I close my eyes. I don’t want to think about Henry. It’s the only way I can cope. By pretending he doesn’t exist.
My eyes turn back to my laptop. The icon for my email account is bouncing up and down at the side of my computer screen. I click to open the message.
It’s from Supporting Solos, a charity that supports single parents. I’ve been talking to one of their PRs about a possible collaboration once my new channel is live. The PR is very enthusiastic, full of ideas of how we can work together. We’re meeting up next week. It feels like she really understands what I’m trying to do.
She’s a single mum too. Her name’s Lily.
She seems nice.
EPILOGUE
YVONNE
I was induced at thirty-seven weeks, thanks to pre-eclampsia, a side-effect of my age. In my hospital bed, I turned over all the awful scenarios in my mind, until the doctor agreed that I was also suffering from mild post-traumatic stress disorder from my previous experience, and consented to a Caesarean section.
It was nothing like last time.
They handed me the baby, and she was perfect. Bigger than I expected—so much bigger than Nathan—and strong too. She shouted at me when I first held her, great howls of anger at being plucked from my womb before she was ready. She was feisty already, and I was proud.
Simon cried, telling me I had made him the happiest man on the planet, and I didn’t even care that it was a cliché.
When she slept, I studied every inch of her face, looking for similarities. She was fair, so much fairer than Nathan was. A fine reddish down covered her head. I stroked her tiny nose and realised that I would never know. And neither would she. We would never know either way, and I was fine with it.
In the weeks after Henry’s visit, I was frantic. Not just for the scan at twenty weeks, for someone to reassure me that her kidneys were developing normally. But every morning I would wake up wondering how much longer I would get away with it all for. Thankfully though, as the baby grew, my anxiety shrank. With every passing day that I looked out of my bedroom window—wondering if Henry would be there, waiting to wreak revenge—and I didn’t see him, I felt myself relax, just a little.
And then the time came when we got to take her home, and I was suddenly complete, my heart so full it ached.
We called her Daniela, after my mother.
* * *
Nearly a year after Lula’s accident, Violet returned to vlogging as a single mother. A new channel; started from scratch. I watch the first few videos with interest; any feeling of antipathy towards this woman who replaced me, who for so many years had lived the life I thought should be mine, extinguished the second I held my baby.
She doesn’t feature the children in her videos anymore, and the sparkle has gone from her eyes, but it’s been replaced with a determined strength and altruism that I can’t help admire.
Aside from his new single status, Henry’s life doesn’t change, as far as I can tell. But I try not to think about him, and I don’t look him up online as I once did, so obsessively.
As the weeks roll into months, I come to understand that the look he passed me, out there on the driveway that night, was one of cold understanding, that we were finally even.
And of acceptance, that what he had done was his fault, and his fault alone.
I am grateful to him for that. For the only thing he has ever truly done for me: leaving Simon and me alone. To love our baby in a way he never could.
ALSO AVAILABLE BY CHARLOTTE DUCKWORTH
The Rival
Author Biography
Charlotte Duckworth has spent the past fifteen years working as an interiors and lifestyle journalist, writing for a wide range of consumer magazines and websites. She lives in Surrey with her partner and their young daughter.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Charlotte Duckworth
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-392-5
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-393-2
Cover design by Nicole Lecht
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
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First Edition: March 2020
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