The Wrong Daughter

by Dandy Smith

This time of year, I see sisters everywhere. Pairs of women, safe in the knowledge that at the end of every bad date, or party or day, there is a soul out there born of their blood who will love them always.

‘The board did make it clear this merger means there’s only one Director of Operations position up for the taking.’ ‘Robert Brent, Johnathan Jones.’ Antony shrugs. ‘They’re both ruthless bastards.’ ‘But one of them has to go.’

lmao that's a convenient conversation to have AT the guy's own party

Wanting to please your parents is one of those universal instincts, like opening your mouth to apply mascara.

The only thing more valuable than being loved is being known by someone. Truly known. And he knows me so well.

I know loneliness, the taste and smell and shape of it. The clawing desperation to slough it off like dead skin. Loneliness is the most harrowing kind of poverty.

We’re both laughing now. Love for her fizzes up. Florence is family in every way that matters. In every way but blood.

Evie has posted a handful of photographs of her six-month-old son. Her feed used to be filled with images of Maple, her little blonde cocker spaniel, or her bouldering adventures, weekends away with her husband, weekends away with friends, brunches and birthday celebrations, cocktail snaps and the road trip she and her cousin took around America last summer. Now, there are only photographs of her son lying down. Lying on a colourful mat. Lying in his crib. Lying in someone’s arms. At six months old, he has less than a handful of expressions, yet there are so many images of him that Evie’s feed looks like a game of spot the difference … minus the differences. It’s as though her entire personality exited via her vagina along with the baby, and she’s had the afterbirth made into edible tablets. Even her profile photo is of her child.

REAL

‘Maybe real happiness is living the life you want, the way you want, without worrying about other people’s expectations.’

‘Don’t be afraid to play the main character in your own life. Don’t be a person that things just happen to because it’s easier than being a person who makes things happen.’

That jade-green gaze is fixed unwaveringly on me, the heat of it making me breathless. ‘Personal.’ It is an intimate burr, one that makes me wonder what his stubble would feel like on the inside of my thighs.

Real

He hits the ground, his chest split open like a pomegranate.

Bro

‘I know he loved me but …’ ‘Some people can’t love without destroying what they care for most,’ he says.

‘I’ve lost my parents’ voices now, though. It’s like knowing the lyrics to your favourite song but forgetting the tune.

So maybe your blood is on my hands, too. Maybe I am as much to blame as she is. I confided this fear, one that has left me haunted by night terrors, to Harriett, but she told me a person is only ever in control of their own actions. That I did the best I could with the information I had. That there was no shame in trying to save everyone, but I need to come to terms with the fact that not everyone deserves to be saved. Or, like you, not everyone wants to be saved.

I know people whose loved ones are all alive, who’ve never experienced the deep, lacerating grief that accompanies loss. I wonder what it feels like to be blissfully ignorant to that pain. Blissfully ignorant to death hovering, ready to snatch everything from you at any given moment. This used to be a bitter, jealous thought but, as I stood in the wild meadow, it was merely a sad one.

I let the knowledge that you won’t be at the airport to greet me when I return to England after my travels, wash into my ears and eyes and nose and mouth. You will never get to hear about my next heartbreak or my last love. You won’t stand beside me on my wedding day. Or feel the weight of my first child in your arms. We won’t grow old together like you hoped. You will never feel my cool, wrinkly hand in yours. The years which we have lost and continue to lose, lie like thorns in my palms. But I pluck them free. Toss them aside. And choose to focus on the years we did have, letting them blossom inside my mind like new roses. Like sunflowers.