‘Not for a morning. I know. That’s your best writing time.’ Donna grinned. She didn’t forget important facts.

Mary Prichard took one look at the headlines and shoved the newspaper away with an exclamation of loathing.

Her son, who’d brought the scandal rag he’d noticed at the newsagent’s round to show her, picked it up off the floor and folded it carefully, avoiding her eyes as he spoke. ‘I’ve been thinking of going to see him.’

She turned on him. ‘What? After all I’ve said to you.’

‘Hell, Mum, Jez Winter’s my father and I’ve never even met him. You won’t tell me much about him, so how else can I find out? You get tight-lipped if I so much as mention his name.’

‘I brought you up decently and normally by keeping you away from him. Just be thankful for that.’

‘I am. You’ve been a wonderful mother. And Brian’s a great stepfather. But I want – need to know my real father as well.’

‘You don’t need him.’

‘I do.’ Tom looked at her earnestly. ‘Believe me, I do, Mum.’

She sighed and her shoulders slumped. ‘I wish you’d never found that birth certificate.’

‘I don’t. I’d always wondered who my real father was. And I’d have had to see it eventually, wouldn’t I?’ He hesitated, then asked the question that was burning inside him. ‘What I need to know is, did you persuade Jez to stay away from me all these years or was that his own choice?’ His voice broke on the words; he couldn’t help it.

Her lips tightened into a thin, bloodless line.

‘You’re doing it again. You always get that expression on your face when I try to talk about him. That’s when Brian usually steps in to prevent me continuing. Only I deliberately chose a time he wouldn’t be here. Mum, if you won’t tell me anything, do you have a contact address for Jez Winter? I really, really need to meet him. He’s my father.’

‘No, I don’t.’ She raised one hand to stop him speaking. ‘I never wanted one. He and I agreed on a clean break and I kept to that promise.’

‘Did he never show any interest in me?’ Tom turned his back to her, breathing deeply a couple of times, trying to control his emotions but quivering with the violence of them.

She laid her hand on Tom’s shoulder from behind, saying nothing.

He raised his own hand to cover hers. ‘Could you answer that question, please, Mum? It’s important to me. Hasn’t my real father shown any interest in me at all?’ His voice cracked again on the last words.

The hand slipped off his shoulder and he turned to see her shaking her head blindly, tears in her eyes. But this time he didn’t weaken and stop asking. This time he was determined to find out what had happened between his biological parents. It was doing his head in. He was twenty-six, dammit, a grown man, and should be over this. But he was a man with pain in his heart whenever he thought of his real father, the pain of rejection, and no amount of reasoning would take the sharp sting of that away. Only the truth would do it. He hoped. ‘Well?’