She fills his glass once more, then her own, pokes the fire and sits down. He thanks her and stares into the flames again, so distracted by his own thoughts that at first he doesn’t hear her.

‘Sorry? I’m getting a bit deaf these days,’ he says.

‘I said there’s something else I need to tell you, Vic.’

‘Go on.’

She is struggling for words, he can tell. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she says, getting up to tidy the plates. ‘Water under the bridge.’

He waits until she returns from the kitchen and sits down again. ‘You were going to tell me something,’ he prompts, gently.

She shakes her head. ‘No. It’s all so long ago.’

‘Try me,’ he says.

‘I don’t know how.’ There is another agonising pause before she bursts out: ‘I named her after you, Vikram.’ For a second he’s confused, until she explains. ‘My daughter. Victoria – Vicky for short.’

‘Goodness, how wonderful. I’m very touched.’

‘Don’t you want to know why?’

He nods, his spine tingling with a powerful premonition that what she’s about to tell him will change his life forever.

‘Because she is your daughter, Vic.’

He is so astounded that he doesn’t for a moment understand. ‘My daughter? What? How . . .? When . . .?’ His face is numb, and his lips won’t work properly.

‘After you left for America I began to feel slightly unwell, but I assumed it was because of my grief over Mark, so I just buckled down and got on with it. And after a while the sickness passed. When my skirt wouldn’t do up any more I put myself on a diet, but that didn’t work either. I must have been five months gone when it dawned on me what had happened. I just couldn’t believe it.’

He feels light-headed. He has not taken a breath all the time she has been speaking.

‘Good God. But why didn’t you tell me, Kath? I’d have been here like a shot.’

‘Tell you? Of course I bloody told you. I wrote to you, again and again, but when I didn’t hear anything, I just assumed you didn’t want to know. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, Vic. I was such an innocent. How could it have happened after . . . you know, just the once? Eventually I confided in Marcia, and she gave me the address of a clinic in London and lent me some money, but they said I was too far gone. If I didn’t want the child, they said, I could have it adopted, and I was all set to do that, but as soon as she arrived I realised it was completely out of the question. So I kept her. Ma and Pa were brilliant. I’d never have got through it without them.’

‘All that time, and I never knew,’ he gasps.

‘And all that time you never replied to my letters, Vic,’ she retorts, sharply. ‘Can you imagine how that felt, for me?’