‘I haven’t seen the clinic’s records, but if Carstan has been putting my initials beside babies’ names it will be for those who were born alive but with a life-limiting condition. I told the parents they were stillborn and took them away to save them the trauma, just as I did for you and Emma. Many don’t live long.’

‘You what!’ Ian cried, his hand instinctively going to his throbbing head. ‘I don’t believe you. Why are you lying?’

‘I’m not. I’m telling you the truth. I did it to save the parents the agony they would otherwise have endured. Think about it, Ian. You caught sight of David just after the birth, and you were grateful I took him. You didn’t want any fuss or an autopsy. You just wanted me to deal with it, which I did.’

‘But that’s when I thought he was stillborn. It’s different now.’

‘How? I saved you and Emma the pain and heartache of the truth. You wouldn’t have coped. Remember the looks on the faces of the nurses who delivered your first baby? Emma told me the senior nurse managed to just about hold it together, but the younger nurse couldn’t hide her shock. That would have been the reaction of everyone who came into contact with David if I hadn’t falsified the records to show him as stillborn.’

Ian held her gaze as he remembered the horror of that first birth, and that he and Emma had been grateful to Anne for taking David away and seeing to everything. He supposed there was some truth in what she said.

‘If you are telling me the truth, then Moller is responsible for all of this. He’s pure evil. But I don’t understand – we’re normal. We don’t have any condition.’

‘The children born from his donor sperm are usually healthy; the only give-away is that they often look similar, as half siblings do. The defects only began to appear in the second generation. Moller got away with it for years, tricking parents into believing they were buying donor sperm when it was him all along. But then some of their children began forming relationships with each other, as you and Emma did. It was inevitable with so many sharing the same biological father that this would start to happen. Unaware they were related, they began having babies and that’s when this condition began to appear.’

‘My God! And Moller did this for money?’

‘Maybe in part, but he and Edie can’t have children and he became obsessed with his line carrying on. He’s very arrogant and believes his genes are superior.’

‘That’s ironic,’ Ian said bitterly. ‘When he’s responsible for deformed babies.’

‘Except they’re not deformed, as such.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ Ian asked, touching his head again.

Anne paused. ‘Have you ever heard of atavism?’

‘No,’ Ian admitted.