Mika’s face was very pale, but she looked him straight in the eye. “It’s true that I have never had a family,” she said, and the tremor in her otherwise tight, even voice almost undid him. “I don’t think I have ever been loved by anybody. But I would argue that, despite what you think, that makes me uniquely qualified to know what it is to be treated poorly, and it means I know what I’m talking about when I say you deserved better. You deserve better.”

His voice cracked. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said quietly. Her arms were tightly folded across her chest, but some of the colour came back into her face as she gave him a faint smile. “I’m sorry, too. You asked me to stop, and I didn’t. I should have.”

“It doesn’t excuse what I said.”

“Can I just ask one thing?”

“You want to know why we’re going today,” Jamie guessed.

She nodded.

“I haven’t seen any of them since I left Belfast. I’ve talked to my mother a few times over the years, but she’s never asked me to meet her before. She said she wanted to, but she always chickened out. Until now, with the whole sixtieth birthday thing giving her a push. I think she thought I’d refuse to go, but I didn’t. She’s my mother, and I left her at a time when she was in pieces. I owe her this.”

The expression on Mika’s face told him she had some choice words for him in response to that, but she didn’t say them. Instead, with heroic effort, she only said, “And your brothers? They’ll be there, too, won’t they?”

“I don’t think about them much these days, but when I do, they always seem so large.” He shrugged. “You know how when we’re little, we’re afraid of monsters under our beds? We think they’re huge and terrifying, but then we turn on the light and look and all we see are a few cobwebs.”

“And you’re hoping that’s what today will be like?”

“Pretty much,” Jamie said. “It feels like the least I can do for the boy who was afraid of what was under his bed. I’m hoping that when I see the monsters today, they’ll just be cobwebs.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Tate in Liverpool was in a converted dock right on the River Mersey. It was a long brick structure with wide arches and red columns, with a stream of visitors trickling in and out of the doors, and Mika felt not the smallest desire to join them.