‘Oh, I absolutely want them, but I don’t want to make the same sacrifices he has made to get them,’ Evan said sadly. ‘My dad made a lot of choices to get where he is today that I couldn’t live with. Not easily at least. I know I only have the opportunities I do because he worked so hard to give them to me, but he talks like he wants a clone, not a son. It was always made very clear, I would go to college, join the business, and when he was satisfied that I could pick up where he left off, my dad would retire and hand the reins over to me. But I’ve seen what it takes to do what he does, what kind of person you have to be behind closed doors, and I don’t want it. I love my dad, but I don’t want to be him. The thought that I might even be like him, deep down, it scares me.’

I rested my hand lightly on his leg as he shook his head. ‘That makes sense to me. I loved my mum, but I’m terrified of turning into her.’

The moment the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. I clapped one hand over my mouth to stop anything else from slipping out.

‘Do you want to tell me why?’ he asked gently.

‘Ever since she died, people always go on about how nice she was,’ I said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘But I’m not sure that’s how I would describe her.’

‘People don’t rush to insult the dead,’ he replied.

‘They didn’t know her like I did. She definitely wasn’t nice,’ I said with a wry smile, knowing she would have hated to have been described that way. ‘She was funny and clever and fiercely loyal. She worked harder than anyone I’ve ever met. But after my dad left, she was just …’

I trailed off for a moment and Evan waited patiently, still stroking my wrist, his full attention on me.

‘She was bitter,’ I said. ‘Then she got ill and then she died. My mum wasn’t a bad person, but she wasn’t a happy person either. When people die, you want to be able to say they lived a good life, but what if it wasn’t exactly a fairy tale? Sometimes I hear myself and I sound just like her and I am so scared of ending up bitter, alone and miserable, and not knowing how to change that.’