‘A woman had written it,’ I interrupted, ‘you messed around with the pronouns and that’s what made me think that Mum had written it.’

‘Yes,’ he nodded.

He’d almost succeeded too, but now I realized that was why a few things hadn’t quite added up, no matter how many times I read them. That was why the words hadn’t always scanned quite as seamlessly as they should.

‘I see,’ I whispered, even though I was struggling to. Dad then explained that it was Mum who had been the adulterous one in their marriage, not him. She had had numerous affairs over the years and they had all been with women.

‘But the final one,’ he said, sighing deeply. ‘That was different.’

‘You wrote that she was “the one”, didn’t you?’ I interrupted.

‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I did and she was.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She was the love of your mother’s life.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I’ve talked to her,’ Dad said, looking uncomfortable. ‘I now know that your mother was planning to leave me for her. Once she had discovered the diary, she realized the emotional damage she had caused and knew it had to stop. She was planning to make a clean break of it and let us both move on with our lives.’

That was something, I supposed.

‘So, you knew Mum had found the diary?’

‘Not until I discovered this page in her trunk,’ he said, looking at the sheet, ‘and then I spoke to the other woman, Vanessa, before realizing that you most likely had the rest of it and had assumed that . . .’

It was a relief that he couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t want to hear him say out loud that I had jumped to the one conclusion that couldn’t have been any further from the truth.

‘But why didn’t you leave her first, Dad?’ I stole myself to ask. ‘Why didn’t you divorce her when you first discovered what was going on? From what you’ve written, the affairs had been happening for a really long time.’

He squeezed my hand again and shrugged, ‘I couldn’t leave her,’ he said, ‘because there was a part of me that still loved her.’

It broke my heart to hear him say that and I suddenly understood that trying to ignore what had been happening in Mum’s life was the real reason behind why he had thrown himself into the business. He had wanted something which would occupy as much of his time as Mum’s lovers did hers.