Traffic was horrendous on the journey back to London, the motorway reduced to one slow-churning, bad-tempered lane somewhere in Northants, as the result of an overturned lorry. Closer to home, the outskirts of the city snarled with bottleneck after bottleneck, and Frankie felt gritty-eyed and numb as she changed from first gear to second and then back again, in a seemingly endless stop–start queue of cars.

Back when she’d decided to make the trip to York, she’d had vague thoughts of making a weekend of it – wandering around the Minster and visiting The Shambles, enjoying imagining her mum walking those same streets once upon a time, young and carefree. She’d even daydreamed about returning, in some rose-tinted future, with Craig and Fergus to introduce them to Harry, tentatively joining her two worlds together in a family Venn diagram. But oh, such things seemed impossible now. Even the idea was laughable.

Of all the many outcomes she’d considered for the weekend – that she was too late and Harry had died; that he wasn’t interested and told her to leave; that he denied all knowledge of her mother and wouldn’t so much as look her in the eye – it was safe to say that the scenario where she accidentally blundered into his Golden Wedding anniversary celebrations had never once occurred to her.

Her mouth dry, her palms clammy, she had stood there in a panic at the edge of the room, feeling paralysed, as if all her power had been taken from her. Craig had suggested from the outset that she write a letter first, introduce herself at a distance in order to give the man some time to digest the situation in private. And sure, Frankie knew he’d had a point, but then Craig made his living as a writer, he’d have found that sort of thing easy, whereas she . . . didn’t. Far better to knock on a door, she’d thought: say hello in person, begin a dialogue right there and then. At least you’d know where you stood.

Although look where she’d ended up: in a packed, steamy village hall, where a prancing tight-trousered singer was giving it his best Tom Jones on a stage, with flashing disco lights, inebriated dancers and a huge gold-foiled banner strung across the room: CONGRATULATIONS HARRY AND JEANIE! 50 HAPPY YEARS! She’d gone looking for a father, but she’d managed to stumble into his whole family. For so many reasons, this was most definitely not the place to launch into a delicate conversation about dads and daughters and decades-old secrets.