Your mother was convinced Camilla would take you away and make you choose between her and us.

We let other people handle things.

There were papers.

We signed what the lawyers said to sign.”

I asked whether he was telling me he hadn’t read documents concerning a newborn child.

“I relied on professionals,” he said.

I thought of the way Chloe relied on me to check that her bathwater wasn’t too hot.

Wealth had given my father a thousand options for avoiding responsibility, and he’d mistaken them for innocence.