‘Neither of us did,’ I tell Jorge, ‘so we asked to know, and when we got the results later on it didn’t make sense. The combination of our blood types…’ I shake my head, vaguely aware of Jorge staring at me. ‘It wasn’t possible, you see, that we were related.’

I feel Jorge’s hesitation, his shock. ‘So your mother…’

‘No,’ I almost shout. ‘It wasn’t that. We knew it wouldn’t be that. Mum wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t have cheated on Dad.’ I swallow back a hard lump of guilt. Because I know, though neither of us ever admitted it out loud, that it had occurred to us both. But only for a moment – at least, for me. ‘I checked Mum’s old medical records, but it didn’t clarify anything. Her blood type could have resulted in mine – from a different father. But I knew it wasn’t that, I just knew.’

I remember the feeling I had, as though memories were rushing forward and taking their place in a big jigsaw puzzle, forming a picture I’d never seen before. Maggie saying, Such lovely blue eyes you have, they must have skipped a generation! Aunt Jemima joking that I couldn’t possibly be her brother’s daughter because I was far too clever and witty. Me, wondering why Rachel looked so like her mother when I didn’t look at all like either of my parents.

‘Dad couldn’t deal with it, didn’t want to know more. But I couldn’t just leave it, I had to know. So I looked up a DNA testing company and ordered a kit. I persuaded Dad to give me a saliva swab, and I took strands of hair from Mum’s old hairbrush. We still hadn’t got rid of her stuff, you see.’ My voice cracks, but I can’t stop now; I have to get it all out. ‘The wait was horrific. I couldn’t sleep. And then, when the letter finally came in the post, I drank half a bottle of gin before I could bear to open it.’

But then I did.

And there it was, typed in stark letters under the clinic’s letterhead. DNA testing for Jessica Faulkner, Jim Millson, Sylvia Tallis. A paragraph of medical speak and percentages and then the final verdict, clear as anything. Conclusion: unrelated. A thread I’d tugged that unravelled my entire identity until I couldn’t see the shape of it anymore. A letter that took away my history, that called our family a lie and left me nothing but a gaping hole where my sense of self should be.