I tried the words out. If my father loved me. They didn’t seem to make much difference now. And I could work out the rest of the story for myself. Audrey was the wife he wanted and had taken for himself, but the contract had turned itself inside out. Faye died, Audrey rejected him, and he was left with a beady-eyed and unpliant child. There had been the serial aunties as compensation, and Scentsation followed by a spell in prison, and the uneasiness that lay heavy between the two of us for the rest of his life.

His charm had worked on me, but after he left me I was cunning enough to hide the effects of it from him. Power to the powerless. Ted may have traded in dreams, but he had lived with lost love and the finality of death. He wasn’t wicked, or really even a bad man. He was just what he was. I thought I knew him but when I tried to catch the scent of his cologne, or a glimpse of him within the glittering box of Scentsation, there was nothing there. Only the stink of cats and Audrey’s peeling wallpaper.

‘I think I understand,’ I said, meaning the effects of history that had marked us all.

‘Maybe. Or maybe not.’

I stood up because my thighs and back were aching. ‘Shall I make us a cup of tea?’ I asked.

‘That would be nice,’ Audrey said.

I washed the teapot thoroughly, found teabags that were still in their hygienic sachets, located two cups. While I waited for the kettle to boil I cleared some of the potato peelings and expired teabags and eggshells out of the sink, and tied them up in a plastic bag. I swabbed the sink with a cloth and wiped the crusted taps. There must be a very fine line, I thought, between choosing and having to live like this. Audrey had probably started on the right side of it, but I wasn’t sure about now.

I poured the tea and gave a cup to Audrey. She puckered her mouth and blew on it, then sipped and sighed appreciatively.

‘What about the money?’ I ventured.

‘I never saw it again. You might say, more fool me.’ She put her cup down and retrieved the marriage certificate from where I had left it. She folded it neatly and stowed it in her pocket. ‘I never asked him to pay it back.’ That was a matter of pride, I could tell.

‘Did you see each other?’

Audrey smiled, for the first time a genuine smile that made her look much younger. ‘Once in a while.’

I said, ‘We’d like to pay you back. Out of the house sale. I can’t speak for Lola, but Jack and I will make it up to you, with the proper interest.’