Then Helen got up to speak, shifting Frankie onto Eileen’s lap and moving to stand alongside Sean’s coffin, holding two typed sheets of A4. She looked pretty good, Patrick thought. Her hair was a straight dark shiny sheet under the brim of her hat, and her coral lipstick matched her dress and shoes – the family having eschewed the traditional black in favour of a so-called ‘life-affirming’ dress code of bright colours. Only the black bags under her eyes gave away her grief.

She hesitated, opened her mouth to read what was on the sheets, then closed it again, screwed up the sheets into a small ball and dropped the ball onto the marble floor. Everyone sat up a little taller when she finally spoke, in a voice that was strong, unwavering – and absolutely furious. She addressed her husband’s coffin directly.

‘Sean Adrian Philips’ – it had never occurred to Patrick before that the deceased’s initials spelled SAP – ‘I will never forgive you for what you’ve done to us.’ The congregation gasped. Patrick wondered if she’d have said the same if Alice hadn’t left the room. Probably not. The screwed-up ball of paper on the floor was almost definitely very different in content.

‘We’ve been through hell in the last two weeks, the worst two weeks of my entire life, and just when we got our baby back, you do this to me? You—’ Her lips formed a cat’s bum of a B for bastard, but at the last moment, she seemed to remember that she was in church. ‘Coward,’ she hissed at the coffin instead. ‘There is nothing that would make me forgive you for this. Nothing.’

Gasps and sobs bounced off the rafters in the church roof. It was then that Eileen turned around, still holding Frankie, and stared straight at Patrick even though he was almost in the back row, her eyes lasering into him. Other people turned to see what she was looking at, and Patrick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Her meaning could not have been clearer: DO NOT TELL HER.

Do not tell this grieving furious woman, tearless and devastated, that the reason her husband killed himself was because her stepdaughter was the product of incest. Because he’d married his half-sister, because he hadn’t known that the same woman had since come back and befriended Helen, because he couldn’t live with the guilt and shame of it all coming out. Or worse, perhaps because he realized he still loved his first wife, and couldn’t live without her? They would never know.

Patrick stared at the floor. Liz Wilkins poked his bicep. ‘Why is Sean’s mother looking at you like that?’