I can't look at him. I should be able to, I should love him, but every time I look at him my stomach rolls and I have to look away again. I'm not sure what hurts most, the fact that I can't look at him or the fact that I don't want to.

I'm slowly slipping into a frame of mind that scares me. And yet, at the same time, I feel it's what I need. He can beg and beg, he can cry all he wants and I'm indifferent to it all. It's as if someone has put a cap over my emotions, taken away my ability to be happy and to love. It feels like they've taken a chunk of me away and tried to pack me in again. But they've left gaps, great weeping holes reminding me of why I don't want him anymore. I don't want him; it's the truth.

But what I do want is to be whole again.

I want to be the girl I was before he turned up. I want to be the fearless girl with the hot temper. I want to be the girl that didn't have a care in the world.

But she's gone, sitting on the sideline waiting to be called. She was pushed aside by who I am now, the broken woman who can barely look at her own child.

All I ever think about is someone taking him away from me. There are days where I long for it and days when I think that with him gone, I can recall the old me from the sideline; the me that didn't want to be a mother, just wanted to live a happy life.

But then I look at my husband.

He always has such a look of adoration on his face. He all but melts to a puddle on the floor every time he looks at the useless lump we created. He never had a family, so I can understand why he cares so much for our son. But that just makes me feel worse that I can't even bring myself to love him; it makes every thought of abandonment feel ten times guiltier.

I've always had a need to please everyone so this seemed like the most obvious choice. Harry always wanted to have a family around him, one of his own. But I never did. And still, because I felt the over whelming urge to please him, I gave him one. Even though it has now broken me down, I have to live with it. Because it's what he wanted.

I think Harry knows how I feel. I think he can see it in my eyes every time I look at James. I think that's why he does all the work. He is always the one who gets up at three o'clock every morning to feed him. He's always the one to change James' nappy. He's always the one that rocks him to sleep at night. He's the one who had to give up his job because I can't even spend the day alone with my own flesh and blood.

And yet, not one person in my family knows. In these last few months, I have perfected the art of deception. Not a soul can see past my carefully constructed lie to see how truly broken I really am. No, they don't know, they can't see it, because every time they come around I'm playing the role of doting mother; one who loves her child. I hold my son, I give him sweet kisses to his head and I rock him to sleep. And all the while, my stomach is churning and I'm fighting the urge to throw him down and run away.

I often wonder what is wrong with me. Why I'm not like my mother, my sister-in-law. Why I'm not as happy as I think I should be. And I often come to the conclusion that it's because I grew up with too many boys, that it somehow stripped me of the mothering gene every time I picked up a quaffle instead of a doll. I know that it's because of something else, but I need to pin blame to someone, to something. Because, otherwise, I see no real reason as to why I can't bring myself to love my son.

I think of my own mother and wonder how she did this seven times and how she managed to find love for all of us. I was never around to see the looks of adoration for her children, but I know she must have, There are faint echoes every time she looks at James, at Victiore and even at Teddy. I see the echoes and I long to feel like that, to feel like I care. I want to feel normal.

I want to know, more than anything, when the day will come when I can hold my son, when I can love him the way Harry does. I want to know when the day will come when the sight of his tiny body won't make me want to run away. When will it be when, one day, I look into his little eyes and feel a blossom of love in my chest, trying to break out and smother him in it? When will it be?

I know that one day it will happen. It has to. I'm not the only mother in the world who goes through this, but I don't find that fact as comforting as I'd like to. Why did this disease choose me? Why did it have to be me that couldn't love her child? Why not someone who deserves this? After all I've done, after all I've lost, why am I still not at ease in life? Why now, after the war has ended, am I faced with a new dilemma? I can't help but feel anger towards life. I can't help but feel singled out in the rat race of life. I can't help but feel as though this is punishment for something I did wrong.

I just want to rest, to lay my head down and feel peace. I want to have a, if not perfect, then at least happy life. I want to feel the bubble of love, contracting around my heart, making sure it only beats for my son. I want to feel the burst of fear when he falls for the first time and grazes his knees. I want to feel the need to comfort him when he wakes from a bad dream. And I want to be able to cry when I wave him off for the first time. But I don't know when it will happen. I don't know if it will be a sudden thing, or whether I will just grow accustomed to this empty feeling and acclimatise to it. I don't know if this is all I'm ever going to get.

And still, even with that thought, I cannot bring myself to look at him. I cannot make do with what I have, and instead, I long for the past.

Never let it be said that I don't want the life I have; I was never one to live in the past. But now, with this new arrival, it's all I want.

And I know I can never have it.