Chapter 37

• But apparently not today, because she let out a breath then said, “He was a surgeon, like I said, and I wanted very much to do something that would make him proud of me. So I spent the whole of my sixteenth year paying attention to my studies. I…wasn’t the best at school, but I tried very hard that year, because he liked me to. I got a B plus for Biology in the end, and I was very pleased. And I expected him to be impressed, but…he wasn’t.”
• She turned her head slightly away, as if she didn’t want him to see her face. “He was disappointed I hadn’t got an A, told me I needed to work harder and not to bother him for any less than an A minus. I was…furious. I don’t know why it hit me so hard that night, it just did. I’d tried so hard for him—I always tried hard for him—but he just wasn’t interested.” Her voice had become scratchy. “I lost my temper. I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me and so I grabbed my mother’s picture off his desk and took it out of the frame. And then I ripped it up into pieces.”
• She didn’t look at him, the setting sun gilding her lashes. “It was very precious to him because it was the only photo he had of her and he’d loved her so much. He’d never got over her death and I knew that. It was my mother who’d wanted a child, not him, but then she died and he ended up with me, and I… I guess I ended up being a reminder of that.”