He had been a bachelor all his life, had never dreamed he could be a father, was a father. He felt the blood rush to his face, colour his neck and cheeks, flushing like a middle-aged woman. A daughter. He rolled the word round. A child. His child. He looked up, at a loss for words, willing her to ask, Could you be my father? He’d find the words then, soon enough.

He felt nothing for this woman. Wouldn’t a father feel love? He couldn’t stop studying her, could see it made her uncomfortable, but she had an Irish complexion, that would be for sure, plenty of black-haired colleens with skin as white as porcelain, and hadn’t he thought there was something familiar about the way she looked and carried herself? She didn’t take after little Bridey, or any of the men, for they were small and wiry like himself, but didn’t he have some great-aunts in Kerry who were tall and slender? Strong as oxen, mind. It happened, that a likeness skipped a generation, or two or three.

He’d grow to love her. And she him. Make up for those lost years, those little things that meant so much. Teaching her how to tie a shoelace, blow her nose. Things that fathers taught. And Irish dancing. Oh, she would have been champion.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. She reached for her bag, hoisted it onto her lap. ‘Do you mind if I have a cigarette?’

Joe had stopped smoking after the war, but he understood its grip. ‘I’ll fetch an ashtray,’ he said, walking to the dresser and taking down the chipped saucer he used for Pierre.

When she asked, Why don’t I have a daidí? What was my daidí like? What did Trude tell her? What lies? She was capable of anything, Joe knew. Did she ever show remorse? For Joe surely felt it now. He would never have abandoned his child.

He placed the saucer on the table.

‘Thank you.’ Barbara was frowning. She was tongue-tied too, Joe realised. The shock of it all.

He would have been the happiest man, had he known. Had it been possible to know. He’d have cherished the little babaí. Still could. They’d work it out, he and Barbara.

But what if she rejected him? He’d heard the disbelief in her voice, the disappointment that he had been her mother’s lover. He could feel his old anxieties swim to the surface, only he couldn’t put a name to them, not now.

He opened the window. Perhaps Trude had loved him, just a little.

‘Can we go for a walk?’ she said, finishing her cigarette and scrunching it into the saucer. ‘Along the shore? You can tell me everything.’

That I can, he thought. That I can.