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"I’m so sorry," I whispered.
Enid shook her head, unable to speak.
"For what?" Robert asked. His deep voice may as well have been my own. "None of this is your fault."
"We could have questioned things more," Hector said behind me.
"We look so much like you," I said quietly. Both had dark hair, thick even in their advancing years, and eyes like glistening coal. "How little we look like Iris and Sinclair. It’s so obvious now."
Adele pulled two chairs to either side of the sofa so that Hector and I could sit. As I turned, my eyes searched for Vivian.
“They’re just next door,” Adele said, smiling. "You probably want some time alone. I’ll be in the kitchen with the girls."
"You are such handsome young men." Enid’s trembling voice turned me towards her.
"Must be good genes,” I said, trying my hardest to put her at ease.
"Why did you do it?" Hector asked, suddenly. I flashed him a look; it didn’t feel like the right time to interrogate - we’d only just got there.
Enid turned to face him; her dry lips parted. “We didn’t have any choice."
Hector’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
"The Thorns threatened to take away our home, our jobs, everything. We’d have had nothing to give you.”
"Why did they choose you?” I asked.
Robert looked fondly at his wife. “There was something of a likeness between the Thorns and us and… well, once upon a time, Sinclair was infatuated with Enid here. Of course, it wasn’t allowed, but not only that, Enid made it quite clear she wasn’t interested.”
He patted her leg in a move that spoke of pride. “You were probably the only woman in the island who didn’t deny him."
"I only had eyes for you,” Enid whispered, peering into Robert’s. It was clear there was still a lot of love there - something we rarely saw in the Consortium world.
“Sinclair never forgot, and we heard that Iris was plagued by miscarriages. They got lucky with Ossian but then years passed and there were no more babies.” Robert dropped his head and Enid placed a hand on his arm. "Then they approached us."
"They knew I was pregnant," Enid said, her voice gaining in confidence, her tone gaining in bitterness. "At first they simply offered us money and of course we refused. We’d had fertility issues of our own and were just beyond happy to be expecting our first child.”
Robert took in a sharp breath. "The second time they came back they told us our house would be bulldozed and our jobs cut if we didn’t give them our first born. We knew at that point people had died at their hands and we were petrified. They said if we handed you over, we could keep our home, but we decided we couldn’t stay on the island and watch someone else raise our child. So, they paid for us to live on the mainland."
"Leaving Crow was the hardest thing we’ve ever done…" Enid said, more tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Not a day goes by when we don’t miss it, or miss the family we could have been," Robert added.
"If you’d already been moved to the mainland," Hector continued, unmoved, "why did you give me up too?"
Enid covered her face with a tissue, muffling more sobs and an avalanche of tears.
"Because the house the Thorns gave us wasn’t worth the deeds it came with. It was demolished along with the rest of the estate and we were suddenly homeless," Robert explained. His rounded eyes implored us to believe him. I did, but Hector clearly needed more persuading. "Our employment was also demolished. We both worked for one of the local shops, so when the place was flattened, our jobs went too."
Enid looked up, sniffing through more tears. "We had no savings, no decent qualifications…"
Robert squeezed her hand again then turned back to me. "Growing up on Crow doesn’t equip you for life in the real world. Not now it’s become the home of those billionaires. Before then it was just another Scottish island. Now… it’s a prison."
"You haven’t answered my question," Hector said in a clipped tone. I shot him another glare. I understood he was hurting but I could clearly see that they were too.
"We reached out to the Thorns.” Robert dropped his gaze to the floor and chuckled bitterly. "They were expecting us. They’d known the estate they placed us in was going to be destroyed. And they knew we couldn’t have earned and saved any money of our own. So, when we did make contact with them, they demanded we give them you." Robert looked up at Hector. "You hadn’t even been born."
"We only found out I was pregnant after we were evacuated from the housing estate," Enid said, dabbing her eyes.
