“Tell me the truth. Right now.”

My father, Daniel Miller, came out onto the porch and understood everything without a word being said.

My mother went pale. She put a trembling hand against her chest.

“If Eleanor’s told you part of it,” she said quietly, “then you need to sit down, because there’s more you don’t know.”

She sat because her legs wouldn’t hold her. And through tears, she told me how twenty years ago, during a violent storm, a well-dressed woman had turned up at their door carrying a baby and begging for help.

The woman was Eleanor. The baby was me. She’d pleaded with them to take me somewhere a life like hers couldn’t reach me.