‘He’s with Sister Conceptua. He’s fine. He carried you all the way here,’ she smiled.

‘Tamara.’ I heard another voice, and Mum came rushing over to me and fell to her knees. She looked different. She was dressed, for one thing. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail and her face was thinner, but it was her eyes…despite being bloodshot and swollen as if she’d been crying, her eyes had life back in them again. ‘Are you okay?’

I couldn’t believe she was out of bed I just kept staring at her, studying her, waiting for her to go into a trance again. She leaned forward and kissed me hard on the forehead, so much it almost hurt. She ran her hands through my hair, kissing me again and telling me she was sorry.

‘Ouch,’ I winced as she grabbed my wound.

‘Oh, love, I’m sorry.’ She let go immediately and moved back to examine me. She looked concerned. ‘Weseley said he found you in a bedroom. There was a man, with scarring…’

‘He didn’t hit me.’ I jumped to his defence immediately though I didn’t really know why. ‘Rosaleen showed up. She was so angry. She kept spouting all of these lies about you and about Dad. I ran at her to tell her to stop and she pushed me…’ I placed my hand on my cut. ‘Is it bad?’

‘It won’t scar. Tell me about the man.’ Mum’s voice trembled.

‘They were having a fight. She called him Laurie,’ I suddenly remembered.

Sister Ignatius held on to the couch tightly as though the floor were swirling beneath her. Mum looked at her, her jaw tightened, and then she looked back at me. ‘So it’s true. Arthur was telling the truth.’

‘But it’s not possible,’ Sister Ignatius whispered. ‘We buried him, Jennifer. He died in the fire.’

‘He didn’t die, Sister. I saw him. I saw his bedroom. He had photographs. Hundreds and hundreds of photographs all over the walls.’

‘He loved taking photographs,’ she said, quietly as though thinking aloud.

‘They were all of me.’ I said, looking from one to the other. ‘Tell me about him. Who is he?’

‘Photographs? Weseley didn’t mention that,’ Sister Ignatius said, shaking, her face pale.

‘He didn’t see, but I saw everything. My whole life was on the walls.’ The words caught in my throat but I kept going. ‘The day I was born, the christening,’ I looked at her then and an anger came flooding through me. ‘I saw you.’

‘Oh.’ Her wrinkled bony fingers went flying to her mouth. ‘Oh, Tamara.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you both lie?’

‘I so wanted to tell you,’ Sister Ignatius jumped in. ‘I told you I’d never lie, that you could ask me anything, but you never asked. I waited and waited. I didn’t think it was my place, but I should have. I realise that now.’

‘We shouldn’t have let you find out this way,’ Mum said, her voice trembling.

‘Well, neither of you had the guts to do what Rosaleen did. She told me.’ I pushed Mum’s hand away and turned my face away from her. ‘She told me some ridiculous story about Dad arriving here with Granddad, wanting to buy the place to develop it into a spa. She said he met Mum, and he met me.’ I looked at Mum then, waiting for her to tell me it was all lies.

She was silent.

‘Tell me it’s not true.’ My eyes filled up and my voice trembled. I was trying to be strong but I couldn’t. It was all too much. Sister Ignatius blessed herself. I could tell she was shaken.

‘Tell me he’s my dad.’

Mum started to cry and then stopped again, took a deep breath and found strength from somewhere. When she spoke her voice was firm and deeper. ‘Okay listen to me, Tamara. You have to believe that we didn’t tell you this because we believed it was the right thing to do all those years ago, and George…’ she wavered, ‘George loved you so much, with all of his heart, just like you were his own…’

I yelped at that, couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

‘He didn’t want me to tell you. We fought about it all the time. But it’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.’ Tears gushed down her cheeks and though I wanted to feel nothing, to stare her down and show her how she’d hurt me, I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel nothing. My world had shifted so viciously, I was spinning out of orbit.

Sister Ignatius stood up and placed a hand on Mum’s head as she ferociously tried to stop her tears, wipe her cheeks and comfort me instead. I couldn’t look at Mum so my eyes followed Sister Ignatius as she then crossed to the other side of the room. She opened a cupboard and brought something back over to me.

‘Here. I’ve been trying to give this to you for some time now,’ she said, her eyes filled. It was a wrapped present.

‘Sister, I’m really not in the mood for birthday presents right now, what with my Mum telling me she’s lied to me my whole entire life,’ I spoke with venom and Mum pursed her lips and her forehead creased. She nodded slowly, accepting whatever it was I threw at her. I wanted to shout at her more then. I wanted to use that opportunity to say all the bad things in the world that I’ve ever felt about her, just like I used to do when fighting with Dad but I stopped myself. Consequences. Repercussions. The diary had taught me that.

‘Open it,’ Sister Ignatius said sternly.

I ripped off the paper. It was a box. Inside the box was a rolled-up scroll. I looked to her for answers but she was kneeled beside me, her hands clasped and her head dipped as though in prayer.

I unrolled the scroll. It was a certificate of baptism.

This Certificate of Baptism is to certify that Tamara Kilsaney was born on the 24th day of July, 1991, in Kilsaney Castle, County Meath and was Presented to the World with Love by Her mother, Jennifer Byrne, and her father, Laurence Kilsaney On this day 1st January 1992

I stared at the page, reading it over and over, hoping my eyes had deceived me. I didn’t know where to begin.

‘Well, first things first. They got the date wrong.’ I tried to sound confident but I sounded pathetic and I knew it. This was something I couldn’t beat with sarcasm.

‘I’m sorry, Tamara,’ Sister Ignatius said again.

‘So that’s why you kept saying I was seventeen.’ I thought back over all our conversations. ‘But if this was right, then I’m eighteen today…Marcus.’ I looked up at her. ‘You were going to let him go to gaol?’

‘What?’ Mum looked from one to the other. ‘Who’s Marcus?’

‘None of your business,’ I snapped. ‘I might tell you in twenty years.’

‘Tamara, please,’ she pleaded.

‘He could have gone to gaol,’ I said angrily to Sister Ignatius.

Sister Ignatius shook her head wildly. ‘No. I asked Rosaleen over and over to tell you. If not tell you, to tell the garda? She kept insisting he’d be fine. But I stepped forward. I told the garda, Tamara. I went to Dublin to Garda Fitzgibbon and gave him this certificate myself. There was a breaking-and-entering charge too, but bearing in mind the circumstances, it’s all been dropped.’

‘What’s been dropped? What happened?’ my Mum asked, looking at Sister Ignatius with concern.

‘God, Tamara, if you don’t know that by now, then you’ve far more problems than I thought. Listen, I wish you good luck with everything but…don’t call me again.’

That had been our last conversation. He’d known then why the charges had been dropped. How messed up was I that I didn’t even know my own age? I had been so relieved for Marcus that my anger subsided momentarily. Then that faded and I was fuming again. My head pounding, I held my hand to my wound. They had been feeding me lies, dropping a trail of breadcrumbs in their path which I had been forced to follow in order to learn the truth for myself.

‘So let me get this straight. Rosaleen wasn’t lying. Laurie is my father. The freak…with the photographs?’ I shouted then. ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me? Why did everybody lie? Why did you all let me think I lost my dad?’

‘Oh, Tamara, George was your father. He loved you more than anything in the world. He raised you as his own. He-’