I looked at the woman in the bed, this mystery behind skin, and wondered at the fact that the egg that had become half of me had first grown inside this old body that lay there, injured and depleted on the bed in front of me. The egg that had become me had blinked into existence inside the developing body of my mother, inside the body of my grandmother. Like a photograph of a photograph of a photograph, going back in time. It was hard to think about. Just like the egg inside me now, the one riding the wave of life with some of Nassim’s sperm, that egg had grown inside me inside the body of my mother. Where to draw the lines . . .

Bette’s breathing seemed fine, so I slid open the bedside drawer to put the tablets in there, thinking of some kind of out of sight, out of mind preventative action, and there in the drawer was the letter that I had picked up for Bette from the post office. When the man had handed it to me the typewritten front hadn’t revealed anything about what might be inside the envelope. But now, I caught my breath. A folded note was peeking out of the torn envelope, written in handwriting that I instantly recognised.

Without hesitating, I took it from the drawer, pushed the drawer shut, switched off Bette’s lamp and left the room, taking the letter with me.

The letter held the promise of something, maybe some answers. Because it was in Mum’s handwriting.

My mother had responded to Bette after all.

28

Paper is a strange thing. Recently it was alive – growing, using the air, the sun, the water running through the soil. You hold a piece of tree between your fingertips, pressed flat, and read what some primate has inked there.

I wasn’t used to it, all this writing on paper. The screen was my medium, the words floating and then duplicating to their recipient – instantly in two places at once, both more and less permanent than words on a page; real and unreal at the same time.

But there was something about the solidity of paper, the material itself: it was matter, it had weight and substance. When I had first imagined writing to Bette, I’d thought it would be a little bit like being in a novel, existing in a fiction. But now, holding Mum’s letter, it seemed like the opposite was true. Paper gave things weight. Words on paper were realer than real.

No, Bette. No. You don’t deserve that.

Please stop contacting me. I am not ‘yours’ nor have I been for a long time. You know perfectly well why I left. Mother and daughter in history only. Your doing, not mine.

And I know exactly what you’re doing with your ‘we’ this and that – Leonie has my number, you know, and while she doesn’t suspect it I know this has you and Dad all over it. I think it’s despicable. And for you to think that you could use it as a lure to bring me back . . .