Tara stood up, and followed him to the door. At the step Keith turned and gazed down the black-and-white hallway, as if the years were scrolling back in a fast rewind through every iteration of Ruth’s redecorations to that last time he’d seen it. Hallowe’en. The cobwebs on the banister, Branston in his tutu mane. Tara on the stairs, bewildered by the fifty-pound note in his hand.

Are you remembering? she wanted to ask. Are you sorry?

Then he shook himself. ‘It was good to see you, Tara. I wish we could do this again, but I … understand if you don’t want to.’ Keith kept his eyes fixed on hers. ‘I needed to say goodbye to your mum. And this house. We had some happy times here. I’m sorry, Tara, I know you didn’t want me to mention her but it’s true. And I wanted to see you.’

A thick lump swelled in Tara’s throat.

She’d planned this conversation since she was about fourteen, when she still thought Dad might crawl back to her and Mum and Toby. As the reality gradually dawned on Tara that Keith wasn’t coming back, ever, her ‘Fuck you, Dad’ speech had mutated; sometimes glacially angry, sometimes passionate, sometimes indulgently lyrical and forgiving, depending on where she was in her own life and how forgiving she could afford to be.

Now her father was here in front of her, ready for that piece of her mind and apparently willing to hear it. Instead, Tara felt hollow: looking at herself from the outside, as if the angry Tara were as much of a stranger as this man was. Her mother was gone. And any happy times Mum had in the house had happened long after Dad had left.

Keith waited on the step, braced for her words.

‘Goodbye, Dad,’ she said mechanically, and closed the door.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tara didn’t sleep well that night, as the old voices in her head started up a familiar argument. If it hadn’t been for the sleep app playing fruitlessly on her mobile phone, she could have been transported back to any given evening between the ages of ten and eighteen, when she frequently lay awake agonizing over the impossible micro-balancing of family loyalty.

One voice dominated proceedings. And it was furious. Who the hell did Dad think he was, waltzing back in like that, expecting everything to be forgotten in a lovely Hollywood ending? How dare he ‘need to say goodbye’ to her poor mother, when he’d left them without a backwards glance – if he’d cared about his family, he’d have kept in touch. It wasn’t that hard.

But a smaller voice kept butting in. Seeing him had been surprisingly easy, hadn’t it? Maybe he’d changed. Maybe it was time to stop defending Mum’s feelings, now she was no longer here.