I had to hand it to him: we were right on schedule. Right after, 3 p.m, check in to Toad Hall, unpack, check oil and water in car and have slight rest, was the thing I’d been dreading all the way from Penzance. Sadie 4 p.m. call Dan McLachlan to set up meeting. Just like that. Like good old Dan McLachlan was going to open his diary and move a few things around to fit an illegitimate son in between appointments with his broker and his weekly briefing with the deputy prime minister. Because if there was one thing I did remember about Dan McLachlan, it was that he was a guy who was going places. He certainly went places for a couple of nights with me, but I’m pretty sure none of them would have helped progress his career. Not unless he’d switched his law degree to gynecology. Or drug-lordery.

I don’t know how easy calling a guy you’d had a two-day dalliance with thirteen years ago out of the blue sounds to you, but if you ever have to do it I sincerely hope you handle it better than me. Leonard had already added all the potential fathers’ numbers into my phone, and I’d been going over a vague script in my head for the past week, so it’s not like it crept up on me or anything. But what I really wasn’t prepared for was having to talk to Dan McLachlan’s answering machine. And the fact that his voice sounded exactly as I hadn’t even known I’d remembered it.

Hi, you’ve reached Dan McLachlan, arrogant bastard with good hair and a bad attitude to women. I’m way too busy and important to answer your call right now but if you leave your number I may deign to get back to you at some stage. Or, you know, something like that.

Put on the spot, I stumbled about, trying to sound lighthearted and casual, blurting out some drivel about old times and did he remember me, and just being in town for the evening and I’d love to catch up.

“And oh, hey, by the way, there’s...there’s a possibility you could be my twelve-year-old son’s father. He’s a really great kid. The bomb. The best kid in the world, actually. He, that is, we...”

At that point, Leonard began madly flapping one hand in the air and dragging the other across his neck in a desperate cut-throat sign. I didn’t disagree. I’d swerved way off script, because we’d decided definitely—definitely—not to say anything about Norman until I’d met up with the guy and evaluated the situation. And maybe not even then. Norman also looked a bit terrified at the prospect of having to live up to my hype, but it wasn’t until I hung up and dropped my mobile on the bed like a sizzling chip that I realized what that slim, insistent finger that had been tapping at my shoulder from the moment I’d heard Dan McLachlan’s voice had been about. Because that wasn’t the first time I’d heard him at the end of an answering machine. Oh, no it wasn’t.