Not that a parent’s candour guarantees all that much! I believe that as a rule children don’t care for their parents’ truths and have long since made up their own minds, or have formulated false beliefs from which they can never be persuaded, since their whole conception of reality is founded on them. I can credit any amount of wilful denial and self-deception and calling a spade an apple tree among family members, because thereby hangs our self-belief by the slenderest of threads. There were certain things, in other words, that Justine could not afford to know, and so she would not let
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