Lottie sat up in bed and thanked Chloe for the tea and toast. She hadn’t the heart to tell the girl she never wanted to touch either again.

‘Louis is being really good,’ Chloe said. ‘You’d think he knows to be quiet when you’re trying to sleep.’

‘He’s a great baby. You are all brilliant children. I’m a lucky mother to have you here with me. Did I tell you I love you?’

Chloe groaned. ‘Only about a million times since you’ve come home. We know you love us. Always knew it. So please, please don’t keep saying it. It gets kind of gross after a while.’

Lottie smiled, reached out and held Chloe’s hand. ‘I’m sorry for—’

‘Enough!’ Chloe said. ‘I want my old Mum back. The cranky, contrary, fussing and rushing one. You know who I’m talking about?’

‘Yes, I do. Okay. Less of the mushy stuff. I promise.’

‘Whatever, but I know the next time any of us comes in here, you’re going to start again.’

Lottie watched her tall, beautiful daughter pick a tendril of blonde hair from her face and head for the door.

Without turning round, Chloe said, ‘Granny is on her way up to see you.’ Then she escaped.

Putting the tray on the locker, Lottie flinched with the pain in her upper back. Almost two weeks she’d been made to stay in the hospital. And now, after three days in bed at home, she was itching to get out and back to work. Another month, the surgeon had said. Well, he doesn’t know me, Lottie mused. But now she had to face Rose Fitzpatrick. That thought was more painful than the wound in her back.

‘How are we today?’ Rose said, dropping about a dozen magazines on the bed. ‘Thought you could do with something to read.’

‘I’ve plenty of reading material,’ Lottie said, tapping the folder on the bed beside her.

‘What’s that then?’ Rose enquired, leaning over to have a look.

‘A story compiled by a journalist.’

‘About your heroics in catching a serial killer?’

‘No.’ Lottie thought the best course of action was to get straight to the point. Though she wished she was standing up so she could look Rose in the eye.

‘Paddy Moroney was the owner of the Midland Tribune,’ Lottie began.

‘The father of that poor murdered journalist and his wife. He’s been dead years. Why would you have his story?’

Pulling herself up in the bed, Lottie went for it.

‘My dad was a fraud. A sergeant on the take. Bad enough I spent my life thinking he’d killed himself, but do you know what’s worse? Knowing he duped the system and conspired to put a young woman called Carrie King into the asylum. Jesus, the girl was just an alcoholic; I don’t think she was ever insane.’

‘That was a long time ago.’ Rose stood awkwardly, pushing her hands into her pockets. She stared at a point above Lottie’s head.

‘Everything was a long time ago with you. I searched for the truth but you thwarted me every step of the way. You thought that if you gave me that box of Dad’s things, I’d stop. But you sent me digging deeper until Cian O’Shea and Bernie Kelly’s horrific actions unexpectedly led me to the truth.’

Lottie watched her mother move from foot to foot. If this were a normal conversation, Rose would sit on the edge of the bed. But she suspected Rose knew exactly where it was leading.

‘There is a lot of unsubstantiated information in Paddy Moroney’s file. Most of it doesn’t matter to me. But some of it does. Some of it I can accept, but the one thing I don’t believe is that my dad fathered Carrie King’s first child. Paddy documents that that child was taken into our home. That can’t be possible. There was only Eddie and me. Isn’t that right?’

Rose bent her head. An imperceptible shake of her short hair. Surely not. Lottie gulped. Her heart pounded. Her wound constricted and suddenly she felt very ill.

‘Mother? What are you not telling me?’

Rose bit her lip and stared at the ceiling before dropping her gaze to Lottie. ‘I told you to leave it be,’ she whispered, and then her voice rose. ‘How many times did I tell you to stop asking questions? But no, you had to prove you could solve the problems of the world while unravelling our family history. This is not a fairy tale, Lottie. There’s no happy ending. Our world has real live people in it, not cartoon characters. The dead are gone. They’re not here to explain their actions. But you cannot leave it alone!’

Lottie recoiled at the vehemence in her mother’s voice. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The truth. Do you want to hear it? Because this is your only chance.’

Closing her eyes, Lottie blinked away tears. Did she want to know the truth? Yes. Could she handle it? Strong Lottie could, but a wounded animal, like she was now, probably couldn’t. But she had to know.

‘I want to hear it.’

‘You won’t like it. Final warning.’

Lottie flung back the covers and sat on the side of the bed, ignoring the shaft of pain.

‘For Christ’s sake, Mother, this isn’t some game-show quiz. Spit out the truth. I’m ready. No matter what you have to say, I think I have it figured out already.’

Leaning against the wall, Rose said, ‘I don’t think you have. That’s the problem. But you need to remember one thing. This is all your father’s fault. Not yours, not mine.’ She paused.

Lottie waited.

‘He was a bastard. Your father. On the take. You were correct there. And do you know why? Because, and you know I don’t use bad language, but I will now, because he fucked a desperately demented girl. Got her pregnant and came crying on my shoulder, apologising, asking what he could do and how it would affect his career. The selfish man. Never once did he think of that young damaged woman and how he had abused her.’

‘I… I don’t think I need to know any more.’ Lottie looked around her room wildly. Where were her pills? She needed something. A drink. Anything.

‘Yes you do. You wanted answers, and by God, I will have my say.’

Silence. She hadn’t even the coordination left in her body to count the seconds that were passing.

‘Your father knew Tessa Ball through court cases. Approached her to see what could be done. No abortions allowed. No access to even a back-street abortion. So they came up with a plan. When I think of it now, I want to be sick.’

‘What plan?’ Lottie whispered.

‘Once the baby was born, Peter would take the child as his own. He only had to convince me to go along with this madness. He painted it up; dressed it in fine clothing, his story. How we would be doing young Carrie a service. She wouldn’t be able to raise the child. She was a drug addict and an alcoholic. She’d spent half her life in a mental asylum, for God’s sake. He pleaded. The baby was his flesh and blood, after all. The clown.’

Lottie noticed tears spilling down Rose’s cheeks. Had her mother totally gone over the edge? But no, she looked saner than she had in months.

‘How could you take this child in? You had Eddie, you had me…’

‘That’s the whole point, Lottie. Don’t you get it? Come on, Detective Inspector Parker. We didn’t have you. I couldn’t have children after Eddie was born. Complications at birth. I was left sterile. That’s why there was a seven-year gap after Eddie.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘You were Peter’s child, but you weren’t mine.’ Rose convulsed in sobs. ‘But I loved you. Love you.’

‘No!’ Lottie shot up from the bed, the ache in her back screeching objections along with her voice. ‘You’re not serious. You can’t be. No! That cannot be true.’ She rounded on her mother, gripping her shoulders. Looked into her flooded eyes.

‘You called me Charlotte after Charlotte Brontë. You told me that. Didn’t you? I’m yours and Dad’s. Please don’t tell me otherwise.’

‘I’m sorry, but it’s true. You are the daughter of my Peter and the Carrie King woman. Tessa Ball forged the birth certificate through her contacts at the registry office.’

Lottie dropped to her knees at the feet of the woman she had called mother for over forty years. But Rose wasn’t her real mother. Her biological mother was a woman who’d been locked up in an insane asylum and left there to die.

She shook her head repeatedly. This couldn’t be true. No. Dementia, that was what it was. She would get Annabelle to run checks on Rose’s brain. There were tests… special tests they could do…

Rose continued. ‘Tessa had this hanging over your father’s head like a giant sledgehammer, threatening to let it drop if he didn’t get involved later on when she tried to cover up her own brother’s involvement with Carrie. She took Marian as her child. Keeping a wealthy family happy, she was. No shame displayed for all the neighbours to see.’

‘They were babies,’ Lottie cried. A cold chill traversed her shoulders, slipped down her spine and back up again, coming to an icy resting place in the nape of her neck.

‘You know what I mean. These people were gentry, or at least they thought they were. Covered up all they could, but then there were the twins. How were they going to hide twins?’

‘How? Sign them into the asylum with their mother?’ Lottie scoffed.

‘No. The Belfields had a daughter, Alexis. She was a few years younger than Carrie and she agreed to take the twins. She fostered them, probably illegally, as she was young and unmarried, and poor Carrie was hauled off to the asylum once more. But this time she didn’t stay quiet. Threatened to go public, so I heard.’

‘But how would a supposedly insane woman be believed?’

‘I don’t think Kitty could take the risk. She enlisted Tessa, who forced Peter to help. Carrie was signed out and given the cottage by the Belfields, with the proviso that she get herself clean and then she could have the twins back. All was grand until she started taking drugs and drinking again. Then came the night she almost burned them all to death.’

‘So Alexis took the twins again?’

‘No. Apparently Alexis was heading to America to start up a business venture. She agreed to take one child. The other, Bernie, was incarcerated with Carrie in St Declan’s. I think initially she was put in while the family decided what to do about her. But they just left her there. With her mother.’ Rose sighed, long and deep. ‘I thought they’d both died in there. But I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?’

Lottie was speechless. She didn’t want to believe her mother, but then hadn’t most of it been in Moroney’s report anyway?

‘How could you do it? Agree to take me in? How could you live with Dad after what he did?’

‘It was hard. I did the right thing in the long run. Look how you turned out. Good upbringing wins out in the end.’

‘I can see that we are both victims in this pathetic play, and you know what? I pity you, Mother. Or whoever you are. I pity you for the choices you made.’ Lottie leaned against the bed, wishing she was strong enough to run out of the door, down the stairs and out to the street, where she could howl like a wild animal at the night sky. ‘Dad’s suicide… had you anything to do with it?’

‘How could you think that? I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, he was the one who had the affair, not me. He had to live with that sin. Remember, Lottie, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. We all thought Annabelle had a perfect marriage, and see what her husband was doing to her.’

Annabelle, Lottie thought. She wondered how she was, now that Cian had been charged with double homicide. She’d have to make contact soon. Thinking of what her mother had just said, she’d always known Annabelle hadn’t had the perfect marriage but she’d thought Cian, for all his faults, had been a good husband. Dead wrong there, Parker, she told herself. Circumstances had changed Cian, released in him something evil. And circumstances had most surely turned Bernie into what she had become. But Rose was deflecting the conversation, in typical Rose fashion.

‘This isn’t about Annabelle or Cian or anyone else,’ Lottie said, drawing her back to the topic in hand. ‘This is about my dad.’

‘He was the one who fathered a child outside of his marriage, so don’t go blaming me.’

‘But things must have been strained at home. Jesus, you took in another woman’s daughter. Shit.’

‘She was an addict. She couldn’t care for you. There was no help for her back then, just the asylum.’

Lottie stared up at the ceiling. Blinded by tears. Frustration? Anger? Sorrow? She had no idea.

‘No wonder I’m so fucked up.’

‘I thought if I let you have your father’s things, it would be the end of it. Instead you started on your mad witch-hunt. All those poor innocent people. Killed because of your meddling.’

Lottie dragged herself upright again. ‘You’re wrong there. Marian Russell started it with her genealogy investigations.’

‘But don’t you see, your snooping got Cian O’Shea involved to spy on you, and on me. And whether you care to admit it or not, Lottie, that led directly to the murder of the Moroneys. So don’t play the angel here. Shoulder some of the blame.’

Bristling from the harsh words, Lottie decided that once she was well enough, she’d visit Cian O’Shea in prison to see if she could succeed where others had failed. She needed to know who had got him involved.

‘I’ve heard enough now, Mo… Rose. I think you need to leave.’

Rose pushed away from the wall. At the door, she turned. Lottie stared at the once sprightly woman she had called her mother. Now that woman looked half her size and broken.

‘I’m going,’ Rose said. ‘I just ask one thing. Leave it alone now. Don’t go looking for more answers. It’ll only cause people pain. People who have spent their lives running away from it. Remember, you have your own children and your grandson to think of. You don’t want to bring more heartache into their lives.’

Lottie got up, cringing with pain. She stood as erect as she could.

‘For your information, I’m not finished with this. I intend to find my last remaining half-sibling.’

Rose laughed drily. ‘Don’t forget, you have two.’

‘Two?’ Lottie felt confused. Then it struck her. ‘Bernie Kelly can rot in jail for the rest of her life. I’m talking about her twin. I will find where this Alexis is and—’

‘You won’t. You can never fight her. Your father couldn’t.’

‘What do you mean?’ How did Rose always get the last word?

‘Your father couldn’t stand up to her. He was a tired and broken man, the poor eejit. It was Tessa that made him do it, but I firmly believe that Alexis was behind her, pulling the strings. Didn’t you wonder why Tessa had the gun? The gun that killed your father?’

Yes, she did.

‘Alexis put it all in motion and Tessa wore your father down. Tried to convince him it would be wrong to speak the truth. He was a wreck by the time… by the time… I could never prove it, but I always thought someone tied him up, put the gun in his hand and forced him. Why else was there a rope on the floor by his feet? The rope was taken away, and after the inquest, the gun disappeared too. Tessa had it all these years.’ Sighing softly, Rose added, ‘In the end, I don’t know if he even wanted to pull the trigger or not. But he did it.’

Feeling a weakness in her knees, Lottie sat back on the bed and studied her hands. She had no words left to utter. When she looked up, she was alone.

‘I don’t know who I am,’ she whispered to the rectangle of light shining through the gap left by the open door. ‘Who am I?’