He said “Mum” and then nothing happened for a while.
And in those seconds there was a thing available to me that I did not take.
I could have stopped.
His mother had Opal. He had gone the colour he goes. Jana was already half a step back with her case. The whole of it had landed and it had landed completely.
And what I did was say one more thing.
I will not put the whole sentence down. It was about four seconds long and it was about what sort of man his mother had raised, and it was said to him in front of her.
And it was the only part of that morning I had not planned.
Everything else — the tickets, the pillar, the line about the daughters — I had worked out over three weeks.
That sentence came out of me in a terminal with a baby on my chest and it was for me.
