Warning: Episode may contain strong language, violence and sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

PREVIOUSLY…

• Emma, the new village doctor, moved to Glendale.
• After a chance encounter at The Store, Judith remembered Emma’s true identity.
• Judith shared the news of Emma’s arrival with her daughter, Julia.
• Julia, knowing Emma was the biological mother of her son, Nick, resolved to have it out with her woman to woman, mother to mother.

A mother’s hug lasts long after she lets go. – Unknown

Honeysuckle Cottage,
Glendale

Emma Blake stood frozen to the spot, her grip tight around the doorknob, as she remained locked in a silent stare with Julia Harrington-Jones. The glow of the sinking sun cast shadows across Julia’s stern expression. Emma’s heart thundered in her chest like a wild bird fighting to free itself from a cage. The day of reckoning had arrived.

“Are you going to let me in, or are we going to do this on the doorstep?”

Julia’s voice was just as cold and sharp as Emma remembered. She tried to swallow, stepped aside, and gestured for Julia to enter. The air in the hallway was thick with tension as Julia entered, the heels of her black court shoes clopping against the wooden floor. Emma closed the door behind her with a soft thud.

“Can I get you a cup of tea or something?” Emma asked as they moved into the living room.

“This isn’t a social visit.” Julia looked around the small room that held a personal link to her, not that she’d ever care to share that with Emma. Piled with partially opened moving boxes, it felt cramped.

Emma gestured to the sofa, offering Julia to take a seat, but the invitation went ignored.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Julia said, looking back at Emma. “When mother showed me the Facebook post, I didn’t want to believe it, but the moment I saw that photo, I knew. Call it mother’s instinct.”

Emma could feel her body trembling at the turmoil brewing between them. Twenty-five years of hurt, anger, fear, and pain was heading towards her like a steam train, and all she could do was watch and listen.

“So, why are you here?” Julia crossed her arms.

Silence.

“Hmm?”

The room remained still. Emma had to remind herself to breathe.

Julia’s irritation grew. At the very least, she felt she was owed an explanation. “No?” she sighed, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Nothing to say? Cat got your tongue?”

“What is there to say?” Emma’s voice was fragile. It was the best answer she could come up with off the top of her head.

Julia’s nostrils flared with anger. “Well, you could start by answering the question! Why. Are. You. Here. Emily?” Julia’s voice seemed to grow in volume with each perfectly punctuated word.

“It’s Emma.”

Julia scoffed, and her arms fell to her side rather dramatically. “Ah, yes. Doctor Emma Blake. Remarkable rebranding, I must say.”

Emma huffed and looked away, shaking her head. Julia was still as patronising as always. 

A slight snarl of enjoyment licked at the corner of Julia’s lips. “So, is this an assumed identity, or…”

Emma’s head shot back in Julia’s direction, quick as a flash. The insinuation that she had done something illegal or had stolen someone’s identity made her blood boil with acid. “You always were a miserable cow,” she sneered, her eyes looking her adversary up and down. Time hadn’t really changed Julia. Yes, her face was a little puffier, and her style had become more akin to that of a stereotypically wealthy white Conservatives voter, but her hair was still the same golden blonde, scraped back into the same harsh bun. Her blue eyes still drew you in; she was still ramrod straight, and ice still coursed through her veins. “I changed it by deed poll, not that it’s any of your business!”

Julia’s mouth tightened, affronted at Emma’s insult and disappointed at her rather mundane explanation. “Why are you here, Emily?” she emphasised, a silent declaration that she would never call her anything but her name at birth. “And don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.”

Emma hesitated for a beat. Once she said it, it would be out there. Everything would change in an instant, and she would unleash a hellfire from the Harrington-Jones’ that she wasn’t totally sure she could handle. “You know why,” Emma replied, her voice measured as her stare narrowed. “To see my son.”

There it was. The truth that Julia had so desperately feared. The weight of those four pressed down on her. A wave of white washed over her. Julia’s body tingled, her heart raced, and her mind fractured. Anger mixed with fear. She simultaneously wanted to run home and beat Emma to death. The secret that she had harboured for twenty-five long, arduous years was about to explode, and Julia had absolutely no control. She was livid. “Nicky is not your son!” she snarled through gritted teeth, her fists clenching, and the emphasis on “not” was as sharp as a butcher’s knife.

Emma’s head lowered slightly, and she looked back at Julia from beneath her brow. “But he is…” The faint glint of a smug smile appeared. “And that kills you.”

Julia’s lip twitched.

“I just want to talk to him. To spend some time with him. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Julia spluttered, flabbergasted, as she broke into a laugh that was as much out of terror as it was amusement. “That’s all! And how would that work exactly? How do you think he reacts when he finds out who you really are?”

Emma hadn’t thought through the logistics. If she was being completely honest, she hadn’t really thought through anything at all. “I don’t know yet.”

“Exactly!” Julia was almost jubilant in her righteousness. “That’s exactly the point, Emily! You don’t know! You don’t know what damage you’ll cause or what hurt you’ll inflict on everyone. You’re so wrapped up in your own selfish wants and needs that you haven’t given a second thought to what you’re doing or what is best for Nicky,” Julia said, referencing her son by his pet name, as she always did, and her tone a mixture of furious roar and snarling indignation. She paced back and forth like a lion stalking along the fence at a zoo, her eyes never once wavering from Emma’s. “For twenty-five years, I have been that boy’s mother, his protector, and now you plan to swan in and lob a bomb into his life. Do you have any idea what that will do to him?”

“At least he’ll finally know the truth!” Emma straightened, set her jaw, and stiffened her stance. If she was going to take on Julia, she was going to do it with confidence.

Julia stopped mid-pace. “What truth?” she asked as her left eye gave a slight twitch of stress. “That the man he’s known as Uncle Michael his whole life was actually his father, or that his mother was a seventeen-year-old drug addict who abandoned her baby when he was barely a day old. That truth? Because if we’re playing that game, there’s a lot more I can say, Emily.”

Emma was silent, wounded by the cruel and vicious barb hurled at her by a nasty Julia.

Julia smelled blood in the air. She sensed victory. “Mmm,” she hummed, her lips puckered and her glare narrow. “Not so gobby now, are you?” The enjoyment that leeched out of Julia was beyond cruel. She was relishing tearing Emma and her case apart – a little too much, even she had to admit. Julia resumed her stalking pace, hands clasped behind her back as her mind raced at a million miles an hour, trying to process every thought, fear, argument, and worry that fizzled and popped in her brain. “If you really cared as much as you profess that you do, then why would you want to hurt him?”

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

“But you will! How can you not see that there is no possible outcome where Nicky isn’t left devastated?”

“I’m not the one who has lied to him for twenty-five years!”

Julia stopped, caught off guard.

Emma felt a shift in the air. “I’m not denying my part in all of this, but you…” she sneered, looking Julia up and down. “You could’ve told him the truth all along.”

Julia felt affronted.

Emma stepped forward, realising the pendulum had suddenly swung in her favour. Julia was on the ropes, and Emma needed to land a few good body blows to even the score. “Nothing stopped you from telling Nick the truth about Michael or about me. You chose to lie, Julia. You chose to deceive your son, and that, well, that’s on you, not me.”

The truth stung like a searing hot knife, being pierced through the heart. Julia hadn’t considered that point of view before. Anger flared within her, not at Emma but at herself. How had she been so blind as to not consider that point of view? Cover that base?

Emma titled her head. “What’s the matter, Julia? Cat got your tongue?” she said, throwing Julia’s words back at her.

Julia hesitated. “You’re right.” The reply was short and seemed to catch in her throat.

Emma hardened at Julia’s admission. She was shocked and disarmed by her sincerity and the sudden softening of her face. Julia’s body seemed to deflate. Her shoulders slumped. The ramrod back bowed. It was like a bison being wounded by a bullet.

“I could have told Nicky the truth. I could have been honest, and I wasn’t. I chose not to tell him. We all did. On that point, I’ll agree with you.” Julia looked to the floor and ran her tongue over her teeth inside her mouth as she thought about what to say next. She let out a deep exhale and returned her eyes to Emma’s. “But what I did, Emily, I did for love. I did it to protect that defenceless, innocent, precious little boy. To save him from going into care. To rescue him from ending up like you. So yes, I didn’t tell the truth, but I didn’t do it to hurt him. I did it because I love him.”

Emma’s heart softened. Did she actually almost feel sorry for Julia? Confusion reigned. Was it sincere or a ploy? It appeared sincere. “And so do I,” she said softly, offering a moment for the two women to connect over their shared love.

Julia smiled and shook her head. “Oh God, spare me the oversentimentality,” she hissed with a breathy laugh. “You don’t even know him.”

“You’re right. I don’t, but I would like to. Don’t I deserve a chance to get to know my own son?”

Julia was silent as she looked at Emma. Really looked at her. There was no denying that Emma was no longer the drug-addicted teenager Julia had met all those years ago. She was articulate. She had it together. She was healthy. She was strong, and that was terrifying.

“I’m not the same person that I was,” Emma said, her demeanour as soft as a marshmallow as she sought to gain Julia’s trust. “You can clearly see that. Yes, I was a mess. I won’t disagree with you. But I’ve changed, Julia. You have no idea how much I’ve changed, and all I’m asking for, all I’m begging for, is a chance. Just a chance. Surely, that’s not too much to ask?”

A silence settled over the pair. Julia turned and walked to the bow window, peeled back the patterned net curtain, and looked out. Honeysuckle Cottage really did have the most beautiful view. Julia stared at the fading light glistening across the River Medway at the end of the lane. It was beautiful. Serene. As a host of sparrows hopped about the cottage’s garden, some flying off while others darted in to join, Julia smiled. Sparrows were Michael’s favourite bird, a love Nick had inherited. She sucked in her bottom lip and pressed it against her top teeth. What she wouldn’t give to change how she left things with her brother.

“He looks like you,” Julia said as she released her hold on the net curtain, allowing it to flap closed, and turned back to face Emma. “You have the same eyes.”

Emma smiled softly, and her dimples showed.

“And the same smile.”

Silence.

Julia took a long, slow inhale of breath, held it in her lungs for a tick longer than a beat, and released it, expelling the tension that had built in her body. The mood in the living room had shifted from heated animosity to sombre reflection. “It hasn’t been easy… keeping the secret.”

“I know,” Emma replied in agreement.

Julia walked back towards the centre of the room, and the tips of her fingers glided along the top of the sofa. “I always knew you’d find him, although I hoped you wouldn’t. Every day I wake up thinking, ‘Is today the day?’ and it never was…until today.”

Emma was silent, transfixed by Julia’s openness.

“The thing I don’t understand in all of this is, why now? Why like this? It all feels very calculated. Deliberate.”

Emma shifted on the spot.

“Why now?” Julia looked at Emma with a furrowed brow as she tried to piece the puzzle together. “Why not his first birthday? Or his graduation? Or his twenty-first? Why now, Emily?”

Emma’s face softened with what appeared to be a look of sadness, and Julia could sense something hidden beneath the surface. Something serious. “Are you ill?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Emma breathed a long, deep inhale. “Because… because I want to see if he looks like him.”

“Michael?”

“Alex.”

Julia’s frown deepened in confusion.

“My son,” Emma continued. “He was stillborn.”

As she heard herself say the words, Emma’s body tensed, and that familiar feeling in her chest – the one she’d felt when she’d been told that Alex was dead – retuned. It felt like an empty chasm, a void that stretched wide and deep, deeper than any river she’d ever seen. Emma’s eyes moistened.

Julia was stunned into silence, her expression shifting to something Emma couldn’t quite identify. Perhaps it was pity, regret, or just the shock of hearing something so personal from someone she had spent so many years hating. Julia couldn’t comprehend what Emma must have felt or the grief she must still carry every day. Losing a brother had been awful, but losing a child? Julia was unable to imagine the pain.

Emma sniffed back her emotions and steeled herself, wanting to let Julia in. “I was married. David, my husband, had always been desperate for kids, but I was hesitant. After everything with Nick, I didn’t think I could.” Emma’s voice trailed off, and she met Julia’s sorrowful stare. “We talked about it all before we got married. We both made our feelings clear, and David eventually accepted that I didn’t want children. He understood. He accepted it.” Emma wiped the tip of her nose with her index finger. “Then, in twenty-nineteen, I fell pregnant. I wasn’t happy, I’m not going to lie, but David, well, he was thrilled. Then COVID hit, and the world went to shit. I gave birth to Alex on the first of September, twenty-twenty. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He had this shock of jet-black hair and the most precious little heart-shaped lips,” she said, her voice low, each word carefully chosen. The memory of that day flashed in her mind. The sterile smell of the hospital, the pitying looks from the nurses, and the way the room grew cold as they all realised something had gone terribly wrong. “But he was dead.”

Julia chewed on her bottom lip and wiped a tear as she listened. “I’m sorry.”

Emma looked at Julia and gave a faint smile of acceptance. Alex had been so small, so still and quiet in her arms. Emma remembered his tiny hands and how they didn’t grip her fingers the way they should have. She remembered his blue lips and the long, beautiful lashes of his closed eyelids. She remembered the shocking coldness of his skin against her lips as she kissed him for the first and last time. Once, just once. She kissed him very softly on his forehead so as not to hurt him. And she remembered the emptiness, the crushing weight of it, as she signed the papers to let the nurses take her little boy away.

A solitary tear rolled down Emma’s cheek, and she tightened her mouth as she struggled to swallow down her feelings. “We buried him a week later, and all I could think about was Nick and what happened that night. Was he alive? What was he doing? Did he look like Alex?” she sniffed, her voice wobbling. “I wanted to find him. To see him. David and I were fractured. Alex’s death had killed him too, but me? I had another son. I told David that I wanted to find him, and that was that. It broke us.”

In that moment, Julia wanted to take to Emma. She wanted to hug her, hold her, and tell her that she was strong, brave, and incredible. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. “How did you find us?” Julia asked, shifting focus and allowing Emma time to recover from her emotions. “You’ve never been to Glendale.”

“No.” Emma agreed. “All I know is Michael’s name. Michael Edward Banford. I Googled, I Facebooked, I-”

“Bancroft,” Julia said, cutting Emma off.

Emma frowned. “What?”

“Bancroft,” Julia corrected. “Michael’s name is Michael Edward Bancroft.”

“But he told me…” Emma’s voice trailed off as it dawned on her that Michael had lied. Lying ran through the family like a stick of rock, it seemed. Emma squirrelled away Michael’s true surname for future Facebook stalking. “Everywhere I search for Michael, I come up blank,” Emma said, now understanding why her ex had been so hard to find online. “Then I saw you on ‘Countryfile’ with that interview about riverbank rejuvenation on the River Medway.”

Julia bristled at the mention of her five-and-a-half-minute television appearance. She had initially refused to do the interview on how the residents of Glendale were helping restore and rejuvenate the banks of the River Medway, but her husband, James, had convinced her it would be good to “increase her profile.” Julia hadn’t wanted “a profile.” She was happy being the big fish in the small pond that was Glendale, ruling over the residents like Queen that she was. Now, knowing her BBC debut had brought Emma back into their lives, she regretted it more than ever.

“The second I saw you, I knew,” Emma said, failing to notice Julia’s uncomfortableness with the conversation. “After a quick Facebook search, the ‘Glendale Village & Surrounds’ group popped up, and it went from there.”

Julia mentally cursed Kate Spencer for creating the stupid village Facebook group, and she couldn’t help but feel Emma’s actions were all a bit stalkerish.

“Then the job at the surgery came up.”

“How convenient.” Julia rolled her eyes and puckered her lips tighter than a cat’s backside. It wasn’t lost on her that everything had just seemed to conveniently fall into place.

“It almost felt like a sign. Everything fell into place. David didn’t agree. He said coming here to find Nick was ‘wrong and sick’.”

Julia couldn’t help but agree.

“But I don’t regret it,” Emma said with the hint of a soft smile licking at the corners of her mouth. “After everything, I just want a chance to get to know my son and maybe try and reconnect with Michael, just as friends, of course, just to get some closure to it all. How is Michael?”

Reality hit Julia with the force of a lorry as she realised that Emma had no idea Michael was dead. She cleared her throat and glanced at the carpet, searching for the right words to say in response to Emma’s pleading question that was obviously tinged with hopefulness. “I think I’ll take that tea now.”

– G L E N D A L E –

The minutes felt like hours as Julia waited for Emma to return with the tea. Sat in the middle of a greyish-blue sofa that was far too low for Julia’s liking, she sat poised, rehearsing the words she needed to say.

Emma collected the mugs of tea from the kitchen bench. In her left hand was a large white mug, emblazoned with “I WISH THIS WAS BEER” in black ink, while in her right was a novelty mug in the shape of a fox. That would be hers, Emma decided, sparing Julia the indignity.

Emma hesitated at the doorway and steadied herself with a long inhalation of breath.

“Thank you,” Julia said as Emma returned and handed her the large white mug. She caught sight of the trivial slogan and thought better than to give Emma the pleasure of a rise.

Emma settled into the armchair opposite her. The room carried a weird tension.

It was now or never. Julia sucked in her lips, rolled them together, and then let out a soft sigh. It was time. “There’s something I need to tell you about Michael.”

“He’s married, isn’t he?” Emma cut in quickly, preemptively robbing Julia of any potential satisfaction in twisting the knife. “I knew it. That’s fine,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Like I said, I just want to get some closure, really. A bit of healing.”

Julia swallowed hard, and for a moment, just a moment, she felt sad for the devastating blow she was about to deliver. “Emily, Michael died in two thousand and seven.”

The words hit Emma like a tsunami, and her world tilted on its axis. She clenched the handle of her mug to avoid letting it drop. “What?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She trembled slightly. “H-how?”

“Motor accident.”

The response was so simple, so matter of fact, that it caught Emma off guard. She sat in silence, trying to process Julia’s bombshell. Images of her time with Michael played in Emma’s mind like some old black-and-white movie. The sound of blood swished in her ears, and for a moment, it felt like her heart had stopped.

Julia straightened and pulled her shoulders back, but her attention remained firmly on the mug of tea. Her thumb rubbed up and down the handle, the usual sign that she was feeling anxious.

“We’d had a row,” Julia began in a clear and measured tone, unable to make eye contact. “Michael had done well. He’d been clean for a couple of years, but he had a wobble. He found out that we’d enrolled Nicky in boarding school; he was eight, and Michael lost it.” She paused and pursed her lips at the painful memory. “He came over, pounding on the front door, wanting to talk. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. It leeched out of him. He’d obviously been on a bender. He didn’t like that we were sending Nicky away. He said, ‘You don’t know what those places do to a kid’.”

Emma did nothing but look at Julia and blink. She recalled vivid memories of Michael sharing his horrible experiences at boarding school. What he went through is something no one should have to experience, let alone a child. Emma was certain that Michael’s experience at boarding school was the root of his addiction problems.

Julia continued. “It got heated, and the last words I ever spoke to my brother were, ‘he’s better off without a crackhead like you in his life’. The look on his face, his eyes, the hurt… that look haunts me to this day.”

The room was deathly silent as Julia took a moment. The guilt made her nauseous, and if she were to close her eyes, Julia was sure she’d see Michael staring back at her with that look. One of utter devastation, hurt, and betrayal. The one that haunted her dreams.

Julia ran her tongue across her rapidly drying lips. “He left. He got in his car, and he drove off.” She shot Emma a look from under her brow, almost too ashamed to make eye contact. “About, ooh, I don’t know, maybe an hour later, there was a knock at the door. We knew it would be Michael. It always went this way. A big blow-up, and then an hour later he’d be back, crying, and we’d make up. It always used to drive me mad, but it is the one time I wish he had knocked on my door. Because, when I opened it, it wasn’t Michael. It was the police,” she said as her voice faltered and almost choked on the words. Julia cleared her throat. “There’d been an accident. Michael was dead. On London Road, there’s a hook bend. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, but it’s sharp and dangerous at the best of times. Michael misjudged it, and he collided head-on with another vehicle. He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, so…”

Julia’s words trailed off. She didn’t need to elaborate.

Emma remained silent, too engrossed in Julia’s story, and also heartened that the ice queen façade had slipped and, for the first time in her life, Emma was seeing the real Julia.

Julia sniffed. “It was ruled deliberate. There were no skid marks, no obvious attempts to stop. The police think he did it on purpose. But I don’t believe that. I can’t,” she said, and she tilted her face to the ceiling, willing the tears that pooled in her eyes to roll back into her body and vanish completely. “I like to think he just fell asleep or something. That he didn’t know. That he didn’t choose what happened or what he did, because the alternative, especially after what I said to him, is just too awful.”

Emma wanted to reach across and hold Julia’s hand; she wanted to sit beside her, wrap an arm around her shoulder, and tell her it was okay, and she was thankful to Julia for being so honest. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “For what it’s worth, I know Michael loves… loved you, and he wouldn’t want you to carry any burden.”

Julia tried not to smile her thanks; they were adversaries after all.

Amidst the prolonged silence, the glimmer of a smile licked at the corner of Emma’s mouth. Julia noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Emma replied with a shake of her head and the wave of a hand.

Julia smiled for the first time as what sounded like a small chuckle slipped from her lips. “What? Tell me.”

“I was just thinking about Michael, and this time he got his head stuck in the bannister.”

Julia’s mood lifted. “What? How?”

“I don’t know,” Emma said, the glimmer of a smile now a big, happy one. Memories of that day filled her with warmth. “He didn’t even know! I woke up, and when I went to go downstairs to get something to eat, there he was, asleep, with his head stuck in the banister. He had no idea how he got there or what had happened.”

Julia smiled happily and shook her head. It sounded like something Michael would do. The heavy weight in the air had lifted, and, for the first time, Emma and Julia weren’t adversaries. They were equals. Two women, bound by love and history, sharing stories about a lost man that they both adored and now so deeply missed.

“I remember one time when we were kids, we would’ve been only five or six; we had snuck into our parent’s bedroom, and we were playing with mother’s makeup and dresses.” Julia smiled, and her face radiated happiness at the memory. “There was this frock hanging up, a beautiful flared chiffon gown, and we wanted to put it on. I mean, we looked ridiculous, obviously, but we had such fun. Anyway, as always, things got heated between us, and we ended up in a fight. Michael punched me, I kicked him, and it was on. In the melee, we bumped into mother’s dressing table. For some ungodly reason, I have no idea why, but back then, mother would write letters with ink and a quill. Don’t ask. I don’t understand either,” she said, shooting Emma a look and waving her hand at her mother’s overt ridiculousness. “So, we bumped this dressing table; the ink well is knocked over, and it tips all down the back of this beautiful yellow gown. It looked like a bee, with these garish black and yellow stripes.” Julia made a line movement across her body with her hands. “I needn’t explain how we felt. Quick as a flash, I’m out of the frock; it’s back on the coat hanger, and we’re out of there as fast as our little feet can carry us. Mother didn’t notice. She wore it that night to some charity ball, none the wiser. I was aghast, but Michael, oh, he thought it was the funniest thing ever. He was rolling about the floor, clutching his stomach in laughter. From that day on, Michael always called mother Honeybee. I don’t think she ever understood the reference. I doubt she does to this day.”

Emma smiled, and the two women sat with their happy memories for a moment.

“He’s a good man,” Emma said.

“Yes, he was,” Julia agreed.

Julia’s use of past tense cut Emma deeply as she was reminded again that Michael was no longer alive. Her spine tingled at the thought. Michael’s light had burned brightly, perhaps too bright, that it couldn’t be sustained, Emma thought. Although she hadn’t seen Michael for over twenty years, Emma’s heart ached. She was going to miss him.

A silence settled over the two women, and they held it for the longest time, each lost in memories of the past, thoughts of the present, and hopes for the future.

Julia looked at Emma. “Please don’t destroy my family, Emily.”

Emma met Julia’s pleading stare. “I’m not here to destroy anything, Julia,” she said, taking the final sip of her tea.

The tension in Julia’s shoulders released. Despite the howls of disapproval from James and her mother, Julia grew more confident that her heart-to-heart with Emma had been a positive, shared experience between the pair.

Emma leaned forward in the armchair and set her down on the coffee table. “But Nick does need to know the truth.”

The moment shattered.

“He has a right to know the truth. About me. About you. About Michael.”

Julia’s jaw set. A prickly heat surged through her veins, setting her nerves on edge, and her heart began to ramp up in rhythm. “Do you understand what that will do to him?” she hissed as her eyes narrowed, and she slammed her near-empty mug down on the coffee table. “What sort of mother would do that to a child? What sort of mother would willingly inflict that much hurt and pain on her own son?”

The speed at which the silent harmony descended into heated hatred alarmed Emma. “I’m not saying it won’t be hard, but…”

“Hard?” Julia inflated, rising from her chair as her volume rose and her tone sharpened. Her body seethed with anger. Her lips twitched and snarled. Everything – every story, every emotion, and every shared experience that they had just shared – had all been an act. Emily Barlow hadn’t changed. She hadn’t softened and matured into Doctor Emma Blake. She was a fraud and a clear and present danger to Julia’s family. “Hard! You have no idea!” Julia growled, her voice laden with pure vitriol. “This will destroy him! And all for what? So, you can clear your conscience? So, you can replicate some sort of Disneyesque mother-son relationship that you’ve cooked up in that twisted, sick head of yours? Is that it? Or is it revenge? Vengeance for some perceived notion that you were aggrieved or wronged when we took in your child.”

Emma stood and matched Julia’s stance. “What?” she frowned, confused by the statement. “You didn’t take him in.”

Julia scoffed at Emma’s obvious delusion. “Are you mentally ill?”

“Don’t do that,” Emma snapped, jabbing a finger in Julia’s direction. “Don’t gaslight me like that.”

“Do you not remember what happened?” Julia said it in a smooth and confident tone, concealing the sharp edges of manipulation.

“Of course I remember. How could I forget?”

“You ran away, Emily!”

Emma frowned. That is not what happened. “What?” she spluttered. “No, I…”

“You gave birth to Nicky, and you left,” Julia proclaimed.

That did not happen. “No…”

“Too much for you, you said.”

That is not what she said. “No…”

“Better off without you, you said.”

“No, I never-”

“Get rid of it, you said,” Julia roared, her eyes intense and her snarl as threatening as a wild dog as she hurled recollection after recollection Emma’s way, each one cutting deeper than the last. “It! Like ‘it’ was just something that could be discarded in the rubbish. ‘It’ was a baby, Emily! A baby!”

“I never said that!” Emma yelled so loudly that it hurt her throat. The lies were unbelievable. “I never said any of that! That didn’t happen!”

“Yes, it did!” Julia bellowed, stepping towards Emma. They were now so close that she could feel Emma’s breath on her face. “I was there! You–”

A memory flashed in Emma’s mind. “No, you weren’t,” she said, interrupting Julia mid-rage.

Julia faltered. “Pardon?” she asked and took a step back. Her eyebrows furrowed, and her forehead scrunched. “What?”

“You weren’t there.”

The tension that threatened to boil over immediately dropped.

“Yes, I was. You gave birth, and I took Nicky into…” Julia’s voice trailed off.

Emma could see in the steely matriarch’s eyes that she was frantically searching for confirmation in her memories. “You left the room, Julia. You left me alone in that room with your mother.”

Julia blinked, and her face contracted. Her memory scratched for answers. Her eyes searched the floorboards as if they were going to offer up some answer, some hallelujah moment of enlightenment. Nothing. “Right, and?” she said, looking back to Emma for further answers. “I took Nicky to James, and when I came back, you were both still there. Mother was wiping your brow with a face washer, as I recall.”

Emma smirked. “Yes, she was. All sweetness and light. Practically Mother Teresa.”

Julia was confused. “I don’t see the connection.”

“While you were out of the room, Judith threatened me,” Emma said with a crisp voice. “She said that if I didn’t leave that night, she’d see to it that I never saw another sunrise. She paid me off, Julia.”

Julia’s brow crumpled, and Emma noticed the flicker of confusion in her eyes.

“You didn’t know?”

“Of course I did!” Julia blustered. It was a lie. This was the first she had heard of it, and it rattled her to her core. Her mother wouldn’t have done something so horrible, so sinister, and so evil, surely? It wasn’t possible. Was it? “You sold every other part of yourself, so why not your child too?”

Emma sucked her gums, affronted at Julia’s cruel aside. “That was my baby, Julia. I loved him!”

“You never came back, though, did you?” Julia’s arms flung out involuntarily. “All these years and not once, not once, did you even attempt to see the son you claim you so dearly loved.”

“I just told you, I tried. I tried to find him, and I was scared.”

Julia scoffed. “Of what?”

“Of Judith! Of you!”

“Of rejection, more like,” Julia spat the words in Emma’s direction. “And how do you think this is going to play out now, Emily? Huh? Do you think you’re just going to waltz into Nicky’s life, blow it to smithereens, and he’ll just, what, accept it and play happy families?”

Emma didn’t know how it was going to play out. She had an idealistic view of how she would like it to play out, but she knew that was unrealistic. If the one-on-one with Julia had taught her anything, it was that the Harrington-Jones’ weren’t going to go down without a very bloody fight. “I just want to spend some time with him,” she sighed in exasperation. “I just want to get to know my son.”

“He is not your son! You do not get to call him that!” Julia roared like a mother bear, fed up to the back teeth with Emma’s insistence that she was Nicky’s mother.

“Nick is my baby.”

“Whom you gave up! Abandoned!”

“That’s not–”

“Discarded like some piece of trash.”

“I loved him!”

“You do not get to say that!” Julia warned, jabbing a finger sharply into Emma’s shoulder so hard it moved her body. “You do not get to abandon him and say you loved him! That is not fair! That is not okay!”

Emma stiffened in her resolve. Julia had crossed a line, and she was not about to be bullied and belittled about her own son in her own home. “You know what’s not fair, Julia?” Emma asked with a cold, threatening sneer as she got up into Julia’s face. “Having a baby at seventeen, that’s not fair! Being shunned by your parents and by your family, that’s not far! Being threatened and forced to give up your baby boy, the only thing in the whole entire world that you loved… that you love, that’s not fair!”

Love. Present tense. It hung in the air as the two women were locked in a deathly battle of glares, millimetres apart.

Julia seethed with anger. “Nicky. Is. Not. Your. Son!” she sneered with nothing but absolute hatred. “For twenty-five years, I have protected that boy. I have been his mother. His protector. I’ve wiped away every tear, kissed every boo-boo, and plastered every scraped knee. I have been there for him. Every. Single. Day. And it will be a cold day in hell before I let some coked-up junkie come swanning back into my son’s life to destroy everything he has ever known and loved. I will fight tooth and nail for that boy, Emily. I will continue to protect him until the very last breath leaves my body.”

Emma looked at Julia, unmoved and unflinching, for the first time in her life. “It has taken me twenty-five years to get to this point where I can finally look you in the eye and say you don’t scare me anymore, Julia.” The words poured out of Emma with the fortitude of Sheffield steel. “You or your mother. You don’t. Scare me. Anymore.”

Julia’s glare was ice cold.

“I’m not the one that will lose everything,” Emma threatened, a flicker of malevolence lighting up her green eyes. “You can’t lose what’s already been taken from you.”

“You will destroy him,” Julia replied, unable to understand why Emma would be so willing to hurt the one person she apparently cared so much about.

“Or will I be setting him free? Free from you and that toxic, fucked-up circus you call a family!”

Julia was apoplectic with rage. If Emma had a cat, she would’ve kicked it, such was the level of anger coursing through her body.

“I may have been a coked-up junkie, as you so eloquently put it,” Emma said, her voice low and every word hissed with perfection. “But I will always be something you will never be – his real mother.”

Julia turned on a dime. She went to grab Emma’s throat and thought better of it. Instead, their faces met nose-to-nose, separated by the width of a hair. “You go anywhere near my son, and I will destroy you, Emily,” Julia said through gritted teeth with a voice that could cut through diamonds. “You will pack your bags, and you will leave this village.”

A smirk flickered at the corners of Emma’s mouth, urging Julia to make a move. “Or what?”

“Or I will destroy your pathetic little life. Bit. By. Bit.”

NEXT TIME…

• Ben and Emma go on a date.
• Natalie sets a plan in motion.
• Marion’s doubts begin to get the better of her.