What Lies Between Us(63)

Nina continues to glare at me as I return, defeated, to the bed. If she’s telling the truth and has used Moxydogrel on me, there must have been leftovers among the empty boxes in the basement suitcases. I curse myself for not having thrown them out years ago. I’d planned to take them to the rubbish tip along with Alistair’s clothes and any other incriminating items. Only I never got around to it and over time, I forgot. How stupid of me to leave my secrets and lies in one place and under this roof, yards away from the person they affected the most. I left a trophy cabinet of my failings as a mother for her to find.

‘I did it for you,’ I say first.

‘Which part?’ she replies.

‘Every part.’

‘Spell it out for me. The part where you made me miscarry? The part where you told me my daughter was born dead, only she was a he and you gave him away? How about the part where the medication you force-fed me made me infertile? Or the part where you killed my dad and sent me a birthday card every year pretending to be him? Precisely which part of any of that did you do for me?’

She knows almost everything. ‘I had to protect you,’ I say.

‘From what?’

I want to say from yourself but I can’t. Instead I find someone else to blame. ‘From Hunter.’

‘You did all of this just to keep us apart? Well, that’s a lie because I hadn’t met Jon before you killed Dad. I know why you did this. Because you couldn’t stand having to share me with anyone else – not Dad, not Jon and not my son. You hated it when anyone else threatened to come between us. Even when I wanted to adopt.’

‘No, Nina, you have it all wrong.’ I can no longer hold back my tears.

‘Then tell me why, Maggie,’ she snaps. ‘Tell me why you did these things.’

But I cannot. I can’t give her my reasoning. It is too tightly bound with chains and padlocks like those on my ankle and which I will never open. Nina cannot learn the truth. The lies must continue. ‘Hunter was wrong for you. He was going to hurt you.’

‘He wanted to be a father.’

‘He didn’t deserve to be one. He was a paedophile who groomed you. He had a girlfriend that he didn’t tell you about and who he went on to kill. You could have so easily been Sally Ann Mitchell. You must be able to see that?’

‘You didn’t know him like I did.’ Nina adds a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Jon loved me.’

‘You wouldn’t have stood a chance with him and a baby. By taking you out of that situation, I gave you a second chance at life.’

She gives an unamused laugh. ‘A life? Is that what you call this? You’re the reason I have nothing to show for my life.’

‘Is that what this is all about?’ I say, grabbing at and rattling my chain. ‘You’re doing all this to punish me for trying to give you a better life? For giving my grandson better opportunities?’

‘That wasn’t your decision to make! He was my baby and you gave him up.’

‘You were in no fit state to be a mother.’

Nina rises to her feet and jabs her finger in my chest. ‘You didn’t give me the opportunity to try! It was not up to you to decide that for me.’

I know what she is capable of and I am a sitting duck. I need to calm her but I don’t know how to control the narrative. I am out of my depth. ‘I’m your mother,’ I say. ‘I did what I thought was best for you.’

‘What, like telling me I had dodgy chromosomes that would kill any baby I became pregnant with?’

‘I wanted to frighten you into being careful.’

‘Why not make me go on the Pill?’

‘I couldn’t make you do anything back then. You couldn’t even take precautions after I told you about your condition.’

‘The condition that I never actually had because you made it up? Where did you even come up with such a thing?’

‘It was a case study I read about during my midwife training. It stuck with me.’

‘Were you ever going to tell me the truth?’

‘Yes, when you were an adult.’

‘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.’