‘I don’t think you ever would have carried on seeing Dad behind Paula’s back,’ she said. ‘Not for any length of time, anyway.’

‘I don’t know if I’m quite as nice and good as you seem to think,’ I told her. ‘I never really challenged Mark about not seeing Daisy. It was easier to let sleeping dogs lie. But looking at it objectively… he let her down. And so did I. Don’t you think she was entitled to more?’

Ava’s blue eyes suddenly looked very dark.

‘But it was Paula who made it impossible for Mark to see her,’ she said.

I hesitated. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her. But she’d only just called him her dad. Did she really need to know?

And what if he didn’t make it through?

But then, he had wanted to tell me the truth because he thought he might not get another chance. He must have thought it mattered. In the end, he’d chosen to stop lying.

I said, ‘Ava, that wasn’t true. It was your dad who rejected Daisy. He couldn’t cope with her. He didn’t want to know. I don’t think Paula is at all the kind of person we’ve been led to believe she is. Your dad just told me that she actually wrote to me, after Felix died. She sent a condolence card. But I never got it. He thought it might upset me.’ Or so I had to assume. Unless he had wanted me to carry on thinking of Paula as heartless. ‘He made sure I never saw it.’

Ava kept on staring at me but it was as if she wasn’t seeing me at all; it was as if she’d gone somewhere else. Then she said, ‘Now or never.’

‘Something like that. Yes.’

Ava got abruptly to her feet, as if she’d suddenly decided on something.

‘I’m going to go look for a cup of coffee,’ she said. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘You’re not allowed hot drinks in here,’ Ellie said. ‘Haven’t you read the signs?’

‘Well then, I’ll have a coffee somewhere outside. There’s a café somewhere, isn’t there?’

‘It’ll be shut,’ I told her. ‘But I think there’s a vending machine somewhere.’

‘Then I’ll find it. Do you want anything?’

I shook my head, and Ellie said, ‘I’ll pass. Don’t spill coffee on your dress.’

‘Yeah, well, hardly matters now. After all, I’m not going to be wearing it again, am I? Might as well wreck it.’

Ava swished out. Ellie said, ‘Maybe Paula just wanted to show Mark his daughter. Maybe she wanted to show all of us.’

‘I suppose,’ I said.

She wasn’t looking at me, but into space, the way she had sometimes done when she was little, as if she was trying to remember something, or say something that was on the tip of her tongue. Then she said, ‘At the risk of sounding absolutely crazy, I have a message for you.’

‘A message?’

‘Yeah. But you have to promise me not to freak out about it. I’m trying not to freak out myself. I mean, I don’t usually get any words. Or I haven’t before. It always used to just be a feeling. Anyway, I don’t think it’s anything to be scared of.’