After lunch, Elle pled a headache, which wasn’t altogether a lie, and headed back to her hotel room. She thought she had been ready to uncover the truth behind whatever Gran had been keeping from her, but she hadn’t been expecting this.

‘Gran?’ she asked a little tentatively as she lay on her bed. She wasn’t sure what all the silence meant, but she knew it wasn’t good. There was a heaviness in her heart. ‘I’m so sorry you went through all that.’ Hot tears dribbled down her cheeks as the enormity of the whole thing came crashing down on her. ‘You must have been so frightened.’

It was all a long time ago. It’s forgotten now, a soft voice floated across to her.

‘How did you carry all that around alone for so long?’

We all live with our sins and secrets, darling.

‘But you were just a child.’

I was old enough to know what I was doing, she said a little dryly, before giving a sad sigh. I thought I was in love. I thought I was going to have a life with him.

‘Did … did Duncan make you have the abortion?’ Elle asked, reluctant to drag up the past but needing to talk about it now that it had been revealed. She had so many questions and desperately wanted to understand it all.

We were both scared. Both so young. When I discovered I was pregnant, I wasn’t terribly worried at first. I was scared of telling my father, of course, but I just assumed that Duncan and I would marry and nothing more would come of it … But Duncan didn’t want to get married.

Elle frowned a little at this news.

Once I realised he didn’t love me as much as I thought he had, I panicked. An unwed mother back then came with a huge stigma. I was terrified of telling my father I was pregnant and all alone. When Duncan told me he knew a place that could take care of our situation, I went along with it. I really didn’t see that I had much of a choice. But it all went wrong. There were complications. It was horrible. Gran’s voice cracked a little. After a pause, she seemed to have regathered herself and she sounded a little more in control again. I think it really scared Duncan—he thought I was going to die. I was still in love with him. I thought he might come to love me as I loved him, but then Father announced that we were leaving. I begged Moira to let me live with her—despite everything, I still loved Duncan very much and I couldn’t bear to leave him.

‘And she wouldn’t let you stay,’ Elle finished, feeling angry again. ‘What about your brothers? Wouldn’t they have let you stay with them?’