Fleur crumpled onto the floor, her hands covering her eyes. Nikki drew in her breath, the anguish in her mother piercing her like shards of glass. She bent awkwardly to the floor.

‘It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault, Mum.’

Fleur lowered her hands. ‘But it was, darling; that is the point. If he hadn’t seen Fergus and me together, he wouldn’t have died. He would have taken more care.’

‘Mum, Fergus must have said it to you a hundred times. You don’t know that. Dad was a pilot; he wouldn’t have taken risks with other people’s lives. A storm blew up. That is what happened. The tragedy is that you quarrelled the night before he died. That is the saddest thing.’

‘The saddest thing is he died thinking I was going to leave him.’

Nikki levered herself up and sat heavily in a chair. ‘Mum, we can’t do this any more. Go and have your shower and I’ll pour you a drink. Do you want something stronger than wine? A drink that talks to you, as Gran always says?’

Fleur smiled. ‘Yes, Nik. I think I’ll have a whisky.’ She got to her feet. ‘Forgive me, darling, you’re supposed to be resting. This can’t be good for you.’

‘It’s about time I understood, Mum.’

Fleur turned on the shower and came back into the room. She said desperately, meeting Nikki’s eyes, ‘It’s why I drank that afternoon; why I took strong painkillers…I just wanted to shut it all out.’

Nikki held Fleur’s eyes and then she said, with difficulty, because it was hard, ‘I know, Mum. You were not to blame for Dad’s death…or for Saffie’s. Have your shower and I’ll find you that drink.’

Gently I shut the bathroom door on my mother. I stood in the empty room listening to the sound of water running and watching the bats swoop in the dark beyond the window.

My heart was filled with an impregnable and lasting sorrow. Indirectly, my dad might have contributed to Saffie’s death. If it was his lover that killed her. And Fleur would have known him.

As I stood there I saw that when my parents’ lives together ended, my dad was only thirty-two and Mum was twenty-five. If he had lived, it wouldn’t have worked, their marriage. It couldn’t have done.

We would have grown up and been less dependent on him. Mum would have fallen in love, as she later did, and left him for Fergus or someone else. Dad would have got more promiscuous and less careful. Their lives together would have been unlikely to have had a happy ending. The happy ending that has lived in my head, all of my life, despite my love for Fergus.

I needed to know that my father had been gay to understand this. But how old and full of remorse I now felt comprehending this simple fact.

I thought of Jack and the inequality of our love. I wrapped my arms around my swollen stomach. Jack had been so patient, waiting and hoping for me to say words that would mean commitment to him, to our child and a life together.