She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Shocked, obviously. Mortified. Penny went mental. I think she was mental already, but this tipped her over the edge. She did a runner, left Alice with Sean saying that Alice was a freak and she didn’t want anything to do with any of them . . . She buggered off to Australia and we never saw her again.’

‘Why did Sean tell everyone she was dead?’

Eileen dropped her head again. ‘He couldn’t find her, to get a divorce. He was so upset. He’d really really loved her. I felt so guilty that I’d come between them – maybe I shouldn’t ever have said anything. But then they might have had more children, and the next ones mightn’t have been right in the head, even though Alice was alright . . . He didn’t want Alice to know, obviously, and he didn’t want to tell her that her mum had just abandoned her. So he got rid of all the photos and told everyone that Penny had gone over to Australia on a work placement for six months and died in a car crash over there. Alice was only a toddler; it was better for her that she grew up thinking her mum was dead rather than the truth. He used to worry that Penny would show up out of the blue, but she never did. Not until now. I hate her, for what she did to him and Alice, the mental bitch.’ Eileen’s voice rose until she was almost shouting.

Patrick took a deep breath. Penny must indeed have been mentally ill. He remembered her on the roof, calling Frankie by Alice’s name. Perhaps she thought she had another chance, to succeed with Frankie where she’d failed Alice? The two girls looked similar, the way that Penny and Helen were fairly alike.

‘She’s dead now, Eileen. She died this morning, jumping off the roof in the hotel when we were rescuing Frankie. I’m so sorry.’

‘Good riddance,’ Eileen said, but the words were drowned out in a storm of sobs that bent her double over her wet lap. All Patrick could do was squeeze her shoulder.

If it was easier for Eileen to blame Penny, then who was he to contradict her?

Finally Eileen sat up again and gripped Patrick’s wrists. ‘Promise me one thing,’ she said, staring right in his face. ‘You’re the only person in the world that knows now. You and me, nobody else. Promise me you won’t tell anybody, ever. Promise me. It would kill Alice. The poor girl’s lost her daddy. Don’t tell her she’s just lost her real mummy too. I don’t want her to know that Penny hated her. Do you promise?’