‘You’re right. But you deserve to hear them anyway.’ He waited to see what I would do. My mind was running in circles but eventually both it and my body tired and I lowered myself back down.

‘Thank you.’

I remained silent.

‘I’m not really sure where to start. I made such a giant cock-up of it all.’

My only reply was a slight quirk of one eyebrow acknowledging that he’d at least got that bit right.

‘I don’t have a child.’

‘But your sister said…’ I couldn’t help myself interrupting.

‘I know. And I can see now how it must have sounded. And I can also see now how it must have felt when you realised I’d kept something from you when you’d bared your soul to me. It was unforgivable – although I’m of course hoping you might find a way, but my whole family think I’m an eejit and told me not to get my hopes up.’

I tried to smother the beginning of the smile that wanted to play on my face, easily imagining them saying those exact words.

‘Siobhan and I were engaged, and she got pregnant. I was over the moon. I mean, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. She seemed less so but, when I questioned her about it, she said she’d just been nervous about telling me because that hadn’t been our plan so soon into the marriage.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘Yep. That’s what I thought too. Until a couple of weeks before the wedding when she told me that the baby wasn’t mine.’

‘Oh… Lorcan.’

Even now I could see the pain of that revelation on his face.

‘She’d known it wasn’t all along. I’d been surprised because we’d always used protection but, you know, accidents happen and I had no reason to think anything else.’ He took a deep breath and I gave him a moment as I caught a passing waiter and asked him for a black coffee, which came moments later and Lorcan took a sip. In truth, I always thought tea was better for crises but right now he looked as if he could do with the caffeine. Either that or a fortnight’s sleep.

‘It turned out she’d been seeing an old boyfriend. They’d connected on Facebook and got chatting and then, one thing led to another. And that another led to a baby.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

He shook his head. ‘She told me she was in love with him and, as painful as that was to hear, I could cope with that. The thing I couldn’t cope with was that she’d known from the beginning the baby wasn’t mine. And yet she let me carry on thinking it was, attending scans, shopping for baby things, reading bloody baby books.’ He drew a hand across his brow.