Ellie looked me in the eyes. She gave a little shiver and shook her head. ‘You’re a liar too,’ she said, and went back to the living room.

Was she talking about Jake? But how could she possibly know? I wanted to challenge her, but instead I followed her into the living room just in time to see her stop in her tracks.

There was a local newspaper open on the coffee table, with a great big colour photograph splashed across it.

Paula and Daisy. It had to be.

The picture showed a knackered-looking woman in jeans and a T-shirt crouching down next to a dazed little girl in a stripy dress, who was staring at a set of light-up rings on her fingers. They were in a school playground; there was a stall just behind them, and blue and yellow pennants had been strung up along the edge of the awning overhead.

Both Mum and Ingrid were staring at the picture. Ingrid looked as if she wouldn’t mind if Paula and Daisy were wiped off the face of the earth. But Mum’s expression was one of recognition.

She pointed at Paula and said, ‘I’ve met her.’

Ingrid folded the newspaper and put it away in the storage space underneath the glass top of the coffee table. ‘Are you sure, dear? It doesn’t seem very likely.’

She turned to me and Ellie. ‘You might not remember, Ellie. But you will, Ava. It was the day you burned yourself on the iron, and we took Ellie into school and then took you up to A&E. We bumped into Mark afterwards, in the newsagent’s in the hospital. I hadn’t seen him for years… since I’d had you. Just one of those chance encounters. But he saw you, and you… made an impression on him. That was what prompted him to look me up, later on. When he was free.’

‘I remember the burn,’ I said. ‘I had a scar, for a bit. It’s completely gone now. I wanted to get some sweets afterwards, and I pestered you and eventually you let me. I don’t remember her, though.’

‘She’s not especially memorable, really,’ Ingrid said.

‘I never did find out why they were there,’ Mum said. ‘Mark didn’t want to say.’

‘I think that’s enough dwelling on the past, don’t you?’ Ingrid said. She got up from her knees, settled back into her chair and took a sip of sherry. ‘Do sit down, girls. If Mark isn’t here in another five minutes, we had better start our lunch without him.’

Ellie and I took up our places on the sofa again. Mum had fallen to studying the engagement ring on her finger, turning it fractionally this way and that to catch the light.

She looked worn out. Resigned. Maybe she’d manage some kind of confrontation with Mark – Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me – but really, it was too late. She’d already thrown in her lot with him, and she was in too deep to walk away.