‘It’s OK,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about it.’

David sits silently while I discreetly cry out this latest batch of tears, his fingers rubbing soothing circles on my hands. It’s only when I stop and bring my eyes up to meet his that I see the fear in them. He has something else that he needs to tell me, but suddenly, I don’t want to hear it.

I move my hands out of his grasp and lean back, gripped by an urge to flounce away from him, just as I would have done as a teenager. I tormented David and Anna from the age of thirteen right through to eighteen, sneaking out after my bedtime, drinking, smoking, even dabbling once or twice in recreational drugs. And I delighted in inviting boys home and locking my bedroom door behind us – a practice that was strictly against David’s rules. How bold I felt, when really, I was lost. It’s obvious to me now that I was oh-so angry at my displacement within the world, when what I should have been was grateful – happy to be as cherished as I was by my adoptive parents.

‘I can’t just sit here and watch while you allow your life to fall completely apart,’ David says quietly, his tone sympathetic rather than severe. ‘This is the first time you’ve been out for a meal in months,’ he adds, gesturing around. ‘And what about your job – are you ever going to go back?’

I shake my head once, the gesture unequivocal.

‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I just can’t be there. I can’t be anywhere near there. I’m sorry that I’m not paying my way – I will get a job somewhere else.’

‘Genie,’ he begins, and I know what he’ll say next: money is not the problem, never has been since he wrote all those books about another girl called Evangeline; since he turned my forlorn start in life into the Evangeline And … series for other children to enjoy. It’s that Evangeline who has kept a roof over our heads, who settles the utility bills, puts food in the fridge and pays for the artwork on the walls of our home. She is the real star of our family.

‘It’s time we had a chat about your real mother,’ David blurts out.