A Family Matter

Both plots advance significantly, as if in tandem—Dawn as she moves toward divorce in 1982 and Maggie as she discovers the court welfare report 40 years later. Nonetheless, in the 2022 chapters, the emphasis for much of the narrative is on the small details of Maggie’s family life that make up her day-to-day reality. Maggie does everything she needs to do to keep the family running smoothly—picking the children up, ferrying them around, doing the laundry, keeping the peace when necessary. She gets Heron to fix small things, like the stiff handle on Olivia’s bedroom door, and thinks about even smaller things, like wondering whether the family should switch to oat milk. These details are a feature of the novel’s literary fiction genre, as the author places emphasis on minute details and everyday occurrences that build atmosphere and develop the characters, as opposed to focusing solely on larger actions or conflicts that could propel the narrative.

Maggie’s family life is fulfilling for her, and she juggles the life-work balance, dealing with an adolescent son who is developing his own opinions and attitudes, and managing her unpredictable eight-year-old daughter. If Maggie has been damaged by her upbringing, it is not apparent in these chapters. She has the perfect family, and she is aware of it. Moreover, she and her father get on well; she pops in and out of his house regularly, and they are at ease in each other’s company. Other people comment that she is lucky to be so close to her father, but there is a kernel of doubt within her that grows slowly throughout her daily routines. Maggie thinks it was strange to be raised solely by her father, and she recalls that after her grandmother died when Maggie was 12, she started to experience loneliness.

The truth about what happened 40 years ago seeps out only due to Heron’s well-established habit of wanting to set things in order. Now that he is ill, he wants to sort through and discard old papers. The legal welfare document Maggie stumbles upon gives a new and disturbing picture of past and present. The report was “about her, about all of them, but the family she reads about is not a family she recognizes. He has lied to her. She feels the weight of this settle, heavy and unfamiliar. He is still lying to her now” (146). Despite her upset and Conor’s urging, Maggie still does not confront her father. She keeps saying it is not the right time, demonstrating the same avoidance that Heron himself struggles with; additionally, she acts as if she wants to protect him, since he is struggling with his illness. 

This is not the first time that protection is presented as a reason to withhold the truth. Heron, as will soon become apparent, was motivated by a desire to protect Maggie, and Maggie and Connor do not tell their children about their grandfather’s illness out of a similar desire to protect them. Maggie thus holds her anger in, refusing to express it. She stays silent “because she cannot imagine where to begin or how to end” (155). The enormity of the topic—it’s background, the betrayal, and the impact on her life—are simply too much to process immediately. Maggie does, however, place the court report in the same package as Heron’s Christmas present, so he is almost certain to see it. This action echoes Heron’s desire to tell his family about his illness by leaving a note for them rather than being upfront, further demonstrating the parallels between Heron and Maggie.

Back in the 1982 narrative thread, Chapter 23 sheds light on Hazel’s thought process instead of Dawn’s. It crosses her mind that she could stop the love affair with Dawn and wait for someone else to appear, which is what she has done in the past in other relationships. She tries to fall out of love with Dawn but finds that would be possible only by lying to herself. It is as if the relationship with Dawn is unstoppable; it has a life of its own. Dawn has felt that, too, and it adds to the underlying implication that a preference for a female partner is not a choice but an expression of their fundamental nature. Hazel and Dawn are going to have to face up to the consequences of who they are, and Hazel appears more aware of the social pressures that will be put on them from Dawn’s family and others than Dawn, as she has had more experience with prejudice in the past.

As for Dawn, although she is not surprised when she hears about Hazel’s mother’s abusive behaviors, she is frequently at a loss when she begins facing the structural antigay bias shaping her relationship with her family. Seek out support from others allows her an outlet through which to process the overwhelming events happening to her. In a lesbian support group in London, many of whose members are in a position similar to Dawn’s, she listens to a woman called Sue. Sue has an abusive and violent husband and describes the man’s unscrupulous lawyers. The lawyers accuse her of dressing her two sons up as girls by “[p]utting ribbons in their hair” (128). Meanwhile, “[t]he judge didn’t want to hear of what he’d done to me” (128). This foreshadows the kind of treatment that Heron’s lawyers will dish out in the upcoming divorce hearing. 

Dawn, however, is still naïve. She expects the women to express surprise at Sue’s story, but they do not. She wants someone to do something like call the police, not realizing that the official systems in place are effectively rigged against women and other minorities. She thinks her own case will be different, as everyone will see how much she loves her daughter, and there will be a fair settlement. This section thus gives a picture specifically of the structural prejudice against LGBTQ+ relationships at the time, as opposed to only the interpersonal forms of antigay bias. Having passed as a heterosexual woman her whole life, Dawn is unfamiliar with the prejudice she is beginning to face. These stories serve as a warning for Dawn, but there is little she can do now that her husband has initiated legal proceedings. Despite her hope, it is made clear both through foreshadowing and her absence in the present-day narrative that things will turn out negatively for her in the court case.