when I realised that what I had always believed to be true was the understanding of a sick child. I had never thought to question it when I became an adult. Instead, I put evidence to it and stoked it, all those beads on the one long string. I imagined more than what I’d been told and whenever I imagined my damaged baby, a child damaged by the kind of mother I would be, I felt fear and worse shame, and that was why I had been lying.
