‘We’ve got a sister,’ she said. ‘Dad has a child with a woman called Sarah. A make-up artist. She’s called Molly and she’s ten and he’s brought her here. Here! To our house. No warning, nothing. He didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me she existed, let alone ask if it was all right for her to stay! I came home from work and found this little girl in the garden. She was sitting there reading a book, with a dog. Looking like … looking like me.’ Her voice broke as the words finally ran out.

Silence whistled down the line across the Atlantic.

Say something, Toby, Tara willed him. There was a time when she wouldn’t even have had to explain this. He’d have known. He’d have understood and supplied the words she didn’t have, just as he did in the months after Dad left, still a jump-cut collage of memories in her head, when Mum was either livid or devastated or worryingly silent, and Toby had to make them supper or find the school trip money in jars and drawers.

Tara didn’t want to prompt Toby now. She didn’t even want to speak, afraid she might cry again. She was also terrified that in her general rage with the world, awful, un-take-back-able things might launch themselves out of her mouth about Toby abandoning her all over again, going straight back to his life in America after the funeral when her soul was howling out for his support here. Someone to remember things with. Someone to reassure her that they’d been happy once, that Mum had loved them and they’d loved her enough too.

Now, though. Now was his chance to redeem himself.

Come on, Toby. Say something.

But there was nothing.

Tara cracked. ‘Toby, are you on mute?’

A heavy sigh. ‘No, I’m not. Tara, listen, I’m not excusing Dad, but did you give him a chance to tell you about Sarah and Molly? Or did you blank it out?’

Tara’s mouth fell open. ‘You knew?’

‘Yes,’ said Toby. ‘I knew. I tried to tell you when I came over for the funeral but you didn’t want to hear then either.’

The betrayal took the breath out of Tara’s lungs. She sat down with a thud.

When, she wanted to say. Why. Why?