Would Maisie have carried on tearing her apart then?

Becky has rehearsed the moment many times, picturing Maisie as she learns that her father – the man she loves most in the world, who gets her humour, who makes pancakes with her, who kisses her hello and goodbye and with whom she feels safe – broke into her mother, and then lied. And lied and lied.

No longer the child of two kids who were once in love enough to do it, and then kept her because they loved her, and still love her together. Instead, a child born of violence. A nearly-given-away child. A lied-to infant, daughter of a deceived and broken mother and her manipulative rapist. Her baby face searched for evidence of her paternity.

What happens when your story collapses? How do you fill the gaps that you are left with? Becky knows something about that, and it is the last thing she wants for her daughter. But it is the price that would be paid for justice with Adam. There is no way around that. If she wants to keep her child as she is today – happy, loved, and whole – then there is no place for the truth.

And so she makes a choice.

She chooses her daughter, who in this moment is screaming at her and calling her a terrible person and angrily claiming that she will never forgive her for having done this to another woman.

Becky chooses her daughter.

Let Maisie scorn her. Let Maisie reject her. Let Maisie hate her, if she must – but Becky knows she will never reach for Medea’s knives and poisons.

She will let Adam have Maisie, only for the sake of letting Maisie have Adam.

She will not knowingly raise her daughter, part of a new generation, to feel broken, at fault and ashamed.

When Adam stopped coming round to their flat, Maisie of course had her narrative. Becky was the cause and Adam’s absence was the effect.

Maisie was furious. She demanded that Becky make things right. Unlike Lily, whose parents could apparently not be within a thousand yards of each other, she had a Mum and Dad who hung out. Who liked each other!

‘I’m sorry,’ Becky had said, again, as Maisie set off for Adam’s flat, enraged at the new distance.

Becky had cried. Not for her daughter now, and not for Amber either, but finally for herself.

Adam had lost nothing but Becky. How could that possibly be fair?

Maisie’s whole school knew about her mother. Overnight she flipped from being someone who was making a cool feminist film with rising star Emilia Cosvelinos, to a hypocrite, career-prioritizing, woman-trashing, liar-bitch. The woman in the kitchen. The woman who did not come forward (at least not straight away).

One night, soon after the news broke, she heard Maisie come crashing and tripping back into their flat.