‘What did he say?’

‘He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the boy… man was on the way to being just like him, a piece of rubbish. It was a terrible thing to say.’

‘I mean, what details did he give you of the birth?’

‘None, or almost none. He said the child was born during the first year of marriage, that Bettina went away to have it and returned without it. He said Bettina blackmailed him into concealing everything about the child. She hated him and wouldn’t bring up his child.’

‘Do you remember her being away for long enough at the time?’

She put her hand up to her forehead, a tracery of fine, blue veins was visible through the tight white skin.

‘I’ve tried, I can’t remember. They travelled a good deal.’

‘How would she have blackmailed him?’

‘Henry Brain had a full complement of the human weaknesses, Mr Hardy, it could have been almost anything.’

‘You say he was drunk and raving, why did you believe him?”

‘I can judge character. Truth has a different quality from falsehood. Henry was telling the truth, I’m sure of it.’

She wanted to believe it. It could have been true, but the story had a wild insubstantiality like the memory of a dream. Even thirty years ago it was hard to evade registering the birth of a child. Not as hard as now but hard enough. I asked her what her daughter had to say about it and got the answer I anticipated.

‘She denied it, denied it utterly. I pressed her hard but she said that Henry was a worthless liar and that we should never…that she should never have had anything to do with him. She was lying.’

‘This was when you and your daughter fell out?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was it?’

‘Two years ago.’