Olivia laughed. ‘Not by blood, no. But Kate and I were closer than most sisters ever are. We adored each other. She was lovely, Katie was, when she was young. So kind and sweet. She’d have done anything for anyone . . .’

Anna listened, longing to be beguiled. She wanted to believe everything she was being given, to rest on the surface. And Krish was so interested and attentive, his eyes fastened on his mother’s face, and she wanted to believe in that too, that this extraordinary affection was the whole story between them.

But questions kept nudging into her mind as Olivia talked and talked about her mother. ‘Katie and I were inseparable at school.’ Her face was glowing, her voice animated. ‘And of course she loved my father. She used to come on holidays with us, because your grandfather, Anna, was a very upright man, but rather a joyless sort, I’m afraid. We had a marvellous time together, and then of course I went away to boarding school. But we wrote letters all the time, and all the holidays we just lived at each other’s houses. We talked about anything and everything – quite openly for those days, I can tell you!’

On and on it went, Katie and I, Katie and I . . . Krish seemed to be drinking it all in.

‘So why didn’t I ever meet her?’ he asked after a time.

‘Oh, well,’ Olivia said, face still bathed in a bright smile. ‘The war came and changed everything. Nothing was ever the same. I joined the Wrens and Katie was here nursing and we didn’t see so much of each other after that. And then after, I went off to London and I met your father . . .’

These last words were spoken with a worshipping tone that Anna found ridiculous. He was just a man, she felt like saying. Yet another one.

Olivia directed a wistful smile at Anna. ‘If ever there was a love child – ’ She leaned across and stroked Krish’s head. ‘Unfortunately Krishna, my Krishna, was already married. He was on a visiting lectureship, you see. He felt the only thing he could do was to return home. But he left me his child.’

Anna thought of Elizabeth Kemp, how she managed to put from her so many things she didn’t like. She felt a rising anger and resentment. All this pretence at being honest and vulnerable, when all the time she was selecting what she would tell, giving her son these half-truths. And what the hell was he playing at anyway, listening with that fixed, devoted smile? She felt like a fly trapped in the syrupy atmosphere between them. She knew there were layers and layers to Olivia which made it impossible to know quite where the truth lay. Had she even been honest when she wrote her notes to Kate?

She felt tired of it all suddenly, with a frustrated urge to smash through the brittle surface of things with which she had been presented all evening. She couldn’t listen to any more.