Tara stared at her mother. Cancer? What the hell are you talking about?

‘So when the PSA score shot up they give Leo an MRI scan and a biopsy,’ Jen said. ‘And it wasn’t good.’

And so the totally unimaginable suddenly becomes a cruel fact of life.

‘And then they tried to recruit Leo to the booming prostate cancer industry,’ Jen continued. ‘Remove or irradiate. Chop it out or burn it out. But your father learned that both surgery and radiation result in side effects that he found unacceptable. Impotence, incontinence. He googled it. And personally I can’t think of anything your father would be less likely to sign up for.’

‘It’s better than being dead, isn’t it?’ Tara said furiously. ‘It’s better than cancer.’

Jen shook her head. ‘Not to a man like your father.’

Marlon and Buddy burst into the room.

‘We’re hungry,’ Marlon said.

Her eyes bright with tears, Tara inserted her finger in our boy’s dimple as she scooped him up.

‘I’m going to kiss you right there.’

When Tara and Marlon had gone to look in the fridge, Jen and I looked at each other.

‘So Leo knew he was dying when he killed James Caine?’ I said.

Jen nodded. ‘Yes.’ She touched her too golden hair, and I saw a flicker of pride in her pale blue eyes. ‘But – knowing my husband – Leo would have done him anyway.’

I watched Tara move through the evening – ordering a takeaway, getting Marlon ready for bed, checking in with Skyla at the office – numb with the knowledge that her father was dying.

When Marlon was fed, read and tucked up in bed, she went online. Exactly what her father would have done. A practical response to what life had thrown at her. Educating herself about this latest kick in the head. Weighing up the options.

But there was one thing no search engine could find her.

‘Why didn’t he tell us he’s sick?’ she said.

‘Maybe he couldn’t find the words. Or maybe he thought it made him look …’ I hesitated to use the word weak about Leo. ‘Less strong,’ I settled for. ‘Less strong than he wanted to be for you and your mother and Marlon. And maybe he thought it was nothing to do with us. Maybe he just wanted to deal with it himself. Make his own choices.’

‘But how can you keep cancer a secret from your family?’

‘He was trying to protect you. To put himself between his family and the world.’

Like he did with James Caine, I thought. Just like he did with that bastard.

I took Tara in my arms, and kissed her on her cheek, and caught my breath to feel my lips on her perfect skin.

‘I never told him before today,’ she said, burying herself in my arms, both of us loving that old familiar feeling. ‘That I love him, I mean. Just the one time. That’s not much, is it?’