She looked at his gravestone through the weeds and eyed the years of bird excrement hardened on the top of the stone.

‘Perhaps that’s because you never had anything to gloat about. Nor you,’ she said as she glanced at her mother’s grave with contempt. ‘You both wasted your lives, and tried to waste mine. But you didn’t succeed. Look at me now. I’m rich. I’m happy. I have everything that I’ve ever wanted, and it’s no thanks to either of you.’

The sneer slipped from her face as tears sprang in her eyes. All of her hard work was decaying like the graves at her feet. She was losing control of her marriage, and someone else held the reins. She looked around the graveyard to check she was alone, and leaned in to whisper.

‘I’ve worked so hard to get here, and someone is trying to take it all away.’

The tears fell. She swiped them from her face, and unknowingly smeared mud across her right cheek.

‘I know you don’t care, but if I can’t tell the dead of my pain, then who?’

She read their names engraved into the stones, where only the dates of their lives were detailed below. No loving message of being a mother or a wife, husband or father – just the cold, heartless facts. The first thing she did when her grandmother died was replace their gravestones with the most basic, loveless stones she could find.

As she read their names inside her head, she thought of them sneering at her below the earth and stood on shaking legs.

‘I bet you think I’m getting what I deserve,’ she spat. ‘Well you’re wrong. You always were wrong about me.’

She clenched onto the shears until her knuckles whitened. It was only when her jaw clicked that she noticed she was grinding her teeth again.

‘If you had given me the upbringing I deserved, I wouldn’t have had to fight so hard for so long. I wouldn’t be filled with all this hate.’ She stared down at the shears quivering in her muddied hand. ‘And you would both still be alive.’

She stood up and paced back and forth before the graves.

‘All you wanted for me was nothing but a life of grafting and poverty. You wanted me to live the same sorry lives you were dealt. You didn’t want me to succeed, but become a lazy, worthless slob like you both. You make me sick!’

Her words echoed through the yard. She swiped the tears from her face with her coat sleeve.