Six. Sephy

Darling Callie,

There's so much I want to say to you. So much I need to explain. So much I want to share. It frightens me how much I'm beginning to care about you. You're just two days old and I feel like . . . like your heart and mine are somehow knitting together. Does that make sense? Probably not. When you read this you'll probably think your mum is talking fanciful nonsense. Words about personal things, words that tell the truth, they're so hard to say. If I used words that meant nothing to me at all, then they wouldn't tear off pieces of me as I wrote them. I read once that when a bee stings, it tears its body apart trying to get away from its victim. That's what the truth has done to my life.

And here's some more truth.

Callie, I want to be honest with you – always – but this isn't easy to say. When I was pregnant with you inside me, I hated you. You were alive and Callum, your dad, wasn't. I hated you and me and the whole world for that. But now that I have you here, against my heart, I feel the beginning of peace. Like this was meant to be. Strange that I should feel such strange calm. Maybe it's just an 'eye of the storm' calm. After all, I'm about to be chucked out of my flat, my money is almost gone and I don't have a pot to pee in. I should be panicking. But I'm not. We're going to be all right, I think. I hope. I pray.

I sit on my hospital bed with you in my arms and I watch you. Just watch you, absorbing every line, every curve of your face. You have your dad's eyes, the same shape, the same quizzical expression, but your eyes are dark, dark blue, whilst his were stormy grey. You have my nose, strong and proud. You have your dad's forehead, broad and intelligent, and you have my ears – and yet you don't look like either of us. You're new and unique and original. You're a lighter brown than me. Much lighter. But you're not a Nought, not white like your dad. You're a trailblazer. Setting your own colour, your own look. Maybe you're the hope for the future. Something new and different and special. Something to live on whilst the rest of us die out, obsolete in our ignorance and hatred. We'll be like the dinosaurs, dying out – and not before time either. And yet I can't help worrying. You have to live in a world divided into Noughts and Crosses. A world where you will be biologically both and socially neither. Mixed race. Dual heritage. Labels to be attached. Tags to be discarded. Don't let the world stick markers and brands and other nonsense on you. Find your own identity. I hope and pray you find your own place and space and time.

But I can't help worrying.

I watch you and I can't stop tears rolling down my face. But I don't want you to see me cry. I don't want anything bad or negative in your life. I want to surround you with love and warmth and understanding. I want to make up for the fact that you'll never know your dad. His name was Callum Ryan McGregor. He had straight brown hair and solemn grey eyes and a dry sense of humour and a mountainous sense of justice. He was very special. I'm going to tell you about him every day. Every single day. I'll sit you on my lap and tell you how the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he laughed. How a muscle in his jaw twitched when he was angry. How he made me laugh like no one else. How he made me cry like no one else. I loved him so much. I still do. I always will. He's not here any more. But you are. I want to hold you tight and never let you go. I'll never let anything or anyone hurt you. Ever. I promise.

How strange, but before I had you, I always thought of myself as a pacifist, as someone who'd never be able to deliberately physically hurt anyone. But I look at you and my feelings have already changed so much, it frightens me. For you I would die. But more scary than that, for you I would kill. In a second. I know it as surely as I know my own name. I won't let anyone hurt you.

Not anyone.

My feelings terrify me. Loving you so much terrifies me. I've only ever loved one other person the way I love you and that was your dad, Callum. And my love for him brought him nothing but misery. Love is bad luck. At least, mine is. And now I'm lying here feeling so sorry for myself because Callum's not with me. And I know that you're here with me, Callie Rose, but I miss your father.

I miss him.

With every breath and every heartbeat, I miss him.