To his surprise, Gemma moved closer and slid her hand into his. ‘It’s terrible when someone dies and all their secrets are revealed. I never understood that before.’

‘I think the worst was that your mother died so suddenly and so young. Most people clear out their stuff as they grow older. Gemma … this doesn’t really matter now, so we won’t tell anyone. Agreed? And it doesn’t affect the fact that your mother loved you.’

She hesitated then nodded.

He waited to see if she’d say anything else but she didn’t, just knuckled away another couple of fat, slippery tears. Taking a deep breath he opened the next packet of letters.

‘These are older, from her family mostly. They seem to be in date order.’ He fanned through them, then gasped as he saw one of the early ones. Even after all these years he recognised that elegant italic handwriting.

Before he could hide it, Gemma said, ‘That one’s addressed to you.’

‘Yes. I wonder when it arrived?’ He squinted at the date stamp and saw in shock that it had been posted the same year he came out to Australia. It must have arrived just before he and Judith got married after their whirlwind romance.

Gemma looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Hadn’t you seen it before?’

‘No.’

‘Who’s it from? Do you recognise the handwriting?’

‘Yes. A girl I used to go out with.’

‘Why did Mum open it, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ Relieved that his daughter seemed to believe him, he turned it round in his hands, staring at it through a blur of emotion. It brought back so many memories just to see that handwriting.

‘Aren’t you going to read it?’

‘I think we should let the past go. Whatever’s in that letter can’t matter now.’

‘I don’t agree. It must be important if Mum kept it all these years.’

He was so relieved that his daughter was still talking to him civilly that he did as she suggested and held the letter so that they could both read it. She pressed closer to him and when he put his arm round her, she didn’t pull away.

‘Oh, no!’ Gemma clapped one hand to her mouth, made a little mewling noise of pain and burrowed her head against his chest for a moment or two.

He didn’t know what to say or do. His thoughts were spinning in a surge of fury and dismay. It was immediately obvious why Judith had kept the letter from him: she hadn’t wanted anything to stop them marrying. But even though they’d been living together at the time, she’d had no right to open his mail. And it had been unconscionable to keep a letter as important as this from him.

He looked sideways at his tense, white-faced daughter. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Could it be true? Technically, I mean. Did you have an affair with this Dorothy Redman woman while you were courting my mother?’