Fern dragged her feet down the hallway, past the framed photos she couldn't quite bring herself to look at—Coral in her pumpkin costume, Connor grinning with ice cream on his nose, the three of them at the seaside last summer when, just for a weekend, things had felt the way it should be.
Her bedroom door stood half-open. She nudged it wider with her hip and stepped inside.
Everything was exactly as she'd left it that morning.
The unmade bed, the duvet twisted to one side. The book face-down on the pillow. Her baby pink cardigan was draped over the back of a chair. His crimson hoodie still hung from the wardrobe door where he'd left it a week ago. She crept closer to pull it down and bury her face in it. It still smelt faintly of his aftershave.
Suddenly, she was tired, so tired. This was the end, and she wasn't ready. Her heart was breaking.
Soon, this room wouldn't be hers or his. Soon, half these things would be in boxes, labelled and stacked. Coral's toys, her clothes, her little tepee corner carefully recreated in her dad's house in Sale. Legal papers would divide everything else up into neat percentages.
For now, though, she was adrift in limbo. A life paused between heartbeats, holding its breath to see whether it could survive to the next one.
She walked to the bed and sat on the edge. She tried to stem the silent tears trickling down her cheeks as her heart tore apart at what must happen.
Fern's hands curled into the duvet.
"No more secrets," she whispered into the empty room. "No more pretending."
Down the hall, a cupboard door banged, and Coral's voice floated through, asking Da for 'dino pasta'. The ordinariness of it just made her weep harder. How long has it been since he had done that?
She lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and let herself feel the full, messy tangle of it: grief, fury, guilt, the faintest thread of relief that she was finally,finallymoving forward. It was like she had been holding all in while she waited for the moment she could bring Coral home. Now, she could let go.
There were so many hurdles left and it would take everything she had to see this through. To talk to the police. To deal with her lawyer. To uproot their lives. To stand up to Matilda, to Connor's mum, to whoever chose to stand in her way.
But Coral's small, bandaged hand and the drawing hidden in her handbag were enough to tip the scales.
Fern closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the clatter and murmur of her family in the rest of the house. A curl of anger rose in her chest.
A selfish, illogical part of her whispered that even after Connor got the results, he was still thinking about not letting Jacob down.
What about Coral? What about me?
Was it too much to ask to come first for once?
She rolled onto her side, reached for her phone on the bedside table, and opened the email from her solicitor again.
This time, the words didn't swim.
Fern stared at the solicitor's email until the text blurred, until the neat black lines became nothing but smudges, like a painting someone had dragged a wet thumb across.
Then, carefully, she set the phone back on the bedside table.
She'd been holding herself together all afternoon. Through the wait for Connor. Through the solicitor's office. Through the conversation in the café. Through showing Connor the school letter and telling him she was done. Through the drive home and Harlan's knowing glance. Through the clatter of pans from the kitchen, and Coral's excited commentary about towers and dinosaurs. Her daughter had never spoken like this in her life, almost as if someone had flipped a switch.
Here, alone, there was nothing left to brace against.
She curled onto her side, dragged the quilt up and over her head like she used to as a child, building a private cave where the world couldn't see her. It smelled faintly of fabric softener and the moisturiser she used at night. And Connor.Safe smells,her instinct told her.Familiar ones.
Her chest heaved once, as if caving with pain.
Then again.
Then the sobs tore out of her again, raw and ugly, dragged from somewhere deep inside her. They were the kind of sounds she had held in all week, terrified of scaring Coral. Here, she could let go amidst the familiar creak in the floorboards and the whistle in the windows when the wind hit just right.
The house's soundproofing had never been good, but right now she didn't care.
She pressed her face into the pillow and cried for the girl she'd been when she had met Connor. The girl who had tried so hard to build something sturdy out of the shifting sands. She cried for Coral, for the burn on her small hand, and she cried for the little boy who wasn't Connor's and would soon lose him. She cried for all the years she'd spent making herself smaller, quieter, easier, while everyone else's wants took up the room. For squeezing herself into a teeny-tiny box, just so she could keep this family together with spit and a prayer.
