I reach into my handbag to check that it is still there and take comfort when my fingers close around its cool slim plastic. Checking that they are not looking at me, then hiding it under the red shawl just in case, I sneak another look at it. It has been three days now and still the blue cross is there, perpendicular lines that prove that I am pregnant.
I am a mother, and I am a murderer. I would never have done it for myself. I would probably have done it for Rex and Alice. But I had to do it for this child, for my unborn baby who will complete my family. I know that I can live with what I have done and I am not frightened.
I have the strength of a woman who has everything to lose.
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunnèd it with my smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
—William Blake, “A Poison Tree”
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my agents, Sarah Ballard and Zoe Pagnamenta, to my editor Pamela Dorman and to Julie Miesionczek and Sonya Cheuse. Thanks to Jessica Craig and Lara Hughes Young, Francine Toon and Eleni Fostiropoulos.
Thanks to those readers who were with me from this story’s conception: Charlotte Northedge, Wendy Grisham, Hannah Borno, Michelle Patel, Loukia Michael, Cath Pick, Lucie Donahue, Sharon Connor, and Claire Coakley.
Particular gratitude is due to my dear friends Hannah Black, godmother to this book, and Helen Treacy, its midwife.
Finally, special thanks to my husband Michael for his blind faith in my writing and to our beautiful daughter Marnie, the novel’s twin, who had the grace not to be born until the ink on the last page was dry.