Then her father had turned up periodically, upsetting the whole household with his presence. She had loved seeing him, had loved all the attention he gave her, the presents, the hugs and the cuddles. Then one morning she would get out of bed and he would be gone. Those were the days when he had come back and slept in her mum’s bed. Her mother would be glowing with happiness - then off he went. He would take all the good things with him. Her mother would be hurt, Lizzy would be hurt, and her granny would be annoyed with them all.

She would hear her mother sobbing in the night and it would tear her apart. In her schoolgirl heart she would vow that if her father turned up again, she would not talk to him, would not let him use her any more. Then months later the vow would be forgotten when she would come in from school to find him ensconced in an armchair, a big smile on his handsome face, and his voice would be like a caress as he told her how she had grown, how beautiful she was, and how he was home for good now.

But it never lasted.

Then, lastly, there was her granny, the mainstay of her life. She loved that woman with every ounce of her being. But deep inside herself she had always wondered why Gran had never done anything to make her mother stay home more often. Why she had sacrificed her own life for her daughter’s and granddaughter’s. And somewhere along the line Lizzy had started to think that her granny was a fool. That she was weak and foolish to spend her life looking after her grown-up daughter and grandchild. She got nothing out of it.

Lizzy had pondered these thoughts now for two weeks, and she was finally making some sense of them.

She wanted badly to go to Australia. She wanted to get away from the memory of what she had done, to herself and to her family. She wanted time to heal properly, without having to go over the same old ground, over and over again. When her mother looked at her with those big brown eyes, Lizzy could see how much she had hurt her, could see the barely concealed confusion in them, and it hurt her to know that she had put it there.

She had only been interested in how she felt, and what she wanted. She had never spared a thought for her mother and the struggle she had had trying to bring her up, buy their home, and keep them clothed and fed and warm.

It had been an illuminating time, this last two weeks. But it had also been a time of gentle healing.

She looked at the red lines on her wrists. Every time she saw them she would be reminded of what she had done. So would her mother and her grandmother.