‘So what brings you home after all this time?’ he says, lounging against the door frame, his arm bent at the elbow and resting above his head. Maureen has slipped away and it’s just him and me.

‘This isn’t home, Dad. It’s a place I used to live.’

‘Still as tetchy as ever, I see. Some things never change.’

Less than a minute to slip into the familiar groove of our relationship, rusty from disuse but still well worn. I turn to leave, exhausted by the emotion of seeing him again, but he calls out before I reach the end of the garden path.

‘Actually, I am interested, Brin. Seriously. Why have you come back?’

Part of me wants to keep going, to put as much distance between us as possible, but curiosity is pulling at my strings too, and so I turn and walk back to him.

‘I’m a journalist now. On a story.’

He jerks his head in the direction of Hilltop House. ‘Next door?’

‘One and the same.’

‘I remember that little bitch. I never trusted her. I liked the other one, though. Quiet, mind. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

‘Do you remember much about that night?’

‘Your mother was dying, I remember that.’

He looks a bit misty-eyed so I nip that in the bud. ‘Yes, while you were getting your end away with Maureen Connolly.’

But he doesn’t rise to it. And I suppose I’m glad they’re still together and he didn’t throw away his marriage for nothing.

‘She couldn’t get comfortable so the nurse gave her morphine. Eventually, she fell asleep. She looked just like she did when I met her.’ His face relaxes, as if he’s stepped back into the memory and he’s buying her that first gin and tonic at the Hope and Anchor. ‘I sat by her bed all night. We knew the end was coming.’ He sighs, soft with sadness. ‘About six in the morning, I heard the sound of the sirens. It wasn’t light yet, but they were so close. When I saw how many ambulances there were, I knew something terrible had happened.’

What my father does not say is that he was drunk and careless, and by early afternoon, when the bodies of Dr and Mrs Carter were brought out of Hilltop House, my mother had been dead for several hours too.

‘And then what?’

His eyes are glassy from peering down the long tunnel of shared history. ‘I saw them bring out that little girl. The blood on her pyjamas. She was crying, but when she saw me looking out of the window, she smiled at me.’ He shakes his head, disbelieving. ‘She smiled.’