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‘Do you really hate me that much?’
She could feel the chill hit the room.
‘Don’t start believing your little lover’s words now,’ her mother warned, her voice so sharp that it could have cut through Fliss deeper than any physical wound.
And it would have. Before Ash.
‘Do you hate me?’ She advanced on her mother, a tiny sliver of her old self returning with each step.
In an instant, her mother’s face twisted into a smile that was too ugly to be anything but loathing.
‘You ruined my only chance at happiness the day you were born.’
‘You knew your dancing was over when you realised you were pregnant.’ Fliss wasn’t trying to antagonise, but it was something she’d always wondered about and never understood.
‘Why didn’t you get rid of me if you felt that strongly? Why have a child only to put it through such utter hell?’
‘You think that isn’t what I tried to do?’ her mother spat, the truth embedding itself into Fliss’s very being.
‘Why did you change your mind?’ she whispered.
There was no regret, no empathy, no love in her mother’s reply. The scornful tone like applying heat to a burn.
‘I didn’t change my mind. I was more than happy to go through with it. But then your grandfather turned up, stormed in and frog-marched me out. White gown and all. There was no way he and your grandmother were ever going to allow me to do something that would shame them even more than they already were by my pregnancy.’
Rushing blood roared in her ears as she clawed at the edge of nothingness with her fingernails, just to try to find a purchase.
‘I’d made a mistake, yes, I’d got pregnant. But the obvious solution to get rid of it wasn’t even a consideration for them. That would be letting me off too lightly; in their eyes I was going to have to live with the consequences.’
‘So because they’d trapped you into a miserable life, you made mine even worse?’ Fliss cried.
‘I tried to get out of there, I took you with me so that you wouldn’t be brought up with the same restrictions I’d had. But the first chance you got, you went running back to them. You chose them over me,’ her mother raged, her face inches away from Fliss’s.
‘I was eight!’
‘You threw everything I did for you back in my face.’
‘You did nothing for me,’ Fliss argued, standing up to her mother for the first time in her life. ‘Except make my life more wretched than it needed to be.’
It was almost too much to take in. Feeling for a chair, Fliss backed up and sat down. Ash had been right. Nothing she could say or do would make a difference to her mother. She was craving affection which was never going to come.
Repeating the cycle would only hurt more people. She’d been hurting herself, and she’d definitely been hurting Ash. They deserved better than that.
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
Standing up on shaky legs, Fliss fixed her mother with a calm, firm stare. Her major’s stare.
‘I think it’s time you left.’
Her mother snorted, deliberately turning her back.
Fliss inched her way to the door, fumbling with the catch as she hauled it open. It felt heavy, almost too heavy, but she gritted her teeth. ‘I said, it’s time you left.’
Her mother gave a bark of laughter. ‘I don’t think so, Felicity.’ She didn’t sound as sure of herself as usual.
‘I’m asking you nicely. Don’t make me do this the other way.’
The words were out before she could stop them. And, to her disbelief, they sounded strong, confident, forceful.
