‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ she says. I can feel the knife, feel the shake in her hand through it. ‘You’re really scared.’

‘Julia, that’s enough,’ shouts Barbara. ‘Just put the knife down.’

‘I was scared once,’ she says, ignoring the old woman’s pleas. ‘But then I learned to look after myself. You have to, when you’re all alone in the world.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, remembering her dead mother. ‘It must have been very tough for you.’

She stares at me and for a moment her expression softens; she’s changing her mind. But then her face twists again and she slides the knife across my cheek.

‘No,’ cries Barbara. ‘Julia, stop.’

‘It’s nothing more than a paper cut,’ she says, putting her fingers to it. It stings. ‘You forget, I’m a doctor.’

‘Why are you doing this to me, Julia?’ I say. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither did I,’ she says, taking the knife away. ‘I didn’t understand why I’d been abandoned. I was a little girl, a scared little girl who just wanted her mummy. I was trapped in hell hole after hell hole waiting patiently for the day when she would walk through the door and rescue me. But she never did so I got on with my life without her. Well, guess what? I found her.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

And then I look at her. The straight blonde hair, the pale-green eyes, her clear-sighted intelligence. I see myself, Elspeth and Ben all rolled into one.

‘You mean … you’re …’

‘I’m your daughter?’ says Julia. ‘Yes. I am. The daughter you tried to kill.’

54

As I sit looking into Julia’s hate-filled eyes, the event I have spent my life blocking out comes back to me. I try but I can’t stop it. When I attempted suicide that first time they managed to save the baby I was carrying. I was pumped so full of drugs that I remember very little about it, only what my mother told me afterwards. That the baby was born by caesarean section; that she was a girl weighing three pounds six ounces; that she was taken straight to the special care baby unit where she was handed over to the care of Social Services, which, my mother told me, ‘was for the best’. Since then I’ve tried so hard not to think about that baby, and what became of her. I tried to put her to the back of my mind, but it was no use; she was always there. My missing piece.

‘How … how did you find me?’

‘That’s not important,’ says Julia, picking up the knife again.

‘Look, let’s talk,’ I say, my voice high-pitched with fear. ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’

Julia stares at me for a moment and then starts to laugh.