She knew all about it. Family life meant nothing in the fridge, a mother gone, Jessica crying and baby Megan squawking for ‘bis-quits, bis-quits’.

Family life was their father away working, the au pair seeing some new boy out in the potting shed and not a bloody bis-quit in the house.

More than either of her sisters, Cat had seen the reality of a woman’s work. The hard slog, the thankless graft, the never-ending struggle to keep bellies fed and faces clean and bottoms wiped and eyes dried and washing done.

Let Jessica and Megan build their nests. Cat wanted to fly away, and to keep flying. But she was wise enough to know that this wasn’t a philosophy, it was a wound. As a student, emboldened by one term at university, Cat angrily confronted her mother about all that had been stolen from her.
‘What kind of mother were you? What kind of human being?’
‘your parents ruin –‘
‘Ah, change the record.’ Cat was deliberately loud.
Megan stared with wonder at her big sister. Jessica prepared herself for a good cry. They were in a polite patisserie in St John’s Wood where people behind the counter actually spoke French and srugged their shoulders in the Gallic fashion.
‘You were our mother,’ Cat said. ‘We were entitled to some mothering. I’m not talking about love, Mummy dearest. Just a little human decency. Was that too much to ask?’
Cat was shouting now.
‘Don’t worry dear,’ her mother said, calmly sucking on a low-tar cigarette and eyeing up the young waiter who was placing a still warm pain au chocolat before her. ‘One day you’ll have unhappy children of your own.’
Never, thought Cat.
Never ever.

From The Family Way by Tony Parsons