A knot of anger pulses in my temples. I know I can’t have been easy to live with as I wrestled with the fallout from the tests, but I expected more from my husband. I expected understanding and patience as I figured out how to live in this new orbit – because that’s what it felt like, as though my whole world had shifted on its axis. I knew, from the bewildering period after Mum’s accident, what a cruel thing it is to have your life rocked so fundamentally and yet everything around you stay the same. And here I was again, grieving for something lost, but still having to put one foot in front of the other, go to work, buy groceries, cook dinner. How could I stand in the supermarket deciding between chicken soup and minestrone? How could I sort whites from colours as though it mattered? How could I go to St Mary’s every day and teach Year 9 students about the symbolism in Wuthering Heights? What I’ve learnt is that you just do. So I just did. But it didn’t mean I was okay; it didn’t mean I was the same inside. And perhaps I took it out on him; perhaps he bore the brunt of it. But wasn’t that marriage?

In good times and in bad, that’s what Patrick and I vowed to each other. But I guess the bad times just went on too long for him to deal with. So he cheated.

It’s been five days since I sent messages to thirty-one Daniel Buchs from my list. I’ve had six replies, three of them in German, all saying – I deduced using Google Translate – that they do not have and have never had a sister called Evelyne and I am barking up the wrong tree. Some were curt, others polite, one even made suggestions, saying I should place an advert with a newspaper. But none of them was the Daniel Buchs.

Time passes slowly when you’re constantly checking all your available technology for new messages. I consider Daniel Buchs number five’s suggestion. Of course I’ve thought of that before, but I couldn’t bear it if a newspaper started asking questions and found out what happened to me. Granted, they might also then discover what I need to know, but the price for that would be my name all over the papers. Patrick, Maggie and Dad are the only people who have ever needed to know what I discovered two years ago, and I want to keep it that way.

What with Patrick’s email and my constant anticipation of a message from another Daniel Buchs, I’m in serious need of distraction – thank goodness for Léa’s birthday.