‘Your – your and Jesse’s – father couldn’t cope with our secret either. That’s why he left. Partly, at least. After what happened, he wanted to come clean, tell someone what had happened. What we did. I said no.’ She takes my hand again. ‘But it was because I was afraid for you, for you and Jesse. Afraid that I would go to prison and that you would have to grow up without me.’

Prison? So not an affair. A thought strikes me – Jesse says he remembers his father leaving but maybe that’s a false memory. Perhaps Karen killed him and lied to Jesse about it? No. Surely not. I can’t see she’d have it in her.

She has another coughing fit and this one takes longer to subside. Tears are rolling down her cheeks now – clearly not just from the coughing. She is crying and struggling to speak. ‘I always felt that you being taken, and my illness too, were both punishment for what I did.’

What is she on about? What can she have done that was so terrible? Punishment for what?

She takes my hand again. ‘This is going to be difficult for you to hear, so I want you to prepare yourself.’

Her breathing becomes more laboured as more tears flow.

‘About six months before you were snatched, we were driving home from a party. Your father and I were arguing. By that point in our marriage it wasn’t unusual. I don’t even remember what the argument was originally about now but the upshot was that he wouldn’t listen when I told him he was too drunk to drive and demanded to take the wheel. I should have been stronger, insisted, but I didn’t. I have regretted that every single day since. Every hour of every day.’

‘Our row escalated and I was shouting and screaming at him. You had been asleep in the back of the car but you woke up and started crying. This sent me into more of a rage and I began hitting out at Michael.’

I feel sick. Suddenly I know where this is going. And I don’t think I want to hear it.

‘Jesse started screaming too and before I knew it he had managed to undo his seatbelt and was standing in the footwell behind me, trying to stop me hitting his dad. Michael turned round to get him back into his seat and that’s when the car lost control, spun across the road and hit a small car which was pulling out of a side road.’

I snatch my hand away from Karen’s, staring at her open-mouthed.