Our daughter's twin di3d at nine days old and we let her believe she was born alone — at her eighteenth my husband carried something out of the garage and said he had started it the night her sister died.

Halley already knew.

She has known since she was fourteen.

My mother had a stroke in the November of 2020.

She came through it and she is seventy-four and she is mostly herself, and the thing that did not come back properly is the part that stops you saying things.

And in the July of 2021, in that kitchen, she said the name.

Not as a confession. As nothing. She was talking about a pram and she said "we had two of them" and then she said "Posy" and then she carried on.

And my daughter was fourteen years old and she worked the rest of it out on her own in about three weeks.

And then she said nothing for four years.

I asked her why. In the October, at that same table, and I asked her properly.

And she said: "Because I couldn't ask you."

And I said you could have asked me anything.