She walked over to the table and lowered herself very slowly into a chair. She took another gulp of wine. The glass was nearly empty. ‘Pass me the bottle, would you, Nicky?’

He took it out of the fridge, poured some into her glass and sat down opposite her.

‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, forming her words with evident care, ‘I told Caro I thought it was a mistake to pass Geoff off as your father. I lived with it, though. I backed her up in the … little white lie.’

‘Was it so little?’

‘Well, Peter was dead. Everyone was sure of that. And you were approaching an age when you had to be told something. Then Geoff died. Providentially. Conveniently. So …’

‘What would have been so bad about the truth?’

‘Caro predicted – and the way you’re behaving now goes to show she was probably right – that if you knew your father’s death was just a legal presumption, that nobody could be sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was dead, then you’d never stop wondering if he was actually alive and well and out there, somewhere in the world. She worried it would become an obsession, something that would … distort your life. And she wanted the best for you, Nicky. We both did. A phantom father to chase didn’t sound like the best to us. Whereas Geoff, dead and definitely buried, was … preferable. A whole lot preferable.’

‘But the others – Martin, Miranda – must have realized I was actually Peter’s son.’

‘Caro never told them who the father was. And the resemblance wasn’t obvious until you were older, by which time they didn’t often see you and there was no reason for them to challenge the Geoff Nolan version of your paternity. I guess they decided to let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘I suppose they did. But then, of course, there were a lot of sleeping dogs to choose from, weren’t there, April? I mean, taking Peter Ellery out of my life was one thing. Taking out everything about how Alison Parker died and he supposedly died with her … well, that was quite another.’

‘Telling you about all that might have made you curious about Peter. And if you ever saw a photograph of him …’

‘The game was up.’

She swallowed some more wine and looked at him, honestly and openly. ‘We did what we thought was best for you, Nicky, we really did. What difference does it make which of two dead men was actually your biological father?’

‘None at all, I suppose. Unless the one who was isn’t dead after all. You wouldn’t have done your best for me then, would you?’

‘But he is dead. There’s absolutely no reason to think otherwise.’

‘Really? Are you sure Martin Caldwell hasn’t found a reason?’