‘Oh, am I?’ she says, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Well, you can think that if you wish but I like to think that I’m just a mother and a mother will do anything to protect her child, won’t she, Margaret?’

‘Protect your child?’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Ben’s a forty-seven-year-old man. What did he need protecting from?’

‘From you,’ Barbara cries, jumping to her feet. ‘From the pain that you caused him. You have no idea, have you? No idea what your sordid little fumble cost him. It messed up his life for years.’

I go to speak but she shouts over me.

‘You have built your life around being a victim,’ she spits. ‘Poor little Maggie, the kid who had no friends because she talked to herself, the kid who set her sights on my son, dropped her knickers and to hell with the consequences.’

I shake my head, anger rising through my chest.

‘Ben was distraught about the baby,’ she says, eyes blazing. ‘Utterly distraught. He kept asking to speak to you and we had to tell him you refused to see him.’

‘You did what?’

‘We did what was best for our son,’ she says. ‘But he still ended up dropping out of Oxford before the end of his second year. It took him years to get back on track. He’s still never met anyone else. No grandchildren. You destroyed him. And he was so bright, so clever.’

‘So,’ I say, my hands shaking with anger, ‘you think that because Ben dropped out of Oxford it excuses the fact that you watched my child screaming for help and did nothing?’

‘It was your fault she was there. Your fault you didn’t put the handbrake on,’ Barbara yells.

‘You think it excuses the fact that you played with your granddaughter’s head and let her believe that you’d passed her letters on to me?’

‘I was not playing with her head, I was protecting her from you,’ she screams. ‘What good would it have done to give you the letters? You were in no fit state to be a mother to anyone, let alone a damaged child.’

Behind me, Julia gasps. ‘What did you say?’

She stands frozen to the spot, her eyes on Barbara.

‘Julia, please, you don’t know what kind of a person your mother was,’ says Barbara, her voice shaking. ‘She was – is – highly disturbed. I was protecting you. I –’

‘No,’ says Julia. ‘No.’

‘Julia, calm down,’ says Barbara. ‘Let me explain this to you.’

‘There is nothing to explain,’ says Julia.

‘You were in that awful place,’ says Barbara, her voice growing high-pitched with fear and agitation. ‘I just wanted to give you a bit of hope.’

Julia nods her head ominously.

‘You promised me,’ she says, her voice low and menacing. ‘You looked me in the eye and promised me. Why would you do that?’