Free A Mother's Love by Maggie Ford

expect you to be with them,’ he told her gently. ‘Christmas is a time for families. You know that!’
    She did, but it made no difference. ‘Your parents will have to meet me eventually. I thought this would be a good time.’
    He drew her close as they sat together on her sofa, safe from the promise of snow hovering on a stiff December wind outside.
    ‘I’d rather tell them about you before they meet you. Parents need a while to adjust to the idea of an offspring’s intention to wed. I’m sure mine will. I know yours will also.’
    She had to agree, loving him for his decisive command of things. As it was, she hadn’t yet found the courage to drop any hint to her own family, and still made sure that the door to the printing shop was conspicuously bolted on her side when they came visiting. She could imagine their reaction when she eventually told them. She knew exactly what they would say – Will was only eight months in his grave. How could she cast his memory aside so soon? How would he feel? (As if by some strange supernatural quirk he was still alive and capable of having injured feelings.) She would explain, of course, that a baby needed a father. And dear God, how true that was.
    No one knew what it cost: scooping slops from those lips every time she fed her; steeping dirty napkins in salt water, gagging as she rinsed the bits of towelling free of revolting poop; her sleep broken at night by its crying; having to beg Mrs Hardy to keep an eye on her so she could spend a secret hour or two with Matthew, praying the woman was still unaware of their relationship – though it was only a matter of time before she found out.
    What a godsend it was that Matthew had begun to spend more of his time with Sara. Yes, the baby needed a father.
    ‘And you’d better not spoil things for me,’ she upbraided the mite when Matthew left that evening, her emerging cold making her peevish.
    From her cot, the child stared back, deep blue eyes below a mass of dark curls so like her father, she could have been his reincarnation.
    Harriet shuddered.
    ‘Yes, you!’ she spat as though it was Will she addressed. The eight-month-old had no idea what she was saying, but it did no harm and it helped relieve the strain of coping with her. She had no thought of hurting the child intentionally – no more than she’d intended to hurt Will the day she’d pushed him …
    Harriet shied automatically from that memory. She wasn’t vicious by nature. She would never see her child go cold or hungry; it was just that she could feel nothing for her, going through the motions of administering to her needs as she might a stray puppy. Sometimes it was almost as though this infant wasn’t hers at all – had been foisted on her when she hadn’t been looking.
    ‘You don’t even know, do you, how I feel about you?’ She found her baleful gaze being met with one of sweet innocence. ‘You’ve no idea what I’m saying, you ugly lump.’
    Even as she railed, she knew how untrue that was. Will had been breathtakingly handsome. She hadn’t realised when he’d captured her heart, how black was his beneath those good looks. It must surely follow that, having inherited his looks, the child had also inherited the heart of the man who had sired her with such swinish self-indulgence.
    ‘You!’ she sneered, giving vent to her hatred of a man dead but living on in his daughter. ‘If I could give you away, I would.’
    It wasn’t so bad when Matthew was there. He’d grown fond of Sara, and would pet and coddle her while Harriet looked on, glad to be rid of the burden.
    It was when he wasn’t there, when Sara cried nonstop, compelling Harriet to hold her, rock her, that she would feel herself becoming unhinged, wanting to stuff a rag between those red lips to shut her up. She never did, of course. Shaking Sara in total frustration, throwing her back into her cot and fleeing to her bed to cover her ears with a pillow, she would be filled with a sense