It was just enough penitence. Tara rolled her eyes, a little too theatrically. ‘Of all the things I wish I could call Mum to tell her, it’s that. Dad’s on the wagon.’

‘Fair play to him, he’s been on it a good while now,’ said Toby, returning to the soapy sink.

‘Do you know what triggered that?’ It was a bit masochistic of Tara, but she wondered if Dad had opened his heart to Toby, told him that second-time fatherhood had Changed His Life.

Toby shrugged. ‘Dunno. Apparently he checked himself into rehab, and he’s been going to AA meetings for years now. It’s where he met Sarah.’

‘Oh? And was she an alcoholic too?’

He stacked the teacup carefully on the drainer. ‘Why don’t you ask him yourself? Dad’s pretty open about a lot of things, these days. He said it’s one of the positives about recovery: you have to do a lot of work on yourself to recognize why you make mistakes.’

Tara was familiar with recovery talk. The acupuncturist at the Wellness Centre was a reformed gambling addict and had put them off raffles for life. ‘Sounds like you two have had some real heart-to-hearts.’

‘We’ve had a couple of long chats, yes. Not as easy without a couple of bottles of wine to get things going, but we’re not kids any more, sometimes you’ve got to bite the bullet and hear stuff you don’t like.’ Toby shook the suds off his hands and reached for the tea towel hanging off the brass range rail. ‘All part of growing up.’

‘Is that directed at me?’

Tara could feel her defences rising, purely at his tone.

‘Not necessarily. But you’ve got to admit you’re very good at avoiding conversations you don’t want to have.’

Tara remembered this tone of Toby’s. The ‘ten minutes and twenty years older than you’ tone that had irritated her as a teenager. ‘That’s bollocks.’

‘Well, if you didn’t know when Dad met Sarah you’ve obviously asked him nothing about his life. And since he’s happy to talk about it, I’m guessing you’ve actively shut those conversations down.’

She seethed because this was true.

Toby dried his hands carefully. ‘I need to talk to you about something while Dad’s away. It’s about Mum.’

Tara groaned, a teenage noise. ‘Whatever he’s said about her …’

‘Hear me out. Dad says he wrote to us, tried to get in touch with us regularly after he left.’

‘Yeah, he told me that too.’

‘I believe him. I wanted to know if you’d found any letters or anything while you were sorting out the house.’

‘I told you, Toby, there’s nothing. There isn’t even anything from our childhood – no school reports, no teddies, nothing.’

‘That doesn’t prove anything. She could have thrown the whole lot out.’