on the bed beside the sobbing girl, who finally blurted out the whole story. Amy sat stroking her daughter’s hair until her sobs subsided and her breathing became deep and even. She pulled up the covers and went back down to the dining room, unaware that Moss, who had been feigning sleep, had padded down after her and was listening at the door.
‘She’s being picked on because of us,’ Amy told Linsey.
‘Those little bitches. I could kill them! With my bare hands.’
‘She wants to start afresh at Bradfield and . . .’
Linsey’s voice was dry. ‘I think I can see where this is going.’
‘I’m sorry, Linny. She doesn’t want the new school to know she has two mothers.’
‘Well then. I’ll have to become her aunty,’ Linsey said bleakly.
‘We can discuss that later.’ Moss heard the pity in Amy’s voice. ‘It could be me—the aunt, I mean.’
Linsey’s words were brisk but her voice was husky. ‘Don’t be absurd, Amy. Of course it will be me.’
At thirteen, Moss had little notion of what this offer might have cost Linsey. At the time, her predominant emotion was relief. Only in later years had she come to realise that, in all her relationships, Linsey had always been the lover. For Linsey, the beloved always came first.
Six years after Linsey’s departure, when Moss turned twenty-one, Amy had finally told her about the odd circumstances of her conception. She was startled by the truth; while understanding her mothers’ relationship, she had assumed that Amy had conceived in the usual way. She had had no inkling that they’d taken so much trouble to find the right father.
‘All you need to know is that he was a good man, but the agreement was that he play no further part in our lives. We must respect that, Miranda.’ Amy still called her Miranda when she needed to impress her with the seriousness of the matter at hand.
‘I didn’t make any agreement,’ Moss retorted. ‘What if I want to meet him?’ She had a sudden moment of comprehension. ‘I suppose this was all Linsey’s bright idea.’
‘Well, it was Linsey’s . . .’ Amy began.
‘I knew it. I knew she never thought I was good enough. She tried to make me something I’m not, and I wasn’t and somehow I’m to blame. She experimented with me.’ She stopped and glared at Amy, who was processing this convoluted speech. ‘You know what I mean.’
Amy opened her mouth to protest, but gave up and shrugged inwardly instead. She didn’t want to get involved in a dispute between these two passionate souls. It was true Linsey expected a very different child from the one Moss had been. Besides, while their separation was reasonably amicable, old wounds still festered in Amy’s breast. No-one could ever measure up to Linsey’s absurd standards, she thought petulantly. And that’s a fact.
But Moss brooded. If Linsey had a particular child in mind—a child who was beautiful like Amy and clever like her father—she, Moss, was obviously a disappointment. She glared at her reflection in the mirror. She was clearly not the tall, clever, blue-eyed blonde of Linsey’s imagining. Small of stature, she had the wiry brown hair and gamine features of her Grandmother Sinclair. Her saving grace was her blue eyes, darker than Amy’s but with the same long lashes. Aside from this, she saw herself as a failed experiment. Not to Amy, of course. Moss had always been sure of Amy’s love and approval but perversely valued her praise less than the exacting Linsey’s. Now, mortified to discover that she was a designer baby gone wrong, she realised she could never live up to Linsey’s standards so there was no point in continuing to try. She felt a terrible hollow in her sense of herself. She needed to lash out. Place the blame squarely where it belonged. She would confront Linsey and then cut herself off from her entirely. After that, she’d find another parent—her father—to take her place.
That’ll put paid to all her schemes, she reflected with spiteful satisfaction.
Privy to only some of her daughter’s thoughts, Amy, while not encouraging her, did nothing to intervene. She did point out wryly that Moss was sounding just like Linsey, but her daughter failed to see the irony. She had carried out her plan and now, two years later, here she was, drinking tea with the man Linsey had chosen to be her father.
And he seemed totally unaware of the magnitude, the abiding significance, of this moment.