I glanced at Clio but she just shook her head. Whatever it was, she didn’t know either. Or wasn’t saying.

‘I’m afraid that this is going to come as something of a shock to you all,’ Grace began. She took a deep breath, girding herself for what she was about to reveal. My heart was banging in my chest so hard that I could hear it in my ears. Clio put her hand to her mouth, her eyes very wide. Hector remained stony-faced.

‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ Grace continued, ‘but my husband Charles was the same man as your father Ray, Leah.’

I opened my mouth to say something, although I had no idea what, but Grace put up her hand to silence me.

‘And,’ she continued, her voice trembling slightly now, ‘he was married to both me and your mother Melissa at the same time.’

I’d heard the words, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Married to them both at once? How could that be? It was illegal, for a start. I couldn’t even begin to work out how that might impact on me. It almost felt as if I had suddenly ceased to exist, even though I knew that was ridiculous.

I stared at Grace as my brain processed her words, but it was like thinking through treacle. Hector also appeared to be struggling with the revelation. His mouth hung open as if the elastic holding his jaw together had snapped. Only Clio didn’t look entirely horrified.

‘Did you know?’ I asked her.

What would it mean if she had done? Where would that leave our friendship? I could feel something close to betrayal building inside me, but Clio shook her head.

‘That Dad was a . . .’

She hesitated over voicing the word, but we all knew what she was trying to say. Bigamist. An ugly word for an ugly crime, I thought.

‘. . . was married to them both at the same time? No. But I had worked some of it out,’ she admitted.

Grace looked horrified. ‘Clio, no!’ she said, as if this was the worst news she could possibly receive. ‘How?’

‘There was a notebook with his things when he died. A nurse gave it to me at the hospital. It had names and dates in it.’ Then she turned and looked directly at me. ‘And the address of the house . . .’

She left her sentence unfinished, but I understood exactly what she was trying to tell me. Clio had known that we were sisters all along. I felt sick, physically sick, as if someone had just taken a baseball bat to my stomach.