CHAPTER 24

When I was eight years old, my mother, Maggie Brogan, gave me a gift.

I found out later that it had actually belonged to Claire and she'd left it behind when her Dad had gained custody of her, but to me, it didn't matter that it was a second-hand gift. My Mum had given me a present. An actual present. It was the only one she ever gave to me.

It was a small, cream-coloured hardback book called Tropical Birds by Clive Roots . It was an ex-library book, the official stamp of Hackney Central Library just inside the front cover and a SOLD stamp underneath it in faded red. A clearly unloved book from the very few date stamps on the borrowing record, it had been sold for just twenty pence, whether to Claire or to someone else who then gifted it to her, I never knew. All I knew is that I loved it for two reasons.

The first reason was because when Mum had given it to me, she'd been sober. One brief, totally coherent conversation where she'd awarded me a ghost of a smile and touched