“Sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have brought it up...”

“No, it’s okay. Something to think about, anyway.” She smiled, or tried to, but she felt strange inside, like part of her had just developed a hairline crack that was surely getting wider and wider. “I’d better shower and change. I’m due to pick Mum up soon.”

“What can I do down here?” Ellie still looked concerned and apologetic, as if she regretted bringing the whole father thing up.

“Just man the fort, really. Stir the wine on occasion. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Upstairs in her flat, Olivia knew she should hurry to get ready, but some strange and persistent curiosity had her taking a stool to reach the high cupboard above her bed where her mum stored all sorts of things—boxes of jumbled ribbons and thread, old cords to various appliances and devices that no longer worked, and photo albums.

Olivia took out the oldest one, the one she hadn’t looked at very much. Her mum hadn’t been much of one for photo albums; instead she and Olivia had made a framed collage of photos for each year of her childhood. Tina had taken many of them to her flat in Witney, and a few were still left here. But the collages started after Olivia was two.

Now she perched on the edge of the bed and opened the dusty album, smoothing the wrinkled plastic that covered the old, now-faded photos. There weren’t many—a dozen in all, if that. Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at them. She’d never been curious, which now seemed odd; but in her child’s mind she’d drawn a very firm line across the past. Her life had begun at age two, when it was just her and Mum.

Except of course it hadn’t. She squinted, peering at the slightly blurry photo of them at Blackpool. Her father had her sandy hair, although his was cut short and didn’t look frizzy. In the photo he had her hoisted on his shoulders and she had her arms around his neck like a little, smiling-faced monkey.

What had happened? Why had she never really wanted to know? How could a man, a loving husband and father judging by admittedly just a handful of snaps, have walked away from it all? From his own child?

A lump was forming in her throat, a stone in her stomach. She felt heavy, burdened by a weight she hadn’t even realised she’d been carrying all these years. She’d always been fine about her dad’s leaving. It had never mattered, because Mum was enough. And in many ways her mum had been enough, but there was, Olivia realised, a dad-shaped hole in her life, and there always had been.

Dr Jekyll stalked into the room and jumped onto her bed, startling her out of her reverie. With a jolt Olivia realised nearly half an hour had passed. She closed the album and put it on her bedside table, to look at later. Right now she needed to focus on the present.