“I didn’t want a son like this!” the man snapped, and in that moment, my world shattered.
She stared blankly at the wall, her voice trembling, hands shaking—not just from pain, but from rage. “He looked me in the eye and told me I’d given him the ‘wrong kind of son.’ As if fatherhood was supposed to be exactly how *he* imagined it. And now it’s *my* fault. Because, apparently, I stayed home raising Oliver ‘the wrong way.'”
Marina and Oliver had been together for fourteen years. The early years were brutal. Doctors couldn’t explain why she couldn’t conceive. Endless tests, humiliating procedures—while he whispered venom in her ear: “Maybe there’s just something *wrong* with you. Isn’t that what a woman’s for? Children…” He needled, taunted, but she endured. Because she loved him.
When the pregnancy test finally showed two lines, her heart nearly burst. The ultrasound confirmed it—*a boy*—and Oliver wept. He lifted her into his arms like a giddy schoolboy. Suddenly, everything was lighter. Softer. He doted on her like never before—scrubbing floors, cooking meals, shouldering every burden. At night, he’d wake to soothe little Henry, cradling him, whispering first words. In the park, he pushed the pram like he was carrying a trophy.
Henry was his pride. Oliver dreamed of football matches in the back garden, teaching him to shoot goals, weekends spent camping and fishing. He’d even signed him up for junior league before he could walk. Bought him kits, toy trucks, anything a “proper lad” should love. But Henry didn’t care. He’d flip through picture books for hours, lost in puzzles, sketching with crayons.
At five, Oliver decided it was time to “make a man of him.” He dragged him to football practise. Henry sobbed in the changing room, refusing the uniform, clinging to Marina. On the pitch, he sat on the bench, scuffing his trainers in the grass. Oliver shouted, demanded he toughen up. When Marina argued he had other passions, Oliver sneered: “You’ve ruined him with this coddling.”
Then Henry asked for piano lessons. He’d heard a busker playing violin in Covent Garden and fallen in love. Marina was thrilled—finally, something *he* wanted. But Oliver refused. “You want him to turn into some weepy artist? A *soft* boy?”
The final blow came when Henry needed glasses. Oliver exploded. “A *bookworm*? A bloody weak-eyed nerd? This isn’t the son I wanted!” That night, he suggested IVF. “I want a *real* son. Strong. Athletic. One I can raise *properly*.”
Marina felt the floor drop away. She was in her forties. She’d carried, birthed, given *everything* to Henry—only for him to be deemed *unworthy* of his father’s dreams.
But the worst was yet to come.
She found out Oliver had been cheating. For six months. A woman in Manchester. And *he* had a son now. The whispers stung: “Well, *she* wouldn’t give him another child. What else was he meant to do?” As if betrayal, secrets, a whole *second family* were somehow justified.
She wept for three days straight. Then she gathered papers, hired a solicitor—but hasn’t filed yet. Oliver lingers in their flat, silent, avoiding her gaze. And Marina? She doesn’t hope anymore. Only wonders: *How do I tell Henry his father wants to replace him?*
“I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him,” she murmurs, wiping a tear. “But I’m a mother. I *have* to be strong. For Henry. For myself. For the woman I was before all this.”
Sometimes love isn’t better than loneliness at all.
