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go to the conservatorium to study performance. You told me that the very first time you met me. Your parents convinced you to do the safe course, instead of the brave course. I love your parents. I really do. But I don’t think I can listen to you wax lyrical about how wonderful they are any more, not after tonight. What they are, and what they’ve always been, are two people who love you more than anything else – but to them, love and control are all jumbled up together somehow. I can’t help but wonder if a part of your Mum’s distress last night was because we didn’t ask her permission to have a baby of our own.’
    ‘You make them sound like monsters .’
    ‘No, Bean, I don’t mean to. I just want you to look at this rationally. This is a God-awful thing they’ve done.’
    ‘They said they were advised not to tell me.’
    ‘That’s probably part of why they didn’t. But surely they questioned that, as you got older and society evolved enough to realise how unfair that is?’
    ‘I have to believe that they kept this from me because they really thought it was in my best interests.’
    When I glanced at Ted, he sighed and shrugged.
    ‘I hope you’re right.’
    ‘But you don’t think I am.’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    ‘Who was it at these maternity homes – I mean, who actually took the babies? Was it doctors?’
    ‘From what I’ve read, midwives and doctors . . . and social workers,’ Ted added the last words very softly, and even though I’d feared as much, I was instantly defensive and surprisingly angry with him for saying the words out loud. I wanted to rage at him, and maybe I would have, but he cut me off with a hasty qualification, ‘Look, I really don’t know about any of this – I just skimmed over an article or two in the news over the last few months. And Bean, of course I struggle to see Megan participating in any evil institutional scheme to rob mothers of their babies. But there really were schemes like that and she was a social worker and now it seems that she did work in a maternity home. . . I’m just saying that as awful as it is to consider, we’re going to have to keep an open mind about her role in all of this until we know just a little bit more.’
    ‘Christ, Ted.’ There was just enough weight in that realisation that my emotions suddenly broke free, and the sobs came in an avalanche. ‘Please don’t say these things. Please, just leave it for tonight now. I don’t think I can handle any more than this.’
    ‘I’m sorry, honey.’ I could hear the echoing waterfall of remorse in his tone, just as I’d heard the way his words spilled forward as he talked about my parents manipulating me. He’d been waiting a long, long time to point that out to me, and maybe he’d pushed it farther than he should have given how upsetting the night had already been. ‘We don’t even have to talk about this if you’re not ready yet.’
    ‘I think . . . I’m going to have to digest all of this, piece by piece, and it might take a long time.’
    ‘Yes . . . it might.’
    ‘When they said they didn’t know anything about her. . . do you think they were lying?’
    Ted sighed and nodded.
    ‘Yes. I hate to say it, but they were definitely lying.’
    ‘I felt like that too, the way Mum wouldn’t look at me. But . . . the whole conversation happened so quickly, my head was spinning. Is still spinning.’
    ‘They knew her age, remember? Meg said your birth mother was sixteen, she said that’s why she had to give you up. They did try to quickly move the conversation on, but there’s no doubt in my mind that they just didn’t want to tell you any more.’
    ‘So they’re still lying to me,’ I whispered thickly. It was a fresh punch to the gut to think that this wasn’t something terrible my parents had done, but rather, something terrible that they were continuing to do.
    ‘Maybe they’re just going to let you have some time to digest all of this. We can ask them and