‘Does it really matter?’ Tara asked kindly. ‘Dad is who he is. It’s not as if he’s suddenly going to turn into a more reliable person once we’ve pinned him down to a Capricorn ascendant.’

‘Capricorn would work! Or a Taurus ascendant, like you! I’ve got my book in the studio, I can check the times. Tara?’ She glanced shyly down at the counter. ‘Do you think you could ring Grandma Hunter? Dad says she won’t remember, but she might if you ask her.’

Bloody Dad, thought Tara. Clearly he’d swerved the unpleasant task of explaining why Grandma Hunter might not recall minor details like that; she’d been living in a care home in North Yorkshire for the past ten years, with advanced dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Molly was gazing hopefully up at her, and Tara sensed there was a lot that Molly wanted to know about her family, but hadn’t been able to find out. Was she the right person to ask, though? There were huge gaps in her own knowledge.

‘I haven’t spoken to Grandma Hunter in a long time. She’s not very well. She’s forgotten a lot of things.’ Tara hadn’t visited her in the care home. There’d be no point, as Auntie Jane had told her briskly, in her Christmas card. Mum thinks I’m her own mother and that Linda is Margaret Thatcher, so it would only be upsetting. Tara had been ashamed of her relief at the reprieve.

‘How old is Grandma Hunter?’ Molly’s hand stretched out for her bag. ‘When’s her birthday?’

Tara sighed. Had Molly even met her grandmother? ‘Ninety-three,’ she added, so Molly could work out her star sign. ‘February the fourteenth, nineteen twenty-eight.’

‘Do you know what time she was born?’

‘I don’t even know where she was born.’

Molly was scribbling away in a spiral-bound notebook Tara recognized from the previous evening. It was black, spangled with silver stars. ‘And do you know when Grandpa Hunter’s birthday was?’

‘No idea, sorry. Maybe Dad can help you find it online when he gets home?’ And then you can fill me in on the details, she added to herself.

Molly chewed her pen, thoughtfully. ‘It would be good if Grandpa Hunter was born in … late May. A Gemini. Or maybe late September, so he’d be a Libra. Were they happy?’

Ugh. What a question.

Tara started to say yes, of course they were, then stopped herself. Instinctively she wanted to be honest with Molly; it didn’t sound like her dad was being as honest as he should.

‘I don’t know much about them, I’m afraid. They lived in London, so we didn’t see them very often when I was younger, and then after Dad left, Mum … My mum tried to keep in touch, for our sakes, but obviously, it was a bit awkward. We fell out of touch.’