‘Not exactly. I’ve never played around with two women at once. I wouldn’t do that. I knew Dorothy before I left England, but I hadn’t met your mother then.’

She looked at him in puzzlement. ‘But Mum always said you two met when she was on holiday in England. You met in Brighton, near the Pavilion, and kept in touch because you’d fallen in love.’

‘Judith’s aunt upset her by saying the two of us would never last and she accused me of using Judith to get permission to stay permanently in Australia. So Judith and I agreed to pretend that we’d known one another for longer, that we’d met when she visited England the year before.’

‘You can’t have loved that other woman if you left her behind.’

‘I thought I loved her. I was going to send for her, but then I met your mother and I knew it hadn’t been a lasting sort of love with Dorothy. I thought it’d be kinder just to vanish from her life, then she could blame me.’

‘If you were so much in love with Mum in those days, what went wrong?’

‘I don’t know. Judith would never discuss it except to say she was bored by me and fed up of me going away. It started during that year where I had to work really long hours because a colleague was ill.’ Was that really why Judith had gone astray? Because of his frequent absences? Or had she had other affairs? What did that matter now?

Gemma brought him back to the present. ‘What would you have done if you’d known that this Dorothy person was pregnant before you married Mum?’ She tapped the letter.

‘Who knows? Gone back to England, I suppose. Accepted the responsibility, even if I did nothing else about it.’

‘If you had gone back, you might not have returned to Australia. You might even have married her and then I wouldn’t exist. That’d make your life easier now, wouldn’t it?’ She pulled away from him suddenly.

‘Don’t be silly. I’m glad you exist. I love you to pieces and always have done since you grasped one of my fingers in the hospital just after you were born. If we’re being brutally frank, you’re the main reason I stayed with your mother for so long. I didn’t want her keeping me away from you.’

‘How do I know that’s true?’

‘Teddy bear’s honour.’

Again, the old phrase stopped her in her tracks. It was a silly oath, but she knew he’d never lied to her when he used it. They’d only used that phrase to make important statements to one another. Would it still convince her that what he was telling her was true? He prayed so.

Gemma moved away from him, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans and giving him that don’t-touch-me look again. But behind it he could see pain and doubt.

Oh, his heart ached for her! She was too young to understand the tangles people got into with their relationships. Too young to know the truth of the French phrase: tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse. Everything did pass in the end, and you did grow weary of things, even of being angry at your ex-wife. He wasn’t as sure that everything broke, but the journey to acceptance of change could still hurt.