Maggie was in a daze after the letter, the row with Tom and his subsequent departure. It was like having her heart broken twice over. Emotion had drained her of energy. She slumped into the chair at the kitchen table and reread the letter. Social services had pulled no punches. River had provided a response by email and it was detailed in the letter – I do not wish to have any contact, now or in the future, with this woman. As an alcoholic and unfit mother she has no place in my life.

It was hard to read but not unexpected. He had never tried to contact her. He’d had over fifty years to get in touch so the fact that he hadn’t bothered spoke volumes. Perhaps she should have considered this before and left well alone. But, she reasoned, at least now she knew for certain. There would be no more imagined possibilities or fanciful musings. She knew there was no point in hoping, no point in wondering “what if?” All those questions had been answered. Sadly in the answering they had also destroyed the relationship she had managed to cultivate with Tom.

Maggie folded up the letter neatly and returned it to its brown envelope and placed it on the table in front of her. Silent tears blotted its surface. She wasn’t sure if they were for River or Tom. The two had become inextricably linked for her. Without the connection she’d had with Tom she would likely never have had the renewed yearning to contact River. Had she thought for a moment that it could mean losing Tom she would have thought more carefully about it although deep down she knew she would still have gone ahead. She had foolishly not considered the impact on her relationship with Tom – she thought he’d be someone who would stay in her life. Not always living at the farm but she had hoped he would at least be part of her life in some small way even after he returned home, which she had always known he eventually would have to do. But that assumption had been wrong.

She replayed the scene in her head over and over – she could see and hear it vividly. It would take a long while to fade. If only she’d put the letter away before she’d rushed off. But having read it she had needed to get out and get out fast. It had been as if she had to distance herself from the truth. To clear her head and refill it with things that weren’t River-related and in her rush to do so she had simply left it on the kitchen table.