‘But not… for her?’

The look Ingrid gave me then would have frozen a waterfall. It reminded me of the way Mark could be sometimes, but infinitely icier.

‘You shouldn’t judge what people did or how they felt in the past by today’s standards,’ she said. ‘More to the point, you shouldn’t judge me, or my parents. After all, the time may come when somebody has cause to judge you.’

And with that she ushered me out, pausing only to close the door firmly behind her before escorting me back to the living room.

Luckily, after another sherry Mark seemed to forget all about his aunt and how she had come to live out her life in that very building, and remembered that he had an announcement to make.

‘I have some good news,’ he said. ‘Very good news. We’re having a baby.’

Ingrid almost dropped her sherry glass. Then she recovered herself and set it down.

‘You mean… I’m going to be a grandmother? I never thought… I mean, I had the impression you were perfectly happy as you are…’

The transformation in her was astonishing to see. I’d never seen her look like that – hopeful and shaken at the same time, as if life had just presented her with a gift that was so wonderful, so off-the-scale generous, she couldn’t quite believe her luck.

She got up and went over to Mark to embrace him, and then, to my astonishment, embraced me, too.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured in my ear. Then she withdrew and sat down again, still visibly stunned.

‘I take it you might be willing to babysit every now and then,’ Mark said.

‘Of course. If only you weren’t so far away…’

‘We won’t be, for much longer. We’re planning to move out of London. We won’t be right on your doorstep, but we’ll certainly be a lot closer.’

‘Well, that really couldn’t be better. That is perfect.’

‘It is,’ he said, turning to me for affirmation. ‘Isn’t it?’

He reached for my hand and squeezed it, and I smiled and agreed with them both.

It didn’t occur to me to be apprehensive. It seemed to me that Ingrid was right: everything was perfect. And when, a couple of months later, I was confronted with evidence that it might not be, I was so preoccupied by my pregnancy that I completely missed it.

Every family has a skeleton or two in the closet, and every marriage has ghosts. They’re the might-have-beens, the also-rans, the ones who got away. Mostly they stay in the background, like the kind of phantoms you might be told about by a tour guide at a stately home. But sometimes – usually when you’re least expecting it – bygones cease to be bygones, and the past comes roaring back to life.

That was what happened on the day of my twenty-week scan, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Mark took the morning off work to accompany me to the hospital. There were times when I felt a cold shiver of doubt about how much he was really looking forward to having a baby; he’d been pretty lukewarm about the ante-natal classes we’d gone to, and although he’d dutifully put the cot together, he’d been more than happy to leave the business of choosing it to me, along with shopping for all the other things it seemed we’d need. But then, he loved talking about the future and what our family life might be like, and he was as just as keen on going through the baby name book as I was. It was a big change, that was all, and he was adjusting. We both were. And when it counted – when it really mattered, like today – he was there.