**Diary Entry – 9th May**
My son has changed—utterly broken since his wife betrayed him. I don’t know how to pull him back from this abyss. A mother’s heart shatters, helpless, watching the pieces of the boy she raised slip further away.
James was born from love, pure and strong. His father and I gave him everything—our time, our hopes, our youth. We raised him honest, kind, loyal. All we ever wanted was for him to grow, find a good English girl, build a family of his own, give us grandchildren. A simple, human dream.
But life took a cruel turn.
Three years ago, at just nineteen, James became entangled with a woman nearly old enough to be his elder sister. Divorced, with a child, a troubled past—and, as we’d learn, a sharper tongue and colder heart.
Even now, the memory chokes me—when he told me she couldn’t have children. “Mum, don’t hope. There won’t be a miracle,” he’d said. The ground vanished beneath me.
I paced our London flat, sobbing, begging my husband to talk sense into him. He only smoked, silent, before muttering, “If we fight this, we lose him.” So I swallowed my grief. I bit back every maternal instinct and accepted her—for James’s sake.
She was clever, I’ll give her that. Sharp-eyed, sly. More than once, I caught her flirting with other men, overheard hushed phone calls, noticed her odd disappearances. But to James, she was soft, doting—always stroking his cheek, smiling that honeyed smile. And he believed her. Not me. Never me.
Then came the day my husband and I were set to visit friends in Manchester. We’d reached the coach station when I realised I’d forgotten the tickets. Rushing back, I spotted an unfamiliar car parked outside our house.
I didn’t ring the bell. Quiet as a shadow, I turned my key.
There, in our bed—her. With some bloke fresh out of prison, a man the whole neighbourhood already regretted seeing free. And she’d brought him into my son’s home.
I knew James wouldn’t believe me if I told him. So I lied. Phoned him at work—he was pulling shifts at a café nearby—and claimed I’d locked myself out. I needed him to see. To witness what she truly was.
He came fast. Opened the door, stepped inside—and collapsed. No shouting, no rage. Just silent tears, like a child. Like the little boy I’d once rocked to sleep. Over and over, he whispered, “Why…?”
That James is gone. Now he moves like a ghost. She still lives with him, still parades about, still lies. And he—he fades a little more each day.
Sometimes I wonder: was it wrong to show him the truth? Would ignorance have been kinder? But no. He deserved honesty, however brutal. Better to hurt with the truth than rot in a lie.
All I want now is for my son to live again. To let go. To find someone worthy. Because James is good, and kind, and whole—and I didn’t raise him to be broken by a woman with poison in her veins.
**Lesson:** A mother’s love is fierce, but sometimes, the hardest truth is the only mercy left.
