The Perfect Mother
Catriona has the life she’s always dreamed of: a loving husband, a delightful step-daughter and her own precious little girl, Daisy.
When Daisy begins to feel poorly, Catriona seeks help and in doing so is forced to look to the past and her own traumatic and abusive childhood.
Accused by a doctor of making Daisy ill to attract attention (Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy) Cat begins to realize that the life she has now is more fragile than she could ever have imagined. Have her attempts to be the perfect mother made her over-protective?
Is bad parenting handed down from mother to child? As suspicion grows around her, Cat must fight to find a cure for Daisy and convince the authorities to allow her to keep her child.
Margaret Leroy draws vividly on her own experience to describe every parent’s worst fear and the devastating effect it can have on a marriage and a family.
Margaret Leroy writes: ‘The story began when we took our daughter to our local hospital. She’d been ill for weeks – nauseous, not eating, sometimes unable to remember the words for things. The doctor took the history and then sent her to play in the waiting-room.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” he said. I could sense what he wanted – for me to say that our marriage was in trouble, or that she was being bullied. I said, “Really, there’s nothing – I don’t think it’s psychological.”
“I think it is,” he said. I protested. He said there were things that worried him – that I’d spoken for my daughter and sometimes I’d interrupted him. I felt a surge of rage. He remarked that I seemed to be getting angry, and that just made him more sure he was right.