SPOILERS!!!
This novel is an emotional rollercoaster. The police come to tell Maddie and Lucas that Noah's death was not accidental, but someone killed him. Maddie, who told a lie about the bruises that Noah had on her face, has to say that Noah didn't get those bruises because he got wedge in the cot but because he slipped from her lap and got pressed between her and her chair. What she is still afraid to tell anybody is about her amnesia. DS Ballard tells her that Noah died of some injuries in his brain, which means that someone hurt her up to 72 hours before his death. Naturally, the police are suspicious of the parents, but Maddie knows she could never have hurt Noah. Maddie also knows that Lucas didn't hurt him. Yet, little by little that Lucas has lied to him and she starts having doubts.
Maddie discovers that he remortgaged the house to give his sister Candace money, but he didn't tell her. Candace is an ex-alcoholic, and laterly he has started drinking again, and the fact that she was in the house the day Noah died made her suspect. Then while Maddie is having a nappie, Jacob takes ill, and the social workers wake her to tell her that Jacob is overdosed on calpol. He is rushed to the hospital, and Maddie swears that she only gave him a spoonfool, and she is sure that she didn't leave the bottle unstoppered. When Emily tells her that Candace was in the house, she wonders if Candace did something to Noah too.
Lucas starts worrying about Maddie because her behaviour is erratic. He finds the nursery completely defaces, red paint spread on the walls and the wallpaper removed, and even though she swears it wasn't her, she can't remember. Things escalate as Maddie suspects Lucas of gaslighting her and wanting her gone and Lucas thinking that she is paranoid. Then when her doctor turns up, allegedly after Lucas called him, and suggests she stay in a clinic where she can rest and have some therapy, Maddie feels that she has reached the end of her tether, and she tells him to leave the house.
The chapters about Lydia are heartbreaking as the girl grows up with her horrible mother. After removing from the couple who have fostered her, Mae keeps treating Lydia as rubbish, and the worst thing is when she makes her be the toy of her clients, and at a very young age she is raped, and for her the worst person is Jimmy. Yet, when she grows up, things change when she stand her ground. Besides, Mae gets steady with Frank, a lorry driver, who grows fond of Lydia, and Mae starts cleaning for a rich family. Lydia goes with her and often plays with the four-year-old girl of the family, Julia. Things turn tragic when one day Lydia follows Julia to an old house where she falls, and running out of patience, Lydia suffocates the girl and kills her at the young age of eleven. Lydia first is in an institution, isolated, and when she is sentenced to life, she is sent to a reformatory where there are only boys. Her brother, who reappeared around the time of the tragic event, comes to visit her, and in the reformatory she feels she can have a hope for the future. She starts studying and thinking that she will be released on parole, but her mother spoils thins for her when she goes to the press, saying that her murderess daughter is living a life of delight in the reformatory. As a consequence, she is sent to a prison where she stays until her early 20s, and it is just before being released that she learns that her brother has died in an accident.
As I read the Lydia chapters, I thougth that Lydia was Candace and Davy, her brother, Lucas. But I was wrong. The police come to see Maddie and Sarah, and they reveal that Sarah's real name is Lydia, and Maddie discovers that her mother has lied to her all her life. After prison, Lydia changed her name and ended up marrying her probation officer. She thought she had no right to have a child, and her husband claimed that she was infertile because he hadn't been able to have children with his first wife. Yet, Lydia got pregnant and had her daughter.
Maddie feels confused, angry and betrayed and tells her mother to go. She also learns that she was the one to call the doctor and not Lucas. Sarah says that she intended to tell her who she was, but she was afraid of losing her. I understand Maddie but I think she reacted too strongly, and she needed to have valued the person who has been her mother all her life, and not the story in the press. Feeling that she needs to make up with Lucas, she goes to find him and she gets a surprise when she sees an ambulance before Candace's house. Then Lucas appears and tells her that Candace has tried to commit suicide. Lucas promises to call, but then Maddie wonders if maybe the reason why Candace has tried to kill herself is out of guilt.
This is a very intense novel, and as it touches the idea of inheriting bad blood, I wonder if this is an idea that has been developed more. I am starting to suspect Emily, Maddie's daughter. She has mentioned that she hated Noah crying all the time, and the day that Jacob had his overdose, she had been upset because her mother promised they would go to the ice-cream parlour, but they didn't because she had to pick up Jacob. Could this be a new case of child murder?
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