‘I’m thirty-bloody-six! How much longer did I have to wait?’
I can’t answer that.
‘Why did you tell me I had a daughter, not a son?’ she continues.
‘Because I wanted to give you something that you really wanted.’
‘Careful, Maggie, it almost sounds like you cared.’
‘I did care! I do care. I’ve always cared. Perhaps too much.’
‘If you didn’t trust me to be a parent then why didn’t you help me to raise him?’
‘You wouldn’t have allowed that.’
‘How do you know? Because again, you never asked.’
‘Because you were too obsessed with Hunter and he wasn’t good for either of you. And because you didn’t listen to a word I said. You did as you pleased, coming and going at all times of the day and night. Pregnant twice by the time you were fourteen? How can you honestly tell me that you or that drug abuser were in any fit state to be parents?’ She knows I am right because she changes the subject instead of countering.
‘How long was Dylan here for?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘You wouldn’t forget something like that.’
‘Two, maybe three days.’
‘How did you look after me and him? How did I not hear him crying?’
‘I was careful.’
‘You mean you knocked me out with drugs.’
To her evident frustration, I don’t answer this, or any of the other questions about those few days or even how I found Dylan his new family. So she changes direction.
‘Did you know the Moxydogrel was going to put me in early menopause? That by nineteen, I wouldn’t be able to have any more children of my own?’
‘Of course not. Nobody knew the side effects before it was too late and it was withdrawn from the market.’
‘But if you hadn’t made me take them, I could have had a family.’
‘I know, and for that I’m sorry, Nina, I am so, so sorry. You have to believe me.’
‘I don’t have to believe anything. Are you sorry for giving Dylan away?’
I hesitate and choose my words carefully. ‘It was the right thing to do at the time.’
‘You even denied me my name on his birth certificate. Why did you use your own?’
‘In case one day he tried to find his mother, so he would find me instead. I thought it would be too stressful for you to deal with.’
‘You mean foryouto deal with. And you’d have lied to him like you lied to me. And what about Dad? Why did you kill him?’
I look away. I’m not sorry he is dead, not one bit. But telling her this would not be wise. ‘I’m sorry that things ended up the way they did.’
