whether she could paint her walls yellow.
‘We’ll choose the paint together.’
Olivia stayed awake until I reached her doorway.
‘Mama?’
‘Yes, sweetheart?’
‘Do you think Grandma knows now that girls aren’t worthless?’
I sat beside her.
‘I don’t know what she believes anymore.
But I know what you should believe.’
‘What?’
‘That you never had to be a boy to deserve love, safety, or a home.’
Olivia smiled.
I kissed her forehead and switched off the lamp.
Before going to bed, I walked downstairs and stood at the front entrance of our townhouse.
For years, the sound of a lock had meant someone else deciding whether my daughters and I were allowed to leave.
Now the key was in my hand.
I turned it gently, checked that the door was secure, and placed it on the little wooden shelf beside Michael’s photograph.
Outside, the garden lights shone across three small flowerpots the girls had painted blue.
Inside, three daughters slept peacefully.
And for the first time since my husband died, our home belonged to the people who lived in it.
Not because a powerful man had given it to us.
Not because Margaret had finally approved of us.
But because we had reclaimed what was ours.
And because an eight-year-old girl, armed with a needle, blue thread, and a letter addressed to the hospital man, had refused to believe that her mother deserved a life without windows.
