Chapter 7

The treatment was everything Dr. Smith had warned it would be.

Gerald arranged a full care team: a specialist physiotherapist, a nutritionist, a private nurse for the first month. The family housekeeper at the Kensington house adapted every meal to what I actually wanted to eat, which I discovered I had opinions about once someone bothered to ask.

Gerald sat with me one evening and asked about university.

I found myself talking about it — the grant application process, the part-time jobs alongside coursework, the bursary meal plan at the student refectory that got me through years of lunches I didn't enjoy. Cheap white-bread sandwiches that I ate because they were the affordable option, not because anyone had thought about what I might like.

Gerald listened without interrupting.

When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.

"She had you for twenty-five years," he said finally. "I can't understand it."

He meant my mother. He'd had no way of knowing she would run, or that her reasons for running would lead her to punish the child they'd had together instead of dealing with her own grief. He said it like it sat heavily on him.

I didn't tell him it was fine. It wasn't. But I was learning to understand it as a fact rather than an open wound.