‘He’s not my dad.’
‘Don’t get smart with me, young lady. You can’t just walk back in here like nothing’s happened! Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused? I was up with your brother half the night, and then I couldn’t sleep for worrying about what had happened to you. I’ve had to cancel our trip to Granny Houghton’s because we didn’t know where you were.’
Lily stared at her coolly. ‘I don’t know why you bothered. You don’t usually care where I am.’
The woman stiffened with rage. She was thin, the kind of thin that comes with faddy diets or compulsive exercise; her hair was expensively cut and coloured so that it looked neither, and she was wearing what I assumed were designer jeans. But her face, tanned as it was, betrayed her: she looked exhausted.
She spun round to me. ‘Is it you she’s been staying with?’
‘Well, yes, but –’
She looked me up and down, and apparently decided she was not enamoured of what she saw. ‘Do you know the trouble you’re causing? Do you have any idea how old she is? What the hell do you want with a girl that young anyway? You must be, what, thirty?’
‘Actually, I –’
‘Is this what it’s about?’ she asked her daughter. ‘Are you having a relationship with this woman?’
‘Oh, Mum, shut up.’ Lily had picked up the pineapple again, and was fishing around in it with her forefinger. ‘It’s not what you think. She hasn’t caused any of it.’ She lowered the last piece of pineapple into her mouth, pausing to chew, perhaps for dramatic effect, before she spoke again. ‘She’s the woman who used to look after my dad. My real dad.’
Tanya Houghton-Miller sat back in the endless cushions of her cream sofa and stirred her coffee. I perched on the edge of the sofa opposite, gazing at the oversized Diptyque candles and the artfully placed Interiors magazines. I was slightly afraid that if I sat back as she had, my coffee would tip into my lap.
‘How did you meet my daughter?’ she said wearily. Her wedding finger sported two of the biggest diamonds I’d ever seen.
‘I didn’t, really. She turned up at my flat. I had no idea who she was.’
She digested that for a minute. ‘And you used to look after Will Traynor.’
‘Yes. Until he died.’
There was a brief pause as we both studied the ceiling – something had just crashed above our heads. ‘My sons.’ She sighed. ‘They have some behavioural issues.’
‘Are they from your … ?’
‘They’re not Will’s, if that’s what you’re asking.’
We sat there in silence. Or as near to silence as it could get when you could hear furious screaming upstairs. There was another thud, followed by an ominous silence.
‘Mrs Houghton-Miller,’ I said. ‘Is it true? Is Lily Will’s daughter?’
She raised her chin slightly. ‘Yes.’
I felt suddenly shaky, and put my coffee cup on the table. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand how –’
‘It’s quite simple. Will and I were together during the last year of uni. I was totally in love with him, of course. Everyone was. Although I should say it wasn’t all one-way traffic – you know?’ She raised a small smile and waited, as if expecting me to say something.
I couldn’t. How could Will not have told me he had a daughter? After everything we had been through?