Chapter 9
The counselling session was Professor Sung’s idea.
Sam wasn’t a default pessimist, but her gut told her this wasn’t going to work. ‘My mother’s impossible,’ she’d confessed to him on more than one occasion. ‘One minute she’s obsessed with hearing about everything that’s happening at the hospital. Next minute she doesn’t want to know, and accuses me of abandoning her if I even mention Charlie.’
Professor Sung had nodded, his eyes wise and understanding.
‘There is an implicit tension in the relationship between Mary and Faith,’ he said. ‘Whether they admit to it or not, adoptive parents often feel secret jealousy, or even anger toward birth parents, and vice versa.’
‘There’s nothing secret about it with my mum,’ said Sam.
‘Faith has done all the hard work of parenting, and no
