Fifteen years ago I married a wonderful man who already had one child. He had lost his wife in an accident a few years earlier.
A year after the wedding I gave birth to our son. I don’t know if I was prepared for a ready-made family. Having my own baby made me realise how little I actually felt for his first child.
I could never admit it to anybody else, but I resented her very existence. Her presence was a constant reminder to me of my husband’s former love. It didn’t matter to me that she was dead. My jealousy was extreme.
My stepdaughter had a prized possession that her mother had left to her — a beautiful necklace that she kept in an old jewellery box. One day while she was out playing in the backyard, I snuck into her bedroom and removed the necklace. I took it into my room and hid it at the bottom of a drawer full of knick-knacks.
I waited until my husband returned home from work, then enquired after the necklace, saying I hadn’t seen her wearing it for a while. My stepdaughter laughed and said it was in her jewellery box and skipped off to retrieve it. After discovering it missing, she returned to us with a crestfallen look on her face. It was gone!
My husband was furious with her and I believe that was the point that their relationship started to become strained. I knew what I had done was wrong, but I was also happy that my husband had stopped thinking of his daughter as the golden child who could do no wrong. Maybe now he would focus more on his new family and let go of the past.
All these years later, I still have the necklace. I really don’t know how to return it without having to admit my horrible actions. I’m now quite close to my stepdaughter and feel terribly sad for that hurt little girl fretting over losing such a precious possession so long ago. I still cannot believe that my jealousy was so intense that I resorted to hurting an eight-year-old, sabotaging her relationship with her own father.
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