20

~ Add a drop of dishwasher rinse aid to the water when you're washing windows, and you'll get a lovely streak-free finish.

I 'd promised Adam Doherty that I'd have his flat listed asap, and the new Robyn was as good as her word. Or, at least she was aware of her word and let people know in advance if she was running late with it. I only wished Jim was around to see how very diligent I was being.

Despite my private misgivings, I created a persuasive description of Adam's flat and asked Anna to have a look at the listing before I hit send. The photographer had visited not long after Jim and Gracie had departed, and the resulting sheen on the flat was so striking I assumed multiple filters had been deployed. But no. It was pure elbow grease – and probably bicarbonate of soda, knowing Jim.

‘Great-looking property,' said Anna. She skimmed my copy and suggested a few tweaks here and there (I'd overused the word ‘stunning', to be fair). ‘Did you check the nuts and bolts?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well …' Anna jiggled her hand. ‘It's one of Mitch Maitland's developments, isn't it?'

‘Yes? Why do you ask?'

She stopped jiggling and squinched her nose. ‘I've got to be honest …'

‘Go on.' I had a sinking feeling I knew what she was about to say.

‘They always look fabulous . I mean … fab-u-lous. They're just never constructed to a standard that I'd be happy buying myself. The finish is tremendous. The boring bits underneath, not so much.'

I felt dull inside. I'd only been working with Anna for a short while but she was easily the best boss I'd ever had. Her buzzy personality was what made the office so welcoming to clients, but there was no question about who was driving the business, and where she intended to take it. She was smart and insightful, and I was learning new things every day from her.

So as soon as Anna mentioned Mitch, with that eloquent squinch of her nose, I knew I had to listen, even though I didn't want to. ‘So what are you saying? We shouldn't work with him?'

Anna leaned against the desk opposite mine. She was wearing a blouse printed with Granny Smith apples. I made a mental note to find out where she'd got it. I needed more apple blouses in my life. ‘Mitch approached me recently about a development he's bringing to market next year.'

My stomach flipped. Should I tell her? No, I wanted to hear what she had to say first. ‘Lark Manor?'

Anna paused, thinking, then shook her head. ‘I don't think so, it's what used to be the metalworks? I did a bit of digging and I don't think he's even got funding for it yet. Sounds like he's just casting a few lines to see who bites. It's how he works, one step away from crowdfunding, if you ask me.'

I didn't remember Mitch mentioning a metalworks. So there was that and the steak restaurant. How far down the priority list was Lark Manor? I'd done a bit of digging around myself, and discovered that despite what he'd told me at the weekend, there was no record of a sale in the Land Registry; OK, the records might be taking a while to update, but it introduced the very real possibility that he hadn't even secured it yet. It wasn't being sold on the open market, so there were no sites to check to see if it was under offer.

I tried to tell myself that Mitch probably had lots of irons in the fire. It was how developers operated.

‘I told him we weren't interested, anyway,' Anna went on. ‘Not until I could have a look round the finished property. I mean, Mitch talks a great game, I'm not denying that, and there's always a waiting list for his properties, but I don't want to be remarketing after six months because the client feels they were sold a pup. What? Why are you looking like that?'

‘I sold this pup last year,' I said. There was no point lying to Anna. I didn't want to, in any case.

Her blue eyes widened. Anna had very expressive eyes.

‘Yup. And the client told me that one of the reasons that he wants out is because the plumbing's bodged. Which I obviously didn't know at the time.'

Anna's eyes widened further.

‘I can confirm that with first-hand knowledge. And,' I added, raising a pre-emptive hand, ‘before you jump to conclusions, I know the shower's rubbish because I broke it myself when I was working for my sister's cleaning agency. It literally came off in my hands.'

Anna laughed. ‘The undercover estate agent! I love it! Did Adam give you a hard time about selling him a shoddy bachelor pad when you went round last week?'

‘He didn't recognise me,' I admitted. ‘I could have been wearing a T-shirt with "I Was Your Estate Agent" printed on it, and he wouldn't have recognised me.'

That was the thing about men like Adam, I'd realised. When they wanted your attention, they couldn't take their eyes off you. When they didn't, you might as well be invisible. But maybe I was being mean. Maybe it was just a bloke thing. Mitch wasn't great with faces either; he'd walked straight past another ex-colleague at the food festival, this time an in-house solicitor called Danni. I supposed it was better than the alternative – she certainly seemed delighted to have bumped into him .

‘Well, make sure everything's perfect before you start showing clients round.' Anna wagged a finger. ‘And if Mitch Maitland calls in with his big brown eyes and his big sexy property portfolio, you say no thanks, you hear me?'I nodded, and said nothing. I was happy to be honest with Anna about selling the flat, and also breaking the shower, but that didn't mean I wanted to reveal the full extent of my involvement with Mitch Maitland. Not yet anyway.

Jim had given me a great piece of advice early on in my cleaning journey. It wasn't even a cleaning-related tip; it was just something he'd intoned in the car driving between jobs when I was moaning about the mess in my flat.

‘Just time how long a task takes,' he'd he'd informed me, like some kind of internet self-help guru. ‘It's never as long as you think. You'll do it before you've even stopped making up excuses not to.'

This was so true I felt like getting it embroidered onto scatter cushions for family Christmas gifts.

For example, it took me twenty minutes on the phone to book an appointment with my GP, and then about three minutes for the GP to confirm that most of my adult personality, and the struggles I had with it, could also be a symptom of ADHD.

I'd probably done too much Internet research, but it had helped to compile a full list of my possible symptoms beforehand, so I wouldn't be overcome by a misplaced sense of not wanting to bother anyone. I told Dr Keyes the truth: that my disorganisation, lack of concentration, fear of failure, inability to complete tasks, and so on, was more than I could control alone. Once I started articulating everything I'd struggled to keep in check my whole life, I couldn't stop. I cried a couple of times, and it was embarrassing to admit the worst of my past behaviour, but Dr Keyes listened patiently, as if I wasn't the worst person in the world. He reassured me that the rest of my life didn't have to be as chaotic or stressful, and referred me to a specialist. I left with a handful of the same leaflets Sally Armstrong had had.

It wasn't a silver bullet but it was a start. And I'd done it myself.

Back home, I'd also timed how long it took to sort and empty the boxes I'd lugged from my old place. Thirty-five minutes, on average. Even I could concentrate that long, and now the flat was almost clear of them.

Who knew that chucking unwanted possessions away would be so easy, or that it could dissolve any lingering regrets faster than you could say ‘misplaced nostalgia'. I'd despatched my university notes and books without so much as a backward glance – goodbye Pinter, Chekhov and the Method Actors! Goodbye, Meredith, Zara and the other students I shared a house with nearly twenty years ago and felt bad about losing touch with! Hello, space and light and air.

I had reached the final box which had only survived because I'd placed Astrid and her friends on it to enjoy better sunlight. Still, it had to go. I moved the plants off, unfolded the top and stopped, because I didn't recognise anything inside: a jean jacket, flip-flops, a bucket hat. It seemed too old to be Cleo's. Which meant … it had to be Mum's. My heart bumped with excitement, as I reached down and took out a shoebox that someone had covered in Christmas wrapping paper.

I removed the lid, and it released a fragrant cloud of magnolia soap.

Inside was a familiar jumble of unfamiliar things: birthday cards, a cassette tape with handwritten track listing, photographs, newspaper cuttings, a velvet jewellery pouch, a bead bracelet. I laid it out slowly on the floor around the box. A train ticket to Manchester, a Young Person's Railcard, single earrings, folded-up notes on lined A4 paper, postcards from Majorca, Paris, Dublin.

The Young Person's Railcard belonged to Kirsty Davies.

It took me a second. Kirsty. Mum's sister!

I lifted the photocard nearer. It was eerie to see a face that was almost but not quite me, almost but not quite Cleo. Same dark eyes framed with dark brows, same small rosebud mouth, no make-up, round gold-rimmed glasses that had been in and out of fashion twice since she'd worn them.

I had a sickly sense that I was snooping on something I shouldn't be, but at the same time I couldn't stop looking. This was a past I'd never even been allowed to imagine, and I had to consume every detail before the box was snatched away. Kirsty was a stranger but she was also my auntie, my flesh and blood, the shadow at the heart of our family.

My heart beat quickly, faster than it ever did at the gym, as I examined each fragment of evidence, trying to absorb any decades-old traces of Kirsty or Mum that might be lingering on the surfaces, putting each piece together to see if I could make a complete picture of a girl I'd never meet.

The cassette was an old-fashioned mix tape; I didn't know whose handwriting it was, but it was pretty, each title printed, each artist in capitals. True Faith, NEW ORDER; April Skies JESUS AND MARY CHAIN; Build, THE HOUSEMARTINS; other bands and songs I didn't recognise. Who'd made this? For whom? Had it gone in a Walkman, on a bus, on a train? Was it the soundtrack to a holiday?

The postcards were mostly from Mum to Kirsty. Mum seemed to get about a bit: ‘ Having an amazing time in Galway, met some fit lads who took us to a great pub with live music. I got a penny whistle! Hope revision going well and you're not working too hard! xxxxx'

‘ Having an amazing field trip in London – we were supposed to do two art galleries but we got postcards in the shop and went to Camden Market instead! Mum says you got all As in your mocks which is brILLIANT. SO proud of you. Don't forget to sleep! Xxxxx'

‘ Just a postcard to say congratulations on the county hockey trials. I am crossing everything for you!!!' I turned over the card; it was a hand-drawn black cat surrounded by lucky shamrocks. Had Mum made it herself, I wondered? She was good at drawing, always making us treasure maps as kids, and I knew she'd been to art college – but it was part of the family folklore that we never asked about, as her time there coincided with Kirsty's accident, so it fell under the embargo. She certainly never mentioned it.

There were sketches in here, though: vivid drawings of Kirsty posing with her hockey stick, a sweet, good-natured expression caught in a few clever dashes of pencil. A Labrador – I hadn't realised Mum had a dog. I'd never seen a more Labrador-like Labrador.

And what were these? I lifted out a tiny doll with a blue dress and – I spotted a stray leg under a scrunchie – another in a red dress. Why were they familiar? Oh! I covered my mouth, as if my emotions might escape. Of course. They belonged with the family in our doll's house, the one Cleo had demarcated with tape as a protest against my mess. I'd always wondered why the family was as small as ours, just a toy Mum, Dad, a little boy and a dog. Cleo and I had had to supplement it with a diverse selection of adopted Weebles and Playmobil nurses and doctors. These were the missing girls.

So that was Mum's doll's house? I marvelled at my own lack of curiosity. And then I marvelled that she'd never told us, in all the years we played with it. Had she never wanted to tell us how we were exactly like her and her sister, making up the same stories, the same arguments? She probably had wanted to, I thought, with a sudden pang of insight. It probably broke her heart fresh every time but she'd held the pain in silence.

I laid the photographs and postcards, dolls and jewellery, notes and trinkets around the box, and tried to sense Mum and Kirsty's blood in my own veins. Mum's love for her sister jumped out of the postcards. I thought of how close Cleo and I had been once. Even now, even with this storm cloud between us, my first instinct was to share this with her.

I need to tell Cleo, I thought. What if something happened to her before we had a chance to hug and make up? I shrank at the thought of how unexpectedly, how permanently life could change. Jim and his mate had expected their rugby match to end in the bar, not in an ambulance. Terry had woken that morning with no inkling of how close he'd come to dying.

A horrible thought struck me. What if Mum and Kirsty had been in the middle of a stupid row when Kirsty was killed in the car accident, the same way Cleo and I were now? What if that was the reason she was so desperate for us never to fall out? Was she to blame for the row, was that why she couldn't bear to look back? Was that why we weren't allowed to remind her of it?

Slowly, and very carefully, I replaced everything in the box and put the lid back on top. This had gone on long enough. I knew Mum was in on her own on Friday night, when Dad was at Cake Club. I'd take the box of memories round to her when I could spend some time with her alone. If it was just her and me, she might open up.

I arrived at Mum and Dad's house just as Dad was leaving with his challenge bake, the one he'd been rehearsing the previous week.

As far as I could make out from the transparent cake container he was lifting into the car, moving in that careful, careful slow motion so beloved of You've Been Framed , it seemed to be a marzipan spaceship.

‘Princess cake, love,' he explained, bending slowly at the knees so he could slide the box horizontally into the back of the Polo. ‘Swedish speciality, very complex construction, cream, custard, genoise, jam. High technical tariff.'

‘I'll take your word for it,' I said as I edged my way into the house.

‘You can clean out the bowl!' Dad shouted behind me, as if I'd ever asked for permission.

Mum was even more pleased to see me than usual. It turned out Cleo hadn't asked for any childcare at all since she'd taken Wes swimming, which was breaking Mum's heart, as well as giving her unprecedented amounts of free time to think about what she might have done to upset her.

In other words, Cleo's plan was working exactly as she intended.

‘It must be something to do with Elliot,' she said, before I'd got my jacket off. ‘Do you think they've got back together and she doesn't want to tell us? I don't mind if they have. I know we said he wasn't treating her well enough when she kicked him out, but if she wants to be with him, who are we to get on our high horses? She knows him better than we do. And there's the boys to consider.'

‘I don't think she's getting back with Elliot,' I said, licking the custard spoon. It had occurred to me that Cleo might be playing a cunning long game of laying so much blame at Elliot's door that no one would notice potential bad behaviour on her part. Although this theory fell down when I tried to calculate when she'd actually fit an affair in to her diary.

‘Then what is it?' Mum threw up her hands. Poor Mum. She looked tormented. ‘I want to help her. She's obviously unhappy. Why won't she tell us what's going on? We're her family, she shouldn't keep secrets from us.'

I carried on licking the spoon. This was ironic, coming from Mum. I hoped she'd bear her words in mind when I produced the shoebox later.

Mum sighed. ‘And I worry about her. I worry about you both, obviously, but Cleo has the boys to look after and that's not easy. When you're a parent you don't stop worrying from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep.'

I sensed this could go on for some time, so I turned to the rest of Dad's bowls. There was a cream bowl, a cake bowl and some leftover marzipan in the shape of tiny pink roses. Mum must have been worrying away for ages if Dad had deliberately chosen such a complex cake to get away from it.

‘… I said, if you need us to look after the boys more so you can spend time with Rhiannon, I don't mind, but she didn't return my call …'

I nodded, and moved on to the cream bowl.

Eventually she ran out of steam, and offered to make me some supper.

‘It'll be omelettes,' she apologised. ‘Your dad overestimated how many eggs he'd need for his cake this month so we need to get through a few boxes.'

‘Fine by me.' Mum's omelettes were legendary.

‘You relax in the front room, and I'll shout when they're ready.' She bustled away, leaving me to enjoy the luxury of a full-service diner with hundreds of television channels and an electric recliner.

I was engrossed in a programme about someone training dogs to speak using buzzers when the phone rang. I had to look around to see what was making the noise at first; Mum was one of the last people I knew who still had a landline. She and Dad kept it ‘in case of emergencies'.

‘Mum, phone!' I yelled.

‘Can you get that for me?' she shouted through from the kitchen.

When we were small, Grandma Taylor had taught me and Cleo to say our names and the phone number but now, of course, that was tantamount to offering someone your front door key and your bank details, so I just said, ‘Hello?'

‘Hello?' The voice on the other end had a Welsh accent. ‘Is that Melanie?'

‘No, this is Robyn,' I said.

‘Would it be possible to speak to Melanie, please?'

‘Who should I say's calling?'

‘Gwen Thomas.'

My pulse quickened. Gwen Thomas! I was going to handle this much better than Cleo did.

‘One moment.' I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and mumbled, ‘Mum, it's Gwen Thomas for you.'

I said it deliberately quietly, and right on cue Mum said, ‘Who? Oh, just take a message, would you, love?'

I returned to the call. ‘I'm sorry, she can't speak just now, but you can give me a message if you like?'

‘Are you a relation of Mrs Taylor's?'

‘Yes, I'm her daughter.' My heart was right up in my chest, pulsing hard. Tell me, tell me.

‘Her daughter? Well, in that case …' Gwen Thomas cleared her throat. ‘I'm sorry to be calling with bad news, but I'm afraid your grandfather is very poorly. We've had the doctor out to see him twice this week, and he advises that Mr Davies be admitted to hospital this evening.'

Your grandfather. Gwen Thomas's tone was kindly and concerned, as if this might come as a terrible shock to me. I tried to summon him in my head; I could see grey hair, a tie, a red sleeveless jumper, but no face. An angry voice, stale tobacco. Mum's strange quivering energy.

‘Where are you calling from?' I asked, reaching for my phone to start covert Internet searches.

‘The Ferns Nursing Home.' Gwen Thomas belatedly realised she might have made a bit of a data protection blunder. ‘I'm sorry, maybe I should call back …'

But I needed to know now ; Mum wasn't going to repeat this precious information. ‘When you say poorly, what exactly do you mean?'

‘Well, Gordon is ninety-four at the end of the day, so we're dealing with a very elderly gentleman with multiple health issues.'

What multiple health issues? Mum hadn't even mentioned the fact that he was in a home, let alone ill. Did she know any of this?

Recent events with Terry had made me hypersensitive to medical euphemisms. ‘Are you saying he's …?' There were so many bland ways of putting it. I scrabbled for the least awful. ‘That he's reaching the end of the road?'

‘I think so, yes.' Gwen Thomas sounded relieved that I'd gone there first. ‘He's very weak, poor man. He's been asking for Melanie and Kirsty, over and over, very agitated, and I've got to be honest with you, this is the first time he's spoken about his family to our care team. I appreciate the family has asked for contact to be restricted to emergencies only, but we do often find that when our guests reach this point of their lives …' She left me to fill in the blanks.

I didn't know what to say. It was as if she was telling me about a complete stranger. Well, she was; I couldn't remember if I even knew my Grandad was called Gordon.

‘Could you perhaps ask your mother to call me back at a moment that suits her?' Gwen Thomas asked. ‘As soon as is convenient, if you don't mind. Shall I give you a direct line?'

I wrote down the number on the back of the Neighbourhood Watch magazine, my hands shaking with the pent-up energy of this unexpected revelation. Mum could hardly refuse to discuss this. It felt too big for me to handle alone – no Dad, no Cleo – and yet I was excited because it was just me here, for once.

Mum entered the room as I was hanging up the phone. She was carrying a tray with two big fluffy omelettes, cheesy and delicious, and a pot of tea with two mugs. One was the Mum mug Cleo and I had given her for Christmas in 16.

‘Who was that then?' she asked.

‘Gwen,' I said. ‘Gwen Thomas?'

‘From the Parish Council?' She put the tray down on the table. I watched her, fascinated by this bombshell trembling invisibly between us, waiting to go off. ‘Did I tell you next door is planning to extend their house again and your dad and I are going to put in an objection? It's ridiculous, your dad thinks they're trying to build a sneaky granny annexe …'

She was pouring the tea as she spoke, adding the exact amount of milk and three-quarters of a spoon of sugar, my tea requirements since childhood, and I thought, the man who held you in his arms as a newborn baby is dying, the man who is a quarter of my genes is dying, and he is just a name to me. How can that have happened?

‘No, Gwen Thomas from the Ferns Nursing Home,' I said.

Mum's back straightened instantly but she didn't turn round.

‘Grandad is very ill.' Were her shoulders moving? Was she crying? ‘She says that if we want to say goodbye we should think about going very soon. Can you call her back, please?'

Mum didn't speak. I tried to see her reflection in one of the family portraits around the room, but she wasn't in the right place.

‘Mum?' Maybe I'd been too blunt. He was still her dad, no matter what had happened. I went over to put my arms around her. ‘Mum, I'm so sorry. She says the doctor's recommended he go into hospital tonight. I didn't realise he's ninety-four. Ninety-four! Do you want me to drive you there?'

I realised I hadn't even asked where the Ferns Nursing Home was.

‘Where is Grandpa living now? I thought he was up in Scotland.'

Mum still hadn't said anything. I assumed she was in shock.

If Cleo were here, she would be in the car by now, I thought. Driving and organising the funeral on her hands-free.

I probed my own surprisingly calm reaction. Should I be more upset? I didn't feel anything. I'd felt more distressed when Terry had been rushed into hospital. Maybe this was how responsible adults felt all the time.

‘Mum?' I repeated.

‘I have to think about this,' she said.

‘Well, don't think about it too long.' What was there to think about? Her dad was dying, surely she should be jumping in the car, even if they hadn't spoken for years? ‘It doesn't sound as if there's a lot of time.'

She raised a hand. Was it a warning hand? A ‘give me a moment' hand?

‘Do you want me to call Gwen back?' I asked. ‘Do you want me to call Cleo? Or ask Dad to come back from Cake Club?' I racked my brains for more people to call. But that was it. That was all the family we had.

‘No!' Mum's voice snapped out of her. ‘No! I just need to think! I need some time. On my own. To think! Not do what everyone else wants me to do for once.'

It wasn't the reaction I was expecting, and the force of the feeling behind the words shocked me. Mum's hands were balled into tight fists. I'd never seen that before. It started a knot of worry twisting in my chest.

‘Mum?'

She lifted her head then looked at me. Her face seemed older, but her eyes were scared and young, brimming with tears. She was that unfamiliar woman again: Melanie, not my mum. A woman who might say or do things I couldn't predict. In the thirty-six years I'd known my mother, I'd never ever not known what she was thinking and it was scary.

‘I'm sorry, Robyn, but I need to be on my own. Two minutes. Do you mind?'

I did mind, if I was honest. OK, I was hardly known for my emotional rock status (now partly diagnosed as having an actual mental-health issue) but I was her daughter. Her adult daughter.

‘I don't want to leave you on your own,' I said. ‘You've had a shock. Let me get you a brandy, Mum. Is it still in the drinks cupboard?'

That was what people did in films. They offered brandy, or sweet tea. I knew this for a fact because, again, I had watched a lot of very bad Hallmark movies while unable to sleep.

‘Robyn, please. I need to be on my own.'

If Mum wanted to be on her own, what could I do? I decided I'd ring Cleo from the kitchen. We'd work something out together.

I picked up my bag and, as I did, remembered the reason I'd come round in the first place. Maybe it would help her decide what to do about Grandpa. Or maybe not. It was a risk, but she could decide.

‘I think this is yours,' I said, taking the wrapped shoebox out of the bag for life I'd brought it in. ‘It was in with the things I left in your garage.'

As soon as I passed it to her, the expression on Mum's face changed. Shock at first, then sorrow, then she crumpled onto the sofa, holding it tightly, her head bowed.

God, this wasn't going well at all.

‘I think it's Auntie Kirsty's,' I added, spooked into gabbling by her silence. ‘There was some other stuff, clothes, mainly. I had a quick look once I realised it wasn't mine – do you think we could go through it together some time? I'd love to know the stories behind … Mum? Oh, Mum, are you all right?'

Her head had fallen forward, her hair hiding her face, and two fat teardrops fell on the lid of the box, blotting the old wrapping paper dark red. Another teardrop, then another, then her shoulders began to shake.

I'd only seen her cry like this once, when our cat Misty died, and she'd tried to hide the tropical storm of her grief from me and Cleo. It had frightened me, the intensity of her emotion breaking through the familiar shell; Mum was so constantly cheerful and normal. She'd had Misty since she was a kitten, before we were born; we'd never known a Misty-less house. We were both inconsolable, but Mum's grief was something else. It made us strangers to each other.

‘I'm going to call Cleo.' I reached for my phone. ‘Don't worry about this, Mum, she and I will deal with the nursing home and find out what's going on. And if you want to go up and …'

‘No!' She raised her head. ‘No! We're not going up, we're not calling back and we are definitely not giving that vile man one more second of our time.'

Vile? ‘Why?'

‘Do I have to tell you why? Do you need a reason other than I don't want to?'

‘What if I want to? What if I want to know something about my grandfather?' I demanded. ‘Don't I have the right to say goodbye?'

‘No!'

‘That's it? Just no? No explanation? Just no?'

‘Oh …' She stared at me, then stared at the wall as if she couldn't bear to think.

I struggled to find something, anything, that would make Mum's reaction make sense and I automatically turned on myself. ‘It's not … it's not something that I've done, is it?' For a second I was the scared child who'd let the handbrake off the car again. Had I killed that Labrador in the sketch, without knowing? Had I done something worse, and blocked it out? Was it somehow my fault?

‘What? No! No, of course not, it's nothing you've done.'

‘Then what? Mum, you're freaking me out.'

She breathed in through her nose, a long, shuddering angry breath. ‘I haven't spoken to that man in half a lifetime,' she said. ‘Do you think I'd have cut us all off without a very good reason? Do you?'

Oh Christ. A stomach-turning thought occurred to me. Had her dad abused her? Had he abused Kirsty?

‘Why don't you tell me what that reason was, and I'll be the judge of it?' I dropped down to my knees next to her. ‘Mum, whatever it is, whatever's happened, you don't have to deal with it on your own.' I hugged her, scared of how inadequate I felt. ‘I love you so much. I would do anything for you. Anything at all.'

Mum had been staring over my head at the various family photos in their silver frames on the sideboard. Lots and lots of us, and a few Taylors. Now she dropped her gaze to me, and I was startled by the fierce challenge in her eyes. ‘Are you sure about that?'

‘Yes,' I said.

Mum closed her eyes as if she was summoning up the very last of her strength. Then she opened them.

‘Fine,' she said. ‘I'll tell you. But you're not going to love me the same afterwards. You might not love any of us the same.'