‘I think we’ve gone beyond that,’ I told him.

He shook his head sadly. ‘It will destroy you, you know, in the long run. If you let the bitterness eat away at you.’

He looked so absolutely sanctimonious I had to restrain myself from lashing out at him.

‘But I’ll pray you’re able to find forgiveness in your heart towards me,’ he said. ‘For the hurt I caused you when I left. For how abandoned you must’ve felt.’

‘Is that all we need to pray about?’ I asked him, incredulous that he could think my anger was just down to him walking away.

‘Forgiveness and peace of mind are the greatest things we can achieve in this life,’ he said.

‘I’ll forgive you, Dad, if you admit it.’

I was lying of course. I’d never be able to forgive it.

I crossed my arms in front of myself. Adopted the bravado that had been mine when I was a teenage girl. I may have been shaking inside but outwardly I looked in control.

One unkempt, grey-streaked eyebrow rose. A look of genuine bewilderment – or a very good impression of it at least. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

He actually had the brass neck to deny it.

‘Don’t you?’ I asked. ‘I know it’s been “our little secret” for a long time now, hasn’t it? “Don’t tell anyone, Ciara. They won’t understand.” Or how about “Mammy would only get cross” or the famous “This is how all daddies show their little girls they love them and I love you the most in the world.”’

I saw whatever colour was left in his sad, sorry, sick face drain away. He swallowed hard. I think, actually think, that he figured I’d either forgotten or would never have the nerve to bring it up again.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, but the tremor in his voice, the slick of sweat breaking through on his forehead, let me know that I’d got to him.

‘Do you really need me to spell it out? In detail? Because I can do that, if you want? God knows the details have never left me. I can even go downstairs right now and spell it all out in glorious, multicoloured, revolting detail to Kathleen, and Heidi and Alex and Stella. And maybe Father Brennan would like to know, if he isn’t already keeping your secrets in the sanctity of the confessional. It’s amazing what can be forgiven with a couple of Hail Marys these days, isn’t it? Suffer the little children and all that nonsense. Or maybe I could tell Mammy. I don’t actually know, standing here now, why I never told her before.’

‘You’d break her,’ he mumbled. ‘You’d destroy her.’

‘What? What was that?’ I asked loudly, my confidence building as I saw him finally acknowledge what he’d done.

‘She’d never recover from it. Look, Ciara, be angry with me all you want. Hate me. Tell me to go to hell and sure, I’ll be going there soon anyway. But don’t destroy your mother. Not now when there’s nothing I can do to make it right.’