‘I’m so sorry,’ said Grace, her voice low and calm just like it had been when I was eighteen. It felt comforting to hear it again, safe somehow, like being wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold day, even though the world around me seemed to be tipping dangerously. It had never occurred to me at the time, but the woman in the church, Grace, had been like my substitute mother, listening to me cry and mopping up my tears. And now, here she was again, and suddenly I felt very small and scared as if all those years as a fully functioning adult counted for nothing.

‘I should have told you,’ Grace continued. ‘I should have made it clear who I was right from the start, but I was frightened. I was so desperate to protect my world, to keep it safe, but at the same time I couldn’t just leave you floundering on your own, Leah. As soon as I heard about what had happened to your poor mother, I knew that I had to make sure you were all right. You were so very young to have been left to cope and yet you managed so incredibly well. But I know I should have told you at the time.’

‘Told her what, exactly?’ interrupted Hector impatiently. ‘Who is this woman, Mother?’

I watched as Grace looked at her son and then back to me. I could see the anguish in her face, as if she was struggling with a demon that we couldn’t see. Then she put her hand to her mouth. The diamond in her engagement ring was huge and it glinted in the sunlight. She took a deep breath.

‘Hector, darling,’ she said, ‘this is Leah. She is your half-sister.’

What? Had I misheard her? Half-sister? My brain was tumbling now, with nothing to grasp as it fell. I had no clue what was going on. And neither, apparently, did Hector.

‘What?’ he said, managing to infuse as much confusion as I was feeling into that single word, but also charging it with something else. Horror? Disdain? I wasn’t sure. His eyes ran up and down me so that I suddenly felt like I was standing there naked. I could see him taking in every detail of me, his lip curling slightly as he did it. I drew myself up as straight as I could manage and glowered at him. I wasn’t having him judging me. I didn’t care who he thought he was.

‘Just as I said,’ Grace said in a voice that was slow and deliberate, as if Hector was a half-wit. ‘Leah is your father’s daughter.’

This just kept getting worse. How could Dad have been his dad too? It made no sense. I tried to make my brain stop panicking and think more clearly. If Hector was my half-brother, that meant that Clio was, what, my half-sister? We were sisters?