Gab lay in bed that night thinking about what Freya had said … and wanting to die. She just couldn’t keep going under this load. It was too much. This was the end. She looked at the silhouette of her baby in the dark, lying in his cot and sleeping sweetly. She wanted to give up, stop trying … but she couldn’t. She was trapped. Who would look after her baby if she quit? She did still care about that, even if she didn’t care about anything else. Gab thought of her hard life with her mother. She thought of all that she had yearned for. Then she imagined her own son missing out on those things too—on the love, warmth and kindness that she wanted to give him, as his mum.

If she was going to keep going—for him—she needed something. All the stuff with Robbie, with her mum, parenting—it was too much to figure out on her own. Her impulse when she was younger had always been to resist help, because she knew that support could dissolve when you least expected it … and then you’d fall. And it would really hurt. More sad, more hurt, more disappointed than when you started. Falling. Injured. Better to only rely on yourself.

But how could she keep going alone? She didn’t want anyone else’s help, and she didn’t want to admit that things were hard. But she knew she couldn’t keep doing things in this way, with the anxious Gab hiding curled up inside her, only to unfurl and encase her every night as her heart raced and thoughts of Robbie and Tory and Steph and her mother—not to mention feelings of her own worthlessness and failures and inadequacies—swallowed her up into a dark and endless abyss from which she could never climb out, and which felt hopeless, engulfing, final.

She looked again at River and she felt angry. It was all his fault; his, for coming into existence against so many odds! The rage coursed through her like a shock and she squeezed her pillow around her head. It wasn’t the first time; and of course she was angry—how was it possible for her not to be? She had endured years of subjugation, years of suppressed fury at her mother, stored up for everything unreasonable, unfair and illogical. She had been angry all along and she’d had no idea—for everything Gina had forced Gab to endure, every burden she had left her to carry. But as a child, she could never have taken that anger out on her mother, because she was still dependent on her. She didn’t have any other family to go to. What would have happened to her and Jack if things at home disintegrated?

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But Gab was the one in control now. She wasn’t the small one anymore. She was the one in charge here; her baby was the needy one. Why did he need her so much? She shook with rage. Even though he was so soft and small, he was controlling her life, directing it in ways she never imagined it would go. She was angry at him for that, and for what it said about her—that she, a competent human who could carry more than others her age, who brought up her little brother and who withstood all the barrages of Gina’s turbulence, was being undone by this tiny little fragment of a human being. It was like red rain pouring in her mind. Then she sat up and gripped her head, paralysed by the sheer intensity of her own rage and simultaneously by the deluge of guilt and disgrace that came with it.

How could she feel such awful things about her baby? It wasn’t his fault. That was entirely illogical. He needed her protection, her help. She thought of what it would mean to mistreat him; she imagined what it would be like. What was wrong with her? How could she even think this way? She felt she did not deserve to exist. Always this guilt like a deadly shadow following her, even pushing in front of her as if anticipating her next move; she could not escape it because she could not escape herself. She should curl up in a ball and hide and never come out ever again. She didn’t want anyone to see her.

And then in her mind, an image flashed as vivid as the day. Gina, in her sunroom. Gina, who never wanted adventure. Gina, for whom life was too much, who had hidden herself away and taken out her frustration on her children. Gab knew that she did not want to be like her mother. That struck. She would not be like Gina.

But … what if it was predetermined? What if fate was stronger than free will and Gab couldn’t help but follow in her mother’s footsteps? Gina always seemed powerless at the hands of destiny. What if Gab really was too? Then she was frightened, terrified. That fear, mingled with ripples of horrified guilt emanating from her anger, was more powerful in that moment even than the desire to love and nurture her child. Gab was afraid, deathly afraid and tormented.

Alone in the night, in that moment, there was one tiny flicker of light. It was a small flicker, a long way off, but it was there. Gab thought back to what Saanvi had said the first time they had met, at the doctors’ surgery. Gab had been terrified that Saanvi would diagnosed her with depression, like her mother. There are genetic factors involved … Saanvi had said … but there’s generally a lot more to it than that. In other words, there was hope.

It was a very thin thread to hold onto, but it was there.