“Son, when will Dad return from his trip?” little Amelia cried one evening, her eyes wide with worry.
“Never,” her mother, Margaret, replied bluntly, her voice sharp with old resentment.
“But what do you mean? Is he dead?” the seven-year-old asked, tears forming in her eyes.
“No, he’s very much alive,” Margaret spat. “But he’s chosen another family, another daughter to love. You’re nothing to him anymore.”
Margaret and Robert had married young—both barely twenty. They welcomed Amelia in a cramped flat in Manchester, scraping by on Robert’s wages as a nightshift nurse and Margaret’s part-time job at a bakery. Robert’s parents had died in a car accident when he was sixteen, leaving him to earn his keep in foster care until adulthood. Margaret, on the other hand, had only her mother for family.
Robert worked overtime constantly, darting between his hospital shifts and side jobs. Margaret, juggling motherhood and the loneliness of her crumbling marriage, snapped often.
“You’re always working,” she’d snap as he trudged in at dawn. “Who’s caring for Amelia? What happens when I’m exhausted and she’s sick again?”
“I’m doing this so we can afford a bigger flat,” Robert would plead, but it only made her angrier.
By the time Amelia started school, they’d saved enough for a small two-bedroom flat in Salford. But the marriage disintegrated further. Arguments over the leaky tap or burnt toast spiraled into screaming matches.
One February night, after a grueling shift, Robert came home to find Margaret waiting with a cold tone.
“The boiler’s broken,” she said, tucking Amelia’s coat onto her shoulders.
“Let me fix it. And I need to talk to you.”
“What now?” she snapped.
“I want a divorce,” he said, his voice steady.
Margaret froze. The silence felt endless until Amelia piped up: “Mummy, should I wear my blue wellies today?”
“Go on, then,” Margaret muttered, her eyes never leaving Robert’s face.
He told her about Fiona, the nurse from his ward, who was expecting his child. “I love her, Margaret. This isn’t fair to you.”
“Then leave. Take your things and go. That’s the only way this ends,” she replied, dragging Amelia out behind her.
She didn’t relinquish him gracefully. Three weeks later, she filed for divorce, sent Amelia to her grandmother’s cottage in the Lake District, and sold the flat. When Robert returned to ask about Amelia’s school uniform, Margaret barred his way.
“You’ve got your new daughter to care for,” she sneered, slamming the door in his face.
Years passed. Robert’s newly born daughter, Lucy, lost Fiona to cancer just months after her third birthday. Margaret never missed a chance to remark on how “quickly fate dealt” with Fiona, how Lucy was now alone. Yet she envied the life Robert couldn’t provide—his new wife had shared his dream of a cottage in Cornwall, swimming in the sea, a Christmas tree always lit.
Amelia, meanwhile, grew up in a world of holidays in the south of France and a stepfather who spoiled her with vintage dresses and private piano lessons. Margaret’s bitterness seeped into her stories. “Your father’s a failure,” she’d say, “he abandoned us for another woman.”
By the time Amelia was twenty-one, she’d never met her father. He’d written once, asking to see her for her sixteenth birthday, but Margaret burned his letter and changed their number.
When the call came—Robert had died in a car crash off the M5—Amelia was—orphaned her own decision. She’d left for the funeral in a daze, clutching her mother’s words: “You don’t owe that man anything.”
But in those quiet hours before the service, memories flooded back: picnics in the park, bedtime stories where he mangled the words on purpose, his laugh as Amelia chased him through the flat with a plastic broom.
At the chapel, she saw a teenage girl at the back, weeping silently. A woman nearby whispered, “Poor Lucy. Just sent to foster care, no one left.”
Lucy. The name struck like a chord. Amelia turned sharply, but the girl had already stepped forward. Their eyes met—emerald green, just like hers.
The funeral passed in a blur. A week later, Amelia tracked down the care home in Bristol where Lucy lived. They hugged, both bawling. The social worker blinked at the shared smile, the same crooked tilt.
“Return the flat to full-time study,” Margaret warned. But Amelia persisted, using her inheritance to fund Lucy’s education and legal guardianship. She hired a solicitor, spent nights poring over documents until the courts signed the papers.
Two years after the funeral, they stood together at Robert’s grave in Wiltshire. Lucy clutched her sister’s hand as the wind tugged at their shared curls. Robert’s photo smiled from a weathered headstone.
“Hello, Dad,” Amelia whispered.
Lucy didn’t speak, but she squeezed Amelia’s hand hard. For the first time, the guilt felt lighter—borne by two, not one.