pure voices soaring into the sunshine.
    ‘Why have you brought those?’
    ‘That, actually. I’ve only got one now. I want you to have it.’
    ‘Where’s the other one?’ Sarah is becoming frightened.
    ‘I sold it.’
    ‘My inheritance?’
    ‘Hardly important, by the sound of it.’
    ‘I told you I could give you some money’
    ‘Tony’s money So you did. Pay your debts, eh? Get me off your back.’
    ‘That’s not true.’
    ‘So what’s true? You’re the one telling all the truth, Sarah.’ Wendy stares into the distance, her knotted hands clutching the bird, her face closed.
    ‘Nothing’s the truth. I’ve been left in the lurch and I’m unhappy and I just want to forget all this, okay?’
    Wendy doesn’t appear to hear her. In the distance something catches her eye and she almost rises to her feet.
    ‘I needed the money,’ Wendy tells Sarah in an offhand way.
    ‘For what?’
    ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Sarah,’ says Wendy, ‘you do go on about things.’ She drops the bird back in her bag. ‘I met a man from the Welfare Department on the beach up at home.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘No, no, why should you? Well, for a certain sum of money, he assured me he could find me the name of your birth mother. There are rotten apples in every basket, I