‘But she’s very damaged. If we start to open this door—’

‘I’ll make sure Fiona and Gus are protected, don’t worry.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. You’re a bloody saint. That’s the truth.’

Rose draped an arm around her niece’s shoulders. ‘I do like a challenge and I’m getting to the stage in life where new ones are not easy to come by.’

They didn’t speak again until they had climbed into Rose’s car. ‘Did you ever think of adopting?’ Kate asked. ‘You have so much love to give.’

Rose breathed out. She looked, for just a moment, as if she might cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s all right.’ She tried to smile at her niece. ‘Dr Wiseman has spent years telling me it isn’t a crime to talk about it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. We’d been through so much pain by then. I think both Simon and I needed to find peace.’

‘The miscarriages?’

‘Everything. The years of trying, both of us wanting it so badly, the times it went wrong and we lost …’

The rain came in hard, thrashing the windscreen. Kate sensed her aunt was on the cusp of telling her something, so she waited.

And the silence stretched out.

‘I’m going to tell you something, which I suspect you’ve already worked out but are too discreet to probe. I mean it as a cautionary tale.’ Rose put her car keys on the dashboard, as if abandoning any attempt to run away from this. ‘The years of trying and trying again to conceive put phenomenal pressure on my relationship with Simon. In addition to the emotional toll it took on us, he was working hard and so was I. It’s the oldest cliché in the world, but I drifted too close to someone.’

‘Sir Alan?’

‘Yes. We’d been friends for a long time but, very briefly, it turned into something more than that.’ She paused. ‘Neither of us could live with the deceit, so we agreed that he would confess to Alice and I to Simon. As you will imagine, it was by some distance the worst conversation of my life, except discussing my miscarriages with our doctor. I’ve never seen such hurt. The pain I’d caused … it broke us both.’

‘Did he leave you?’

‘For a while. But in the end, after we’d both been through more pain than I could possibly describe, he came back and said he wanted to forgive and forget.’

‘But it’s impossible to do either, which is why you don’t want me to get back together with Stuart.’

‘Simon has tried – I mean really, really tried. And I love him all the more for it. But I can’t say he’s ever forgiven me and I don’t blame him. I don’t deserve a second chance.’ She looked at her niece. ‘There is no going back.’

Kate stared at the rain. This explained so much and opened up as many questions. ‘I know,’ she said finally.