30: Gertrude LoganOver the years, Jack’s family grew. Mary Ellen’s confession about Marian’s parentage softened his feelings towards his wife, just as it hardened his hatred of the Irish priest. He felt pity for his Mary Ellen, but it was mixed with guilt that, like the priest before him, he was using her as a vessel for his lust. Their marriage lacked companionship, friendship or any meeting of minds. The lives they lived were mostly separate, there being no common ground between them, apart from in the marital bed.
The year after Marian’s birth, Jack’s first child, a daughter, was stillborn. Mary Ellen couldn’t understand how or why the baby she had carried inside her for so many months and laboured to bring into the world was dead. She swaddled a waxen faced doll in the layette intende
