And yet she’d driven all that way, she kept thinking in dismay. And Craig had rearranged his workload specifically so that he could spend the weekend with Fergus. And she’d already spent so much on petrol and the budget-hotel room, and it wasn’t as if she could afford to waste such a sum. But what was the alternative? Ruin Harry Mortimer’s anniversary party, just because she wanted to get her money’s worth out of the trip?

Disappointment had coursed through her, weighting her feet to the floor. Wrong time, wrong place. This was what you got for being hot-headed, for making it all about you, she told herself despairingly. But then, just as she was about to sidle out of there again, leave them to it, she noticed a man across the crowd and a spear of recognition stabbed her. Tall, pink-faced, a white thatch of hair, laughing brown eyes . . . was it him? Was it really him? Impulse took hold, propelling her across the floor before she could stop herself and then, as he saw her, she caught his double-take of wide-eyed surprise. He’d made a beeline through the knots of people towards her. ‘Do I . . . have we met?’ he asked in a hoarse, almost tremulous voice, a haunted look on his face.

This was her moment. The one she’d been wondering about for so long. And yet now that it had arrived, she felt as if there was static in her head, a huge lump in her throat, a too-bright spotlight dazzling her eyes. ‘I . . . no, we haven’t met,’ she replied honestly. She couldn’t stop staring at his face, seeing her own nose reflected back at her, the similar jawline. Here he was, this man in a beige linen jacket and polished leather shoes, still clutching his half-pint glass, a faint waft of lime cologne reaching her. This was him, the mystery revealed: a real person who was responsible for roughly half the genes in her body. She swallowed hard and forced out the rest of her reply. ‘But I think you knew my mother.’

He nodded slowly, as if he’d already guessed. ‘Kathy,’ he said and his mouth buckled for a moment, emotions playing across his face. ‘You’ve got the same eyes as her. I always wondered what—’

‘She’s dead,’ Frankie interrupted quickly, just to get it out there. ‘She died last year.’ Her hands flapped uselessly by her side; she hated thinking about those final days in the hospice, followed by the funeral and then the wasteland in her own heart afterwards. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, just as he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ There was a moment of intensely charged silence and then he spoke again.