Again, the girl’s eyes flicked from side to side, as if hoping someone would pop up, but no one came.

‘I’m Tara,’ said Tara, remembering too late that modern kids didn’t go revealing their names and ages to strangers who talked to their dogs. They’d had several Lunch and Learns about child protection. But she wasn’t at work now. She was in her own garden. ‘You don’t have to tell—’

‘I’m Molly.’ The eyes squinted up at her, solemnly. Familiarly.

Tara stared at her. It was deeply unsettling.

She glanced down the garden towards the studio. The lights were still on upstairs but there was no sign of Keith through the big windows.

‘Molly?’ She tried to make her voice neutral, kind. ‘Why are you in my garden?’

The girl looked down at her feet, then up at Tara. Her pointy face was tight with anxiety and Tara realized Molly didn’t have an answer. The poor kid didn’t know what she was doing there.

‘Molly! There you are!’

Tara stood up. Keith was striding across the lawn, his hair dishevelled and his clothes unusually rumpled. For the first time since he’d arrived, he looked all of his sixty-four years. Molly jumped up and ran over to his open arms.

When he picked Molly up and hugged her, a quick comforting hug that she was a little too big for but clearly was used to getting, a sharp pain pierced Tara’s heart and made her inhale with surprise.

Keith put Molly down, and carried on to where Tara was standing, frozen. Molly trailed after him, her eyes still wide with tension but not as fearful as before.

‘Sorry, sorry, I had to make a couple of phone calls.’ His eyes darted back and forth between Tara and Molly. ‘Have you two introduced yourselves already?’

‘Sort of,’ said Tara.

If Keith detected the coolness in Tara’s voice he ignored it, and instead said, with a rather theatrical gesture, ‘Tara, this is Molly Hunter, my younger daughter. Molly, this is Tara Hunter, my older daughter.’

Just like that. He made it sound as simple as that.

But it wasn’t simple. Tara bit her lip. For so long she’d been the only daughter: not that much, but something to hold on to; not only special and unusual as a twin, but her dad’s only daughter. It was stupid, but it was the reason she hadn’t wanted to ask about his life between leaving and coming back; she preferred, in her head, to imagine that he hadn’t felt able to replace the family he’d left behind. Here was the proof that he had.

‘Hello,’ said Molly carefully, and held out her hand to shake. She didn’t seem anywhere near as thrown by the appearance of a brand-new sister. She also seemed quite well versed in formal adult introductions.