He sighed. “I agreed to take the fall for Bob in return for him keeping a secret.”

“Go on.”

“Michelle, my wife, and Bob had an affair. It was short lived, and she regretted it, but Sue is Bob’s biological daughter. I found out when she was two. Bob guessed or he knew, I don’t know. He couldn’t have kids with Amanda, so he wanted to have a relationship with Sue. But I refused. He said he’d take it to court, force a DNA test. But I couldn’t bear that; Lissa and Sue were sisters and I never wanted Sue to know she wasn’t mine. So, we made a deal.”

“You took the fall for the bank in return for his backing off?”

He nodded. “Yes. The reality was that I had been involved, had turned a blind eye to certain things. So I felt I deserved to be punished, And I got away lightly. The bank got away lightly. No criminal proceedings against me, just my membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants revoked. That’s when I trained as a paramedic. Although I have my membership back now.”

His eyes glistened suddenly, and they flickered towards Sue and Lissa. “You see, nothing that happened to me could have been as bad as losing Michelle. When she told me, we had a huge row and she left.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I like to think she’d have come back, but she didn’t get the chance. Her car went into a truck on the M11 that same day and she died instantly. Which was another reason why I couldn’t just hand Sue over to Bob Jameson. I had to keep my girls together.”

There was silence for a few seconds, with nothing but the tick of Mary’s old grandfather clock. I tried to imagine Jude’s grief at that time. What it must have been like to find out about something like that, then lose his wife so tragically before they had a chance to deal with it. It was no wonder he refused to lose Sue.

“So, when did you find out about this?” Molloy asked Sue.

She looked down, and I realized how fragile she looked now too. Her eyes were hollow. She had her hand on her nephew’s head and it hit me why they were so close. How insecure she must have felt about family when she found out Jude wasn’t her father, how anxious she must have been to keep them all close.

“Only recently. When they were doing tests for Peadar’s bone marrow. Dad had kept it from us.”

“And just to clarify, Mr Burns, you’ve always known?” Molloy asked.