My fiancé vanished a week before our wedding and left me his ten children. Thirty years later a man I had never seen knocked on my door in the middle of Sunday lunch.

I had the adoption forms in my bag because I had collected them that week and because I was going to ask my mother a question about my father’s address history for one of the sections.

I got them out at the end of the table.

And my mother came round and took them out of my hands.

She squared them off on the  sideboard and put her hand flat on top of them.

And she said, to twenty-five people:

“Give me that. Put those forms down, Oona. They’re not yours and everyone in this room knows it. Sit down.”

There was a sound from round that table. Not laughter exactly. Agreement.

My aunt said something about how it was very good of me but there were limits.

Twenty-five people. My own father. My sister.