Tara stared in shock at the man standing in front of her. He looked exactly like her dad, but with the colour turned down. The hair swept up in a quiff like Superman’s was silver, not jet black. The velvet jacket and black T-shirt that had been his uniform had faded into a grey linen jacket and paler grey trousers. His handsome face was shaded with a silvery beard that tortoiseshelled from dark grey to pewter to white, and he seemed smaller than she remembered. In Tara’s memories, Dad was tall: he towered over Mum, he filled a room with his laughter. This man wasn’t much bigger than she was.

If it hadn’t been for his eyes … Dad’s eyes hadn’t changed. Still North Sea blue, sharp under the beetly eyebrows, looking straight at her and still making her want to smile, even though the adult Tara couldn’t think of a single reason to smile right now.

Instead, she felt a weird sense of panicky betrayal, that her mum might appear out of nowhere and find them talking.

‘Dad?’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Couple of reasons.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘Can I come in?’

Say no, yelled her mother’s voice, somewhere in the back of Tara’s head. Do not let that bloody man into my house!

Tara’s brain spun frantically, the cogs disengaged. She stared at the semi-familiar man standing about four feet from the spot where she and Mum had buried Branston, and a thought popped randomly into her head: Dad was always so rude about men with beards. Uncle Peter. The vicar. And now he had one.

‘Oh, wait.’ Keith mistook her shock, and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Is there still a password to get back inside?’

Tara blinked, momentarily thrown off-balance. The password game was their end-of-day game: her and Toby guarding the back door at five o’clock when Dad left his garden studio office to come in for tea. Toby’s password changed daily, and he made Dad work for it; it would be based on his current hobby or schoolwork or a television programme. Tara’s was always just ‘Let me in’. She didn’t want to waste time, when Dad could be back in the house with them: it was when the fun started.

That was a lifetime ago. Resentment flamed inside her. Dad hadn’t earned the right to lead off with happy childhood memories, when so many painful ones sprang to mind first.

Her voice snapped out of her, cold and high. ‘Sorry, perhaps?’

Keith rubbed his face as if she’d slapped him.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘That was clumsy. It just brought everything back, standing here. Seeing you, with the house in the background. The roses.’ He paused. ‘You haven’t changed at all.’

‘Since I was ten? I’ve changed a lot,’ said Tara bluntly. ‘And so have you.’