I will forgive them. In time. I think a part of me already has. They are my parents, after all, and I love them. None of this would even have happened if they hadn’t yearned for a baby. If Mum hadn’t taken matters into her own hands and slept with Mick Dawson as a means to an end. If Dad hadn’t loved her so very much and understood her desperate need for a child of her own. If he hadn’t been selfless enough to swallow his pride and become my father. My real father. Because let’s face it, never mind the biology, that’s what he is. That’s what he’s always been.

Whatever misguided motives they had for not telling me the truth, I have to accept that they thought they were doing it for the right reasons.

Unlike Ross.

Ross. My toes clench in their stupid elf slippers. I promised myself I wouldn’t think of him today, but how can I not? The mind has a knack for making you think of things you’d rather not. Another letter from HMP Wormwood Scrubs arrived last week. He said all the same stuff he said in the last one, but this time he’s included a long confession, written out like a story, so that I understand exactly how it happened. Why it happened. I haven’t read it yet. I will, though. Eventually.

Will knowing the details make any difference to the way I feel about him? Somehow, I doubt it. Because the man I fell in love with doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of my imagination, of his and Catherine’s devious little plan. He’s a projection of my own romantic longings.

When they led him away at the end of the trial, I felt sorry for him, naturally. Prison must be a dreadful experience. But seeing him in that courtroom was like looking at a stranger.

I never knew Ross Murray at all.

I like to think about the sort of man he could have been, if he’d never gone to live with his aunt Jessie in Riley Road. If he’d never met Catherine Dawson and been taken over by her. Because I caught a glimpse of that man. He was always there, somewhere. And that man loved me. I have to believe that.

I do believe that.