Other emotions would follow the anger. She thought of his remark about her mother. ‘Impossible,’ he had said. Of course Vera was impossible, and how strengthening to hear someone else say so. It wasn’t just that Katie had somehow failed as a daughter! Three years he had lived with Vera – was that all it had taken to drive him away? And Katie was filled with curiosity both about exactly what had happened and about him as a man. What was he really like, other than in her mother’s fantasies? But then the anger would axe through her again. You went off and left me with her!

At times, though, there came other tender feelings. She ransacked her memory, that of her two-year-old self, who held an image of him as kind and loving. Her daddy. These thoughts flooded her with simple longing for all that she had lost or never had. She wanted her daddy – for him to love her.

It had been a tumultuous week. With all this had come the miracle of Marek, another kind of shock, beautiful, warming, that they had spoken their feelings for one another. He had been very kind to her, and considerate, seeing the state she was in. Through the intimate tenderness they shared, she trusted him very deeply already. Yet there were so many gaps in his life and in her knowledge. She did not yet know what had happened to Marek’s family, but she was almost sure that it was he who suffered from the terrible nightmares.

‘One day, I tell you,’ he said, as they sat one evening, perched on the edge of her bed, holding hands as Michael slept. The little lamp was on and the room felt cosy. She looked round at Marek’s thin, sensitive face and even in the gloom could see that mixed with his longing to talk was the fear of it – of facing it all again, and the emotion that went with it. It made her feel very tender towards him.

‘You shouldn’t bottle things up,’ she told him, squeezing his hand, so big and warm. ‘It’ll only make it worse.’

He looked at her. ‘Usually people do not ask. They do not want to know. Or I think they would not believe.’

‘Well, I’m asking. But only when you feel like it.’

‘Yes,’ he said, looking down, almost as if ashamed. She stroked his back. He gave a rueful smile. ‘Thank you.’

She assumed that most of his family had died, somehow. For him, the idea that you might find a parent when you believed them dead would be a miracle indeed, even though he could see that the situation was different. He encouraged her to go and see Michael O’Neill with an open mind.

‘Maybe there was good reason,’ he advised. ‘Give him a chance. He is your father – that doesn’t change.’

Sybil counselled the same. Katie realized that week just how much things had changed in her life. She was openly sharing her problems and concerns with others who cared about her. It felt a new, happy experience.