Free The Bad Mother by Isabelle Grey Page A

came to kiss her cheek, grasping her shoulders. ‘How are you?’ he asked.
    ‘Fine.’ She kept hold of the carrier bags, rebuffing his attempt to take them from her.
    ‘We thought we’d let you alone, allow a bit of time for things to sink in. But maybe now you’d like to talk?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Especially when … Mitch told me about you and Sam,’ Hugo explained gently.
    ‘Right.’ She opened the door of the big fridge ready to put away the meat, relieved that she didn’t have to find the words herself.
    ‘I’m so sorry, Tessie. It can’t be easy.’
    ‘No.’ Tessa began filling the fridge, moving things around to make room to put the fresh produce at the back.
    ‘If you want advice over the legal stuff, I know a couple of good people. Divorce lawyers,’ he added unnecessarily. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to be fair, but equally you don’t want to-’
    ‘Leave it, Dad, please!’ Flushed with anger and distress, she buried her face in the carrier bags.
    ‘Ok. Sorry. But you’re not on your own, Tessie. We’ll get past this together, I promise.’
    ‘Same old cosy pretence, you mean?’
    ‘No. Let’s start afresh, shall we?’
    Tessa nodded, not able to meet his eyes. Hugo leaned down to pick up an escaping tomato that had rolled out of its bag. ‘So what did you make of Erin?’ he asked. ‘How did the two of you get on?’
    ‘Fine, I suppose. I mean, maybe if I’d known all my life that my real mother was out there somewhere …’ Taking the tomato from him, she saw him wince and continued unwillingly. ‘If I’d always known I was adopted, then perhaps meeting her now would be different. But – I really don’t care.’
    Tessa’s shameful fear was that Erin hadn’t bothered to stay longer or offer more because, like everyone else, she’d found her daughter such a disappointment. And her heart clenched tight at unbidden thoughts of Lauren and Mitch accepting Nula’s welcome, of them finding what they needed elsewhere. She banged the fridge door shut with more force than she intended. ‘I don’t know how to feel, frankly.’ She turned to face Hugo squarely. ‘What should I feel? What do you feel?’
    He returned her gaze steadily. ‘You’ve every right to be angry with us.’
    ‘Would you ever have told me?’
    ‘I’m sorry you found out like this.’
    ‘Would you have told me otherwise?’
    ‘Probably not,’ Hugo conceded. ‘Not after all this time.’
    ‘Why not?’ The question burst from Tessa, though she shrank from the answer.
    ‘Because, to me, you were always my daughter.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Right from the second you were placed in my arms.’
    Embarrassed, they both looked away, but Tessa stored away each precious word to take out later when she could fully appreciate them.
    ‘And I think Pamela was afraid that if you knew the truth, you’d never forgive her. But that’s no excuse,’ he added. ‘We should have told you years ago.’
    Glancing around her utilitarian kitchen, a new thought struck Tessa: ‘I thought Grandma Averil left this place to me because I’d earned it. But that wasn’t the reason, was it? This is Erin’s inheritance. That’s why she wanted me to have it; not because I’m me, but because I’m Erin’s daughter and Grandma Averil felt guilty for what she’d done.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ Hugo admitted with a sigh.
    Her grandmother’s legacy was this well-run, sterile machine: despite the perpetual warmth of the overworked Aga, Tessa always felt reproached by the discipline and efficiency of her kitchen, by her failure to create a proper home.
    ‘I take full responsibility for keeping you in the dark,’ Hugo went on. ‘When the subterfuge began, I suppose I never believed it could remain secret. But it did, and then the right moment never came, and we put it off. And besides, I always felt it was Pamela’s secret, not mine.’
    She was suddenly buffeted by images of Sam making a new home elsewhere, and her mind