Then Hope put down the mug and said abruptly, ‘Your father contacted me recently.’

‘Lionel?’

‘No. He wouldn’t know how to contact me, even if he cared about me, and I wouldn’t give him the time of day if he did. No, it was your birth father, Adam Torrington, who contacted me. He’s in England.’

‘He never contacted you before. What does he want now?’ Janey couldn’t help speaking sharply.

‘To meet you. It turns out someone intercepted the letter I sent him telling him I was pregnant, and he never got it.’ She explained how Adam had found out about Janey’s existence.

‘And you believe this?’

‘Yes. Unless he’s changed beyond recognition, Adam isn’t the sort to tell lies, especially about important things like this.’ She smiled, but it was clearly an effort. ‘It made me feel better to know Adam didn’t refuse to help me back then.’

‘And his wife is dead, you say?’

‘Yes. It’s sad for their daughter, isn’t it, to lose her mother so abruptly? Gemma is only seventeen. He says she’s very clever and was a full year ahead at school.’

It was out before Janey could stop herself. ‘Unlike me, struggling to catch up and win a place at university or at least on a technical college course. He won’t think much of me being an unmarried mother, either, will he? He might leave rather than meet me and Millie when he finds out.’

Her mother came and sat beside her, putting an arm round her shoulders, for once offering instead of needing comfort. ‘I told him you were forced and Millie’s the result of that.’

‘You did? And he believed you?’

‘Yes. And if it’s all right with you, I’d like to bring him and your sister to meet you.’

It came out as a whisper. ‘A sister. I can’t believe I have a sister.’ She looked at her mother’s face, so close to her own. ‘It must be upsetting for you, the thought of meeting him again.’

Hope frowned, head on one side, then shook her head. ‘Not now that I know he didn’t deliberately abandon us. I’ve talked about it with my counsellor and it made me feel … better. I can’t find words for why I felt so much better. Not rejected, perhaps that’s it.’

She reached out and brushed away a tear from Janey’s face with her fingertips. ‘Don’t cry. I won’t bring him unless I’m sure it’s the right thing to do, and of course, unless you want it.’

‘He won’t want to meet me.’

‘He and Gemma have come all this way especially to meet us both. Remember that. Travelling ten thousand miles isn’t a casual act.’

‘I can’t believe I—’

Janey couldn’t help weeping a little in her mother’s arms.

And afterwards, once her mother had left, she wept again. She wasn’t ashamed of Millie, but it wasn’t a good look to meet your father for the first time holding your fatherless child in your arms. It didn’t make you feel confident of being accepted. He was more likely to pity her and she didn’t want that either.