YOU LIARS !

You brought me up to tell the truth.

But you lied to me all my life, until the day you died.

You lied about the most important thing that ever happened to me.

For the first eleven or twelve years you led me to believe that you were my parents, that your name was my name, that your relatives were my relatives.

Then you got me out of bed one evening and told me that my parents had been killed in the war: you made me understand how kind you had been to take me in: I inferred that I had better stop misbehaving and be grateful to you.

No mention that you had been desperate for a child. Not a hint that you were lucky to get me, or that you never actually chose me at all, but took what you could get. Not a word about being glad to have me.

And then the embargo:

          “This is our secret and we won’t mention it           again, or tell anyone else about it.”

Why not? If you had taken in a respectable but unlucky child, where was the need for secrecy? Obviously there must be something shameful about the whole business. But I was young, I needed you, and so I shut up.

And I lived with your lies until you died.

Then I found out that you’d met my mother...... and that she was still alive.

You Bastards !