Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, that one disgruntled woman all those decades ago, who decided that no man would ever control the women in her family, didn’t realise that there are more ways to ruin a life than just money.

A son would’ve been tolerable, but a daughter was inconceivable. My father didn’t want a daughter because he wanted to sell the house. The house can only be sold if there are no female heirs to pass it down to. I ruined his future, so he has disregarded mine.

I realise I am crying only when the tears fall onto the ink and make puddles similar to those left in the ink in my mother’s letters.

I swipe at my eyes angrily.

Why can’t I have a family like Tracey’s? With kind, loving parents who may not have financial security but know how to love their kids, regardless of their strengths and weaknesses. I think of Tracey’s brother Alistair, with his gentle, confused eyes and the way his mother looks at him with bottomless, unconditional love. I think of her mother dancing in the kitchen, her face alight with happiness as her hips sway.

Then I think of the way my father looks through me, his eyes always fixed just over my shoulder, never actually on my face. And my mother’s gaze, always blank, glassed over, her mouth pulling down at the corners like a painted mannequin.

I am intelligent, articulate, witty and perceptive, and yet they don’t see any of it, don’t recognise any value in me.

Perhaps this is what Tracey has been saying all along. It is hard for me to see myself if those who are supposed to love me the most don’t see me either. But now it is time I do start acknowledging my strengths and recognising my weaknesses not as failure, but as potential. It is time to stop doing everything I can to get them to notice me and start doing everything I can to notice myself.

This is what I write down anyway, but believing it is harder.

The tears are running freely now and I can’t seem to stop them, even when I hear Martha calling me for dinner. I climb down from the attic and shout that I am running a bath and that I will eat later, ask her to put it on a tray for me as I might get an early night. She replies that she will bring it straight up and that I should leave the tray outside my room as an early night is a good idea for both of us. She says she will see me in the morning, but to knock if I need anything in the night, and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to stop from sobbing out loud. Someone does care after all. But she is paid to.