‘Of course,’ she says, turning to leave. ‘I’ll see you next week.’

I offer a tight smile, but already my mind is with Aunt Meryl, imagining every worst possible scenario.

‘Hey, Aunty,’ I say, my voice already cracking. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Well, no, not really,’ she says.

‘What is it?’ I ask, panicking that this might be the call I’ve spent my entire life dreading.

4

‘I don’t really know where to start. It’s still just as much a shock to me as it will be for you.’

I take a sharp intake of breath. Aunt Meryl may well be seventy-six years old, but I’m no closer to being able to accept her mortality than I ever was.

‘Woah, slow down,’ I say, my pulse quickening. ‘What’s going on? What’s happened?’

‘Oh, darn it,’ she says tearfully. I wait for her to blow her nose into the tissue she always keeps in the sleeve of her sweater. ‘Your father . . .’ she starts. ‘Your father’s been released.’

My legs immediately give way and I collapse onto the couch, as every breath that had, until just a second ago, sat deep within my lungs, is sucked out of me by an unseen force.

No, no, no.

I can’t tell if I scream it out loud or if the deafening cry of anguish is in my head. That isn’t possible. This can’t be happening.

I blindly stab at my phone, my trembling fingers typing words that don’t exist, before Google eventually recognizes enough to take me to the Federal Bureau’s website. I don’t know why I’m doing it because I know that my father is still incarcerated in Upstate New York.

Just typing his name into the Inmate Locator makes me feel sick. I trail a finger across the screen, expecting to see Green Haven under Current Location – as it’s been every time I’ve checked over the past twenty-six years. But it’s not there. My eyes blur and lose focus on the word that’s replaced it.

Released.

I blink furiously, in an effort to shock my pupils into only seeing what’s there instead of the morose prank they’re trying to play on me. Taking a deep breath, I squint along the line, careful not to cross into another inmate, but it still says Released.

‘Naomi, honey, are you there?’ asks Aunt Meryl, through the clouds of cotton wool that my head feels encased in.

I draw my legs up onto the couch and rest my head upon my knees, trying so desperately hard not to cry. If I allow the floodgates to open, they’ll never close again.

‘How . . . how did you . . .’ I mumble.

‘Your sister’s been to see me,’ she says.

My heartbeat stills in my chest. That wasn’t what I was expecting. ‘Jennifer?’ I ask, as if I have more than one sibling.