It was a relief to be away from the two of them, and to get out into the little entrance hall. Not half as much a relief as it would be to get out of there entirely, though, and to have the visit to Mark’s mother’s house out of the way and to be in the car going back home.

And then I’d be free to think of Jake and no one else.

Jake! Jake… I’d tell Jake about all of this, over dinner maybe, or in bed together, in that special after-sex time when it suddenly became possible to say anything. And he’d listen and stroke my hair and hold me close, and say that I shouldn’t worry, they were just an assortment of random people I shared genetic material with, but I didn’t need to feel tied to them, or defined by them, or as if I owed them anything at all. And then he’d tell me I was much too beautiful to worry about anything, and then he’d kiss me and then…

I knocked on the bathroom door and said, ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah. I’ll be out in a sec,’ Ellie said.

‘You OK? It was all pretty heavy in there, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look, try not to worry too much. It’s really nothing to do with us. I think Ingrid just thought we ought to know. But we’re never actually going to meet these people. They’ve got their lives and we’ve got ours. We can pretty much forget about them, to be honest.’

‘I guess.’

‘Ready to go back in?’

‘I suppose so.’

She opened the bathroom door. She looked paler than I’d ever seen her. Her eyes were huge, as if she’d been witnessing things that were too awful to share.

‘Are you OK? You look terrible.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Ellie said, without conviction. ‘I had a headache. I thought I was going to be sick.’ She put her hand to her head as if not quite sure what she was going to find there. ‘It’s beginning to go now.’

‘Do you want to tell Mum we should leave?’ I said, half hopefully.

‘No. We should stay. Maybe it doesn’t matter that it’s too late to help. Someone has to remember what happened here.’

‘Ellie, what on earth are you talking about?’

Ellie shrugged. The colour was beginning to come back to her cheeks. ‘It was something bad. Some kind of torture.’

‘Ellie, this was a hospital.’

‘It was definitely right here,’ Ellie insisted. ‘Can you seriously not feel it? Not a thing?’

‘Not really. I mean… the place is definitely a bit creepy. But that could just be Ingrid.’

‘I don’t think it is only to do with her. There’s something else. Something that isn’t in the past. But it’s difficult to make sense of it when people have been keeping things to themselves.’

‘There can’t be any more to come out. Mark has a kid Mum didn’t even know about. That’s enough for one day, surely? Even in this family.’