Diane showed no concern for her safety. She gave the French doors a curious look, as if seeing a gunman outside would be as interesting as seeing a lost doe. She was distracted, and he wondered if Tarla had called her. He wouldn’t put it past his mother to give her best friend a warning. Cab’s coming. He knows. As if reading his mind, Diane said: ‘Dr Smeltz talked to me.’

‘Ah.’

‘Someone stole my medical files. He says it was you.’

‘No, it wasn’t me, but I was able to retrieve them. They’re safe. You won’t be reading anything in the papers.’

Diane didn’t look comforted. Her face tightened with fury. ‘Do you have any idea how violated I feel?’

‘I think I do.’

Diane tugged the flaps of her robe tighter below her neck. Something about the gesture gave him a vivid and unwanted memory of their two bodies together. He wondered if the same image was in her own head. It had felt right at the time, but almost immediately, it had gone wrong.

‘So,’ she said. ‘You know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

She leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. She was a powerful woman who looked powerless. ‘I told you that afternoon changed my life.’

He said nothing.

‘I suppose you’re going to ask how I could have kept this from you,’ she went on. ‘It’s a fair question. I’ve thought about it myself a great deal. Then and now.’

Cab shook his head. ‘Obviously, I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.’

‘Still, she was your child, too.’

He wasn’t prepared for how that one sentence cut open his heart and left him bleeding. She. A girl. He’d been summoning his courage to ask the question, and now she had answered it for him. She recognized what she’d done, and her face filled with sincere distress. ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t mean to break it like that, but I thought you would have seen it in my file.’

‘I didn’t look that closely.’

‘Well, yes. She. A daughter.’

He shrugged. The gesture was false. ‘A daughter I never would have known anyway. I suppose it doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course it matters, Cab!’ Diane exclaimed. ‘And for what it’s worth, I apologize. Back then, I had no choice but to hide the truth from you, and from Tarla, too. It doesn’t make it right, but you can appreciate the situation I was in. After that, well, I have no excuses to give you. You deserved the truth, but I never sought out the right moment. I didn’t want to revisit what happened. Even so, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her.’

His emotions betrayed him. Whatever he wanted to say lodged in his throat and went nowhere. His eyes felt wet.