Charlotte’s lips curl into a mirthless grin. ‘It would have been no more than he deserves after what he did. I should never have brought him here. I shouldn’t have come myself. It’s not as if I ever feel welcome.’

‘You’re such an ungrateful girl,’ Mary fumes. ‘And if you move out of his flat don’t think you can just move back here until we sell up because I won’t let you.’

‘Well, I have no intention of coming back,’ Charlotte responds, slurring her words. ‘Not now that I know what a lying cow you are and always have been.’

Now Robert jumps to his feet.

‘That’s enough young lady,’ he yells at her. ‘You apologise to your mother right now.’

Charlotte jabs a finger at him. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I know. Or maybe you do know and you don’t care. If so then you’re as bad as she is for keeping it from me.’

Robert has no idea what she’s on about. He turns to Mary who looks just as confused as he is.

‘What lies am I supposed to have told?’ Mary asks. ‘Or are you just spouting the first thing that comes into that drug-filled head of yours?’

There’s a flash of hesitation on Charlotte’s face as she looks from Mary to Robert. But it’s quickly replaced by a dark, determined expression.

To Robert, she says, ‘I wanted to surprise you with a special Christmas present this year. I remembered you once talked about paying for one of those ancestry tests. You said you thought it would be interesting to know about your distant relatives. But I know you never got around to it. So, I did it on your behalf and did one for myself at the same time. All I had to do was send in a used toothbrush with DNA on it. I swiped yours when I was last here.’

Robert remembers it going missing, but that’s not important now. He feels his insides turn cold because he can see where she’s going with this. He starts to speak but Charlotte raises a hand to stop him.

‘A couple of weeks ago the results came back. I got a letter telling me that our DNA doesn’t match. And I knew then that you are not my biological father.’

The shock slams into Robert like a steam train. He looks across at Mary who is standing there with her mouth open.

‘I haven’t talked to anyone about it, not even Neil, because I’ve struggled to accept it,’ Charlotte continues. ‘The reason I agreed to come here for Christmas was so that I could get some more DNA samples for more tests. But in my heart, I know it’s true and the results will be the same.’