I don’t know how I feel about what I saw last night. I’d come to accept that Kenny would be with us for at least a year and I was willing to do my part to make it work but… Jesus. Suddenly a thought crashes into my head.

Fumbling before eventually knocking off the alarm, I whisper, ‘Wait, Aaron, wait.’ I open the door and run down the driveway into Rena’s garden. Aaron is following me barefoot.

‘Mammy, Mammy.’

‘Go back inside, Aaron.’

Cian is running out the hall door after us.

‘Go back inside, Cian.’

‘What’s going on?’ Tom is standing in the doorway in a pair of track suit bottoms. ‘Take them inside, Tom.’

‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Just take them inside.’ He’s still half asleep when he grabs Cian and Aaron under his arms.

‘Sal, are you all right?’ I don’t answer him. I lift the lid on Rena’s bin, rummage in the rubbish until I find it. My heart is threatening to blow up. I open the bag.

The knife glimmers.

Two Weeks Earlier

Joyce

They told me he was dead. They lied.

‘Do you think this is what I wanted?’ Her voice is loud, eyes bulging from the far end of this tiny room. ‘Do you think I wanted to raise a child that wasn’t mine?’

I want to say, I never asked you to, but her anger is palpable, changing the air, changing her face.

‘Why did you?’ I say. ‘Why did you take my boy and raise him like I didn’t even exist?’

‘Well, you didn’t exist. You were gone.’

Her hands are gripping the edge of the table. Her piercing eyes boring holes in my head. ‘I didn’t choose to leave, she sent me away.’

‘But you left and I was stuck here with her, while you were off living the life I had dreamed of. Stuck here in your shoes, raising your child. And now you decide you don’t want that anymore.’ Her voice soars.

‘I never wanted this, you lied to me, Mother lied to me. I wanted to raise my baby but she had other plans, didn’t she, and you went along with them.’

Claire steps back from the table, leans against the wall. A bitter smile creeps onto her face.

‘I went along with her,’ she says, bending forward, her eyes burning. ‘Do you think I had a choice? Do you think I said, “Hey Ma, let’s tell Joyce the baby is dead, let’s pretend it’s mine?” Do you think that’s what happened? Have you no idea the pressure I was put under, the fear I lived with. No, you don’t, because you were either drunk or drugged up to your eyeballs, always the drama queen, always trouble.’

‘I still should have been able to raise my own kid.’