You Don’t Belong in This Family

**16th May**
Helen’s voice was trembling with fury. “You don’t belong here anymore! Understand? You’re not part of this family!”
I tried to interject, “Helen, calm down—” but she cut me off.
“Quiet! Years of your silence made her think she could do as she pleased!”
Abigail stood in the doorway, travel bag in hand. Her face was pale, lips quivering, yet her gaze remained defiant.
“Fine, Mum. Whatever you say.”
“Don’t call me that!” Helen snapped. “I’ve one daughter, and it’s not you!”
I sank into the armchair, covering my face. Abigail glanced at me, waiting for defence. None came.
“Dad?” she whispered.
“Abby, perhaps not so harshly?” I finally looked up. “Let’s discuss this calmly.”
“Discuss what?” Helen seized a photo frame from the table and hurled it to the floor. Glass shattered. “She’s shamed us! The whole town’s gossiping!”
Abigail stared at the broken frame—a New Year’s photo of us all smiling. It now felt like a cruel joke.
“Mum… Helen,” she corrected herself, “it wasn’t my fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” Helen stepped closer. “You’re carrying a married man’s child! Tearing apart his family!”
Abigail instinctively touched her stomach. Though early days, news had spread through our village.
“I love him,” she murmured.
“Love!” Helen mocked. “A forty-year-old with three children! What’s so special about you that he’d leave his wife?”
Abigail blanched. “He loves me. We’ll live together.”
“Where?” Helen sneered. “In *my* house? You think I’d allow that man here—”
“Helen, enough,” I interrupted. “She’s still our daughter.”
“Ours?” Helen whirled toward me. “I don’t raise daughters like this! Education, job opportunities—and she throws it away on the first married fool!”
Abigail set down her bag. “Victor isn’t a fool. We’ve known each other a year.”
“Oh, a whole year!” Helen threw up her hands. “So you lied weekly—‘working late,’ while sneaking off!”
“I wasn’t lying, I just—”
“Hid it? That *is* lying!”
I went to the window. Rain trickled down; grey clouds hung low. “Abby,” I said to the glass, “what does this Victor say? Is the divorce real?”
“Of course. He filed papers.”
“Papers!” Helen scoffed. “His family’s already broken. Children fatherless.”
“They lost love years ago,” Abigail insisted. “He married for security, not affection.”
“Convenient!” Helen laughed bitterly. “That’s what they all say! Then, after the fling ends, they crawl back!”
“Victor’s different.”
“They’re *all* the same! Think I don’t know life? How many girls get promises, only to be abandoned when a baby comes?”
Abigail flinched. “He knows about the baby. He’s thrilled.”
“Thrilled? Then where is he? Why isn’t he here defending you?”
“He… he’s in Newcastle. Back next week.”
“How convenient,” Helen spat. “Away the very day this blows up.”
Abigail lowered her eyes. I’d questioned Victor’s timing too.
“Helen, let’s not rush judgment,” I pleaded. “Give Abby space to sort this.”
“*Sort* it?” Helen stared, incredulous. “She decided for us! Knocked up by a married man! Now all of Dorset whispers!”
“We’re not living together yet,” Abigail said quietly.
“Yet! But the baby’s real! A bastard child! Understand what that means?”
Abigail lifted her chin. “It means I’ll be a mother. I don’t care about gossip.”
“You don’t? *I* do! I live here! Work here! They’ll say *I* failed raising you!”
“Mum, it’s the twenty-first century—”
“And people still whisper! Especially in villages like ours!”
I sat heavily. “Abby, have you thought practically? Your salary barely covers bills. Children cost a fortune.”
“Victor will help.”
“Help?” Helen echoed. “And if he doesn’t? If he wavers? If his wife takes him back?”
“She won’t. They’ve lived apart a year.”
“A year apart, yet he only files now?” Helen pressed.
Abigail fell silent—the same doubt gnawed at me.
“See?” Helen said. “You can’t answer. Because he’s lying. They all lie to mistresses.”
“He isn’t! We love each other!”
“Love!” Helen snorted. “At twenty-six, it’s time to think, not feel.”
“Helen, don’t be cruel,” I begged.
“Cruel? She shames us, and I mustn’t speak plainly? Twenty-six going on sixteen!”
Abigail hoisted her bag. “Fine. I’ll go spare your reputation.”
reputation.”
“Go,” Helen said icily. “Don’t return till you’ve come to your senses.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ve no daughter.”
I stood, anguished. “Helen, what are you saying? She’s our child!”
“Our child wouldn’t wreck a home! This… this stranger did.”
Tears brimmed in Abigail’s eyes. She turned to leave.
“Abby, wait,” I called out.
She paused, back still turned.
“Reconsider. He’s older—different obligations.”
“He loves me.”
“Love,” I sighed. “What after passion fades? Sleepless nights? When he’s torn between his children and yours?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I’ll take the risk.”
“Risk?” Helen interjected. “You’re risking that child’s future! If Victor deserts you, who helps? Us?”
Abigail faced her. “You said you’ve no daughter.”
“Exactly! Meaning no grandchild either!”
“Helen, you can’t mean—”
“I do! Until she leaves that bounder!”
Abigail moved to the hall. I followed her, watching as she scanned the home where she’d grown up. Gone.
“Abby, if anything happens—”
“Nothing will,” she interrupted. “I’ll be fine.”
She kissed my cheek and opened the door. The stairwell felt cold, dark.
“Abby,” I said. “Just think on what we said.”
“I have. My decision’s made.”
The door clicked shut. Outside, drizzle deepened the autumn chill. I heard her call Sophie: “Can I come over?”
Minutes later, a near-empty bus swallowed her silhouette. In our lit window, Helen paced.
Sophie welcomed her with tea in Portsmouth. “What happened?”
“Parents threw me out.”
“Over Victor?”
“Yes. Mum said I’m not family anymore.”
Sophie shook her head. “Harsh. They’ll realise you’re serious when Victor commits.”
“If we are serious,” Abigail murmured.
“What d’you mean? You said he was divorcing.”
“She planted doubts. What if he’s lying?”
Sophie poured
Anne stared into her tea, the rain lashing Lucy’s kitchen window, wondering if tomorrow’s meeting with Victor’s wife would confirm her mother’s harsh verdict or offer a fragment of the future she’d risked everything for, her hand resting on the small, still-unseen life within her, a single, fragile point of certainty amidst the storm outside and the greater storm within, the vague stirrings of hope warring fiercely with the chilling dread that Eleanor might just have been right all along.