‘All right. You’ve convinced me. You can tell Dorothy about that yourself. She’s going to ring you tomorrow evening at seven-thirty if I’m satisfied with your answers today. You didn’t seem like a liar to me when I met you, and I’m pretty good at reading faces. If I hadn’t trusted you, I’d not even have contacted her.’

‘Thank you very much for your help. I’m really grateful.’

‘It’s for Dorothy’s sake I’m doing it. She needs closure on certain things that have been upsetting her for the past nineteen years. And that daughter of yours might have an interest in the affair too, don’t you think?’

He was struggling to find a satisfactory answer when she said, ‘No need to go further into that, eh? It’s between you and Dorothy to settle it now.’

The line went dead.

He had to sit down. How strange! He didn’t usually feel wobbly about things. But this quest was starting to turn up some very important answers.

He realised Gemma had come to sit on the sofa next to him and was looking at him anxiously. He took her hand while he explained exactly what Linda had told him.

She was silent for a few moments but she didn’t push him away as she said abruptly, ‘You look upset and nervous as well.’

‘I am. This could be so very important.’

‘To us both,’ she said quietly. ‘She’s my half-sister, isn’t she? Though I still don’t know whether to hope we make contact with her or to hope we don’t.’

‘I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and—’

‘Is that why you’re sleeping so badly?’

‘How did you know?’ He’d tried not to make a noise.

‘I can hear you tossing and turning in this horrid little flat. And you look deep-down tired with dark circles round your eyes.’

‘Oh. Well anyway, I’ve decided that if I do have another daughter, I don’t just want to meet her; I want to get to know her. Do you mind?’

Her silence had him worried, then she said in a voice that shook, ‘I think I’ll want to get to know her too, unless she’s horrible.’

‘That isn’t surprising, is it?’

Gemma gave one of those offhand shrugs she used to hide her emotions. ‘Anyway, we came all this way, didn’t we? If we have a chance of finding this Dorothy and her daughter, it’d be stupid to back out now.’

‘Yes. It would.’

They sat in more of that heavy silence for a few minutes, each wrapped in thought, then he said abruptly, ‘Let’s go out for the rest of today. We’ve earned a break. Anywhere you like that’s not more than a two-hour drive away.’

‘Oxford. It’s one of the places on my list.’

‘Oxford it is.’

They met the manager of the flats on their way out and she suggested they leave their car at a park-and-ride station on the outskirts of the city and ride in by bus. ‘Can’t find parking in Oxford for love nor money most days.’