The love that I had for her might have waned, might have dried up or might have bloomed into a whole lifetime of love – who can possibly know? Not me and not you. But you know that feeling, that love that is so all-encompassing it’s like a drunken madness, obsessive and singular – when the prospect of not being with that person is a thought that’s almost unbearable. Well, it was like that. It was everything, and I desperately wanted to find out what came next, but you took that opportunity from us. Should I be thanking you? Because if you hadn’t intervened I might not have met Lydia and my Noah and Freddie would be different or not at all, and those thoughts are as desperate as they are unimaginable to me. But good God, Mum, it was a hard lesson.

I’ve seen Merrin and she is still the same, sweet person; a little shy, but smart and with a warmth and honesty that shines from her. It’s funny, I always think of Port Charles with her in it and yet apparently she has stayed away, away from her home, and all because of what happened. This is a bitter pill for me to swallow because I know that the place is her home far more than it will ever be mine. I guess that’s it. This is what I wanted to say, and a different relationship between us might mean I did not have to write to you, but again, here we are. The whole episode caged us in a thin sheet of awkwardness that I find hard to break out of. If it were easy, I think I would have done so a long, long time ago.

I have decided to leave this letter for you to find after we say goodbye at the end of our stay – and I leave it up to you as to whether you want to discuss it further or, if you prefer, do what the Mortimers are so good at: sweep it under the carpet or tear it into a million pieces and pop it in the fire as if it was never written and as if you had never read it. As dad to Noah and Freddie, I can tell you that I would never meddle in their lives as you have in my mine; would never want to exert such control that it impairs their freedom to think, their freedom to explore, their freedom to choose . . . I want them to choose whomever and whatever they want, Mother, because I think that is real love, love without conditions.