I don’t understand what she’s saying. She isn’t making any sense.

“Something she couldn’t get from your beloved ‘father.’ ” She makes finger quotes round the word and does that nasty little smile again. “All that Bible shit she used to spout. What a fucking hypocrite!”

I feel as though I’m on the brink of something dark and chaotic. Something unspeakable.

“He was infertile, your dad. You didn’t know that, did you?” She laughs, but it’s a horrible, mirthless laugh. “No, of course you didn’t.”

Her words don’t compute. All my thoughts up to this point collide in a big messy jumble, then vanish. My mind goes blank. I can’t move.

“You’re lying!”

“I’m not. Why do you think my mum was so depressed?” Her voice sharpens. “Because she was betrayed by her best friend and her husband. That’s why. It doesn’t get much worse than that, does it? Except in this case, it does. Mum was so happy when she found out Sue was pregnant because she knew how desperately she wanted a baby of her own. She knew it was probably her last chance. But then she worked out whose baby it was and by that time, Mum was pregnant, too.” She shakes her head in disgust. “Nice work, Dad.”

I try in vain to control my breath, to understand the full extent of what she’s saying. There’s a terrible emptiness inside me. Like an ache that keeps on expanding till it’s all there is. My entire world has been thrown into the air and now that the pieces are falling, none of them are landing in the right place. I feel cut off from my own body. Frozen in shock and…and grief. My dad is not my real dad. I clamp my hand to my mouth and stagger back. Mick Dawson is my biological father.

53

I press my lips together and shake my head, as if, by continuing to deny it, I can make it go away.

I wrap my arms round my chest. This means that Alice and I were half-sisters. Oh my God. This means Catherine and I are half-sisters, too! The shock of it is turning into a physical pain, as if I’m being held in a vise. When finally I manage to speak, it’s like the words are being squeezed out of me. My voice is thin and reedy.

“But…but why didn’t they tell us? Why didn’t we know?”

Catherine shakes her head, a bitter smile on her lips. It seems impossible that we’re related. Impossible.

“Because that’s what they agreed,” she says. “Your parents and mine.”