It is not a cruel document.
That is the thing nobody expects and the thing that took me about four years to be able to say out loud.
There is no threat in it. Nobody raised their voice at me. I was offered tea twice.
It is four pages and the language in it is mild.
It divides what there was to divide, which in the November of 2014 was almost nothing — a car with finance on it and about eleven thousand dollars.
Because Vale Group did not exist yet. He was twenty-five and working for somebody else on the Belgrave road.
And then, on page three, there is clause eleven.
Under clause eleven, I received two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
Paid in four instalments across eighteen months.
Out of Marguerite Vale's own money. Her own account, from the sale of a house in 2011. Not one dollar of it was her son's and he has never known it left.
