My parents threw me out at nineteen because I wouldn’t end my pregnancy. Ten years later I drove back with my son and knocked on the same door and I finally told them who his father was.

PART 2

The next ten years were the hardest of my life and I am not going to make them sound noble.

Two jobs. Community college, which took me five years instead of two. Awake until two most nights at a kitchen table and asleep only when my body took the decision out of my hands.

There were months I genuinely did not know how we were going to manage, and there was one winter I would rather not write down.

And every single time I looked at that boy I found another reason.

He is clever. He is kind in a way that is entirely his own doing. He notices far more than a child that age should have to notice, which is my fault and not his.

And the questions got harder to get round.

Why don’t we ever see Grandma and Grandpa?

At six I said they live a long way away. At eight I said it is complicated. At nine he stopped asking for about a year, which was worse.