“You don’t understand what it means to be a mother.” For the first time I didn’t need to argue.

“I’m listening to you explain that being a mother justifies frightening a child.

It doesn’t.”

She admitted that she and Victor had opposed Camilla’s relationship with me, and that they had sought legal advice after discovering the pregnancy.

She insisted they believed Camilla had agreed to a temporary arrangement.

I asked why they never told me she was alive.

Why they hid Chloe’s parentage.

Why they arranged my adoption through an agency with missing records.