The sun had gone behind a cloud, one of those flighty ones that keeps changing shape, and the temperature dropped sharply. Both women shivered.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Camilla. ‘Why would she want to give her own baby away, if she was happily married?’
‘Oh, it gets worse,’ said Juliette. ‘D’you know what she did then? Got pregnant almost immediately. And then she kept that baby, another girl. Now why would she do that? Abandon me and then keep the next one? It’s evil.’
‘Is she still with your father?’
‘No, they split up years ago. Apparently it was all her who wanted to get rid of me, he couldn’t understand it either. I think he resented it in the end. That’s what my grandmother told me anyway.’
‘So, she had a new husband, you were born in wedlock, she had another child straight after … There must have been something really devastating, it doesn’t make sense otherwise.’
‘Maybe it was my ghastly hair,’ said Juliette, and as they tried to laugh they looked at each other and it came to them both at the exact same time, and Juliette couldn’t believe she hadn’t ever thought of it before.