Paula said nothing, reeling from a secondary wave of shock as the reality sank through her. Dad with another woman. Dad with another child. When the Mortimers had always previously seemed so unassailable, so tight, so solid. When her parents had been such role models, the greatest advertisements for happy marriage! It was like finding out Father Christmas wasn’t real all over again, only worse – a million times worse.

‘It was unfortunate timing; she had no idea . . .’ her dad was saying in a weak, apologetic voice, so unlike his usual cheery confidence.

Paula didn’t care about timing or what this other woman thought, when Jeanie was sitting there, so broken and hurt. She couldn’t even look at her own dad any more, she felt so stunned.

‘Fuck,’ John said, shaking his head. It didn’t even earn a ‘Language!’ from Jeanie, as it normally would have done, that was how dire things were. ‘Does she want money or something? Is that why she’s come here now?’

‘What if she’s lying?’ Stephen put in, sounding suspicious. The youngest of the Mortimer siblings, he’d become a lawyer and now worked in very grand office premises near the Theatre Royal; his childhood years of being wrestled and sat on and pillow-whacked making him an excellent advocate for those treated unjustly by others.

‘I don’t think she’s after money,’ Harry replied. ‘At least she didn’t mention it. And she’s definitely not lying. I knew as soon as I looked at her that she was . . . that she was mine. I’m sorry, love,’ he added as Jeanie gave a wounded sniff and blew her nose. ‘But why would she lie anyway? Why would anyone make up something like that?’ He sighed. ‘It was all so out of the blue.’

‘You’re telling me,’ Paula snapped, anger flaring inside her. She’d never had a bad word to say about her dad before, never. He’d been her hero her entire life, rescuing her from outside nightclubs when she was young and the last bus had gone; walking her up the aisle on her wedding day; speeding her to the maternity unit when she went into labour early and Matt was working out near Leeds. As the only daughter, she’d always felt so special, so beloved, the apple of her father’s eye. But now, as it turned out, there was a rival apple. Suddenly she was quite a lot less special than she’d imagined.