Then Edie had come along. Tony’s long-term girlfriend in his late twenties. And for a while it seemed like everything had settled down. Jill believed she would never have to worry again about people calling her eldest son creepy or strange. Edie was lovely. Intelligent. Pretty. If she could fall in love with Tony then surely everything was fine with him. When they broke up after two years, Jill had been so disappointed. And then she ran into Edie in the shops. ‘I was so sorry to hear you’d gone your separate ways,’ Jill had said.

Edie had given her a piercing look before suggesting that she might want to ask Tony for the real reason they’d split. ‘You have a blind spot when it comes to him, don’t you?’ she’d said. ‘In your eyes, he can do no wrong. Try asking him about his favourite internet sites, see what your precious golden child has to say about that.’

Jill had backed away from her. What a ridiculous thing to say! Tony had told her they broke up because Edie wanted to focus on her career. That she wasn’t ready to settle down.

Jill never told Tony about her run-in with Edie at the shops. And she never asked him what internet sites Edie might have been referring to. But perhaps that was because she was afraid of what the answer might be.

She hadn’t thought of Edie for years. Not until four weeks earlier, when the email had arrived.

Sender: [email protected]

Subject: You need to know

The email that she kept refusing to read, because how dare this woman who didn’t really know her son send her an email out of the blue with the intention of trashing him all over again? But today, two things had happened to make her realise she no longer had a choice.

The first was when she pulled Tony aside, asked him about his book.

‘Just be honest with me, Tony,’ she’d said. ‘Did you steal your book from your father?’

The expression on his face told her the answer. But then instead of apologising, instead of asking her to understand, he told her to let it go. He told her it was done and there was no going back.

‘How could you do this?’ she’d asked him. ‘To your dad? He loved you! He trusted you. Andrea told me you two are reconsidering having children. Imagine how you would feel if your own child did something like this to you?’

He’d snorted. ‘Well that’s a pretty unlikely scenario considering I’ve had a vasectomy.’