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Life was going well until I got a call from Mrs Sullivan in the post office the day after I closed my house sale on 28th November.

‘Sally,’ she said, still shouting at me. She had never understood that I wasn’t hard of hearing. ‘The sorting office in Athlone had a letter addressed to Mary Norton at your old address. They’ve left it with me. Shall I drop it in to you?’

I put on my coat immediately and went around the corner to the post office. I took the letter from Mrs Sullivan with a pair of tweezers. ‘It might be evidence,’ I said. ‘The guards might want your fingerprints.’

She was amused. ‘Oh, Sally, you are funny. What are we playing at now? CSI Carricksheedy?’ She hooted with laughter.

When she realized I wasn’t smiling, she started to explain, shouting, ‘It’s a television programme, Sally, about forensics.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Sullivan, I know the concept.’

I left without smiling. The handwriting was familiar at once. It was ‘S’. It had an Irish stamp on it. When I got home, I rang Mark. It was 4 p.m., but he said he’d come straight over.

We looked at the envelope together. It was thicker than the others. I wondered if we should call the police first, but neither of us could wait. Mark had brought some surgical gloves with him from the factory. He opened the envelope carefully and I pulled the letter out. A small box came out with the letter as well as another larger box, which was labelled DNA ACTIVATION KIT.

Dear Mary,

My birth name is Peter Geary, and although my birth was never registered in Ireland, or anywhere, I was born there. My mother was Denise Norton and my father was Conor Geary. I am your brother. I was born seven years before you in a house in Killiney. Our father took me away from Denise as soon as I was toilet-trained. I was not allowed to see her, or you, even though my bedroom was next door to yours in an annexe our father built.

I was allowed to enter the other parts of the house as I got older. You and our mother were kept under lock and key. In the early years, I never saw another human except for on the pages of his newspapers and, later, on television.

I have no recollection of meeting my mother until I was seven years old, when I spent a terrifying weekend in that room with her. I realize now that she had been terribly mistreated and brutalized. She was heavily pregnant with you and was frightening to me. I won’t go into detail here as I don’t want to upset you. I know that you were born the day after I left the room and I didn’t see you again, except once, on the day my father escaped, taking me with him. Do you remember? You must have been five years old.

I do not understand why nobody was looking for me. I know you and I were separated, but I believe that my mother missed me, at least until you were born. Did she simply forget about me?

In London, our father arranged to get us fake passports and we moved to New Zealand. My life there has been difficult. I was homeschooled and, even after that, he continued to keep me isolated for a long time. The good news for both of us is that he died many years ago. He is no longer a threat to either of us.