Chapter 2

Once, I was easy to provoke. Lily's particular brand of comments used to detonate something in me every time.

Part of the reason was that watching my mother with Lily gave me a glimpse of the woman she could have been — patient, warm, generous. Nothing like the person she was with me.

I'm allergic to onions. My mother is fond of them. For an entire summer when I was about ten, she served nothing but white rice and onion dishes, three times a day. Even the chicken soup had onion in it. A compliance test, I understood later. She liked to see how far I'd go.

I'd never met my father. She'd made it clear that his name was not to be spoken. Once, when I was very small, I'd asked where he was, and she slapped me hard enough that my ears rang. I learned not to ask again.

The person who held me together through all of that was Bryce. For a long time he was the whole of my world.

His parents worked away and left him with his grandmother. After the onion summer, he had her make me egg fried rice. After that, I was always running to his kitchen. He kept his pockets full of whatever he thought I'd like — strawberry pastries, sweets, the little chewy snacks I was obsessed with — and fed me like I was something that needed caring for. We made plans together: the same university in London, then marriage, then children, then his grandmother would finally get the grandchildren she kept asking about.

And then my mother brought home Lily Forsythe.

Lily had come from a struggling family somewhere remote and had worked extremely hard to get into the local secondary school on scholarship. My mother admired her resilience. She cancelled my music lessons and used the money for Lily's fees and tutoring. I hated that. I hated the way Lily played helpless and my mother fell for it every time. I refused to speak to her voluntarily.

Bryce would put his hand on my head and promise he'd always be on my side.

Then, one afternoon after school, he saw Lily sitting alone on the playing field eating dry crackers and cold leftovers.

I found out much later that she'd been given meals at our house every day. There was nothing dry or cold about what she ate in my mother's kitchen. But Bryce had seen what she'd let him see, and it changed something in his face.

He took me aside that week and chose his words carefully.

"Zara, don't you think you can be a little ungenerous sometimes? Your mum treats everyone well except you. Maybe that's worth thinking about."

I was so thoroughly conditioned by my mother's version of reality that I actually sat with that for days, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Meanwhile, he was using my mother's name as cover. Cancelling plans with me to tutor Lily. Giving up my birthday celebrations because she'd mentioned she'd never been to an amusement park. I didn't know any of it at the time.

That ignorance is the only reason I kept up a long-distance relationship with him for four years.

Until the year I graduated. I came home early with my luggage and found Lily and Bryce in my childhood bedroom, barely dressed and wrapped up in each other.

I cried all night. It felt like a building collapsing.

Four years of promises. Four years of him flying across the country to see me, swearing we'd get engaged the moment I finished. Gone overnight.

I screamed and told Lily to get out. My mother slapped me and said it was her house and she'd decide who stayed.

I broke up with Bryce on the spot and applied for a war correspondent post abroad. My mother didn't blame Lily. She started the process of making her an unofficial second daughter. The only reason it never formalised was that Lily's own parents objected.