Her words gave Tilly pause. She had been young with Gerry, but looking back, it was true – she had always striven to foresee his wants. Out of love, she had told herself at the time, to save him hassle. It had seemed a laudable sacrifice then, making her own wishes and needs secondary to his. Something that he had initially found charming and then taken for granted, she now realised. And it had left her in ignorance of the hidden life he had pursued, the debts he had incurred. No, there had been nothing balanced about it. She wondered how much longer her compliance would have lasted if the tragedy hadn’t occurred – ten years, twenty? Perhaps it wasn’t the extra years, but grief and loss that was responsible for the change in her.

Looking at her mother, she wondered if Elaine’s own marital experience – for she too had spent her life attempting to please her own husband – had made her able to recognise the same foible in her daughter. Gratitude was no basis for marriage, she thought, but the sixties had been a different era. And if Les Williams hadn’t married Elaine, in all ignorance of her condition, then Tilly might well have grown up in an orphanage. So maybe he deserved the gratitude and service his wife had given him through the years. But it wasn’t the same as love. The relationship, flawed by Elaine’s deceit, had cheated all three of them of that.

‘Mum,’ she said with sudden decision, ‘why won’t you tell me my father’s name? You always said he didn’t matter, so who can it harm? I’m no longer a child and I think I deserve to know.’

Elaine looked startled, then sighed resignedly. ‘Oh, Tilly! I thought we were past all this. It still doesn’t matter. How can it? There’s nothing of you in him.’

‘Well, that’s not true. Half my DNA is his. I don’t want to meet him, or claim him, Mum, if that’s what’s stopping you. I just want to know.’