‘That’s the thing,’ Charlotte said gently. ‘She is family.’

Mateo looked at her as though she’d started talking in tongues. ‘. . . Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said quietly, but his face had paled.

‘She is your father’s twin. Younger by six minutes.’

He shook his head, his mouth hanging open but no words coming out. ‘No. This is . . . this is a lie. My father had two brothers, both older, who died in the war. He never had a sister, much less a twin. Don’t you think we would know if he had?’

Charlotte chose her words carefully. ‘Well, Marina Quincy apparently concealed his presence from her family too. They believed her to be an only child, orphaned in the war.’

‘There you go then! She’s a fraudster, a chancer!’

‘I don’t think so. She knew exactly who the client was – who was offering her money – before I had a chance to say your father’s name. In fact, I never did name him. She said it to me, unprompted.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, although she called him Arlo. I assume that’s a shortening for Carlos?’

‘Yes, but not one that I’ve ever heard used for my father. In fact he’s always been very particular about it.’

‘Well, perhaps only she called him by that name? It reminds him of her?’ She shrugged, watching as he struggled to make sense of the barrage of information. ‘Either way, if they’ve both lied about their families and kept their pasts hidden, there has to be a very good reason for it. And with your father gravely ill, this begins to make sense of what he’s doing: it is increasingly looking like he’s reaching out to her, like this is his way of trying to make amends for something.’

Mateo looked furious again. ‘Why should we assume he is to blame? If even any of this is true.’

The waiter set down her drink but neither one of them acknowledged him, too deep in the conversation to notice.

‘Mateo, I’m not pointing a finger at anyone,’ she said calmly. ‘These are the only facts I have to hand at the moment and it goes without saying that we will investigate thoroughly and corroborate Señora Quincy’s story that she is his twin sister; we can also insist on a DNA test for absolute, genetic proof.’

‘Yes. I insist upon it. She could be anyone,’ he blustered.

‘Possibly. But it is strange that both of them have concealed the other’s identities from their own families, don’t you think? Clearly, there’s something that links them. But your father is the one who has instigated contact, not her, and she appears to have gone to very great lengths to remain hidden from him: if Marina’s granddaughter has grown up believing her grandmother was an only child with no other family, then it follows that her father – Señora Quincy’s son – thinks the same too; this would suggest that whatever happened between her and your father at the very least occurred when her son was very young, or it even pre-dated his birth.’