‘You didn’t trust me enough to tell me,’ he had cried, ‘and that hurts. I thought we were partners, pals.’

‘I didn’t trust myself, Mario, to tell anyone. I thought if I let it out, I might fall apart, thought it might split me in two! My shame was so much part of my fabric that I didn’t always think about why I was ashamed – it was just there. Ellory’s existence has sat like a dark thing, hidden for so long, and it filled me up entirely. It was hard to admit to what I’d done, but also to the fact that I lived with deceit, and the secret of her became a burden in itself. It made me a liar and I lived in fear of discovery of both. And because I didn’t tell you in the beginning, that meant there was never a moment when I could say, “Fancy a cup of tea, love? Oh, and by the way, I meant to say . . .”’

He calmed. ‘It split you in two, right down the middle, and it was hard to watch, like you were slipping away, and I held your hand as tight as I could but I had to let go, Bess, I had to.’

She could only nod, her face twisted in distress.

‘But we’re not done, Bess, you and me, not yet. You’re working hard to put yourself back together, I know you are, and I want to help you. Me and the kids, all of us who love you – and Dr Meredith, of course, who I doubt loves you but seems to know her onions.’

‘She does – know her onions that is, not love me.’

And it was true. Her therapist was the first person she had told about her whole experience of being sixteen: the impact of the attack by Tony Dunlop and his words, which had damaged her, and the shame that had cloaked her ever since, rearing its ugly head when any aspect of her life threatened to veer out of control. And all that before they tackled the loss of her daughter and the acute ache for her which haunted her still. Dr Meredith took a tiny pickaxe to her guilt and slowly, at every session, seemed to tap gently at it so that bits fell away. And Bess would gather those fragments into her palms and take them home, thinking of how far she had come and the person she wanted to be, moulding them into something new and positive.