My wife left me with our six daughters for a wealthy man. Fifteen years later she texted to say she’d be at our oldest daughter’s wedding — and my daughter told me to let her come, because she had already prepared a special welcome for her.

He did not shout at her. I want to be fair to the man; he behaved better in that barn than anyone had a right to expect. He looked at the box for a long moment, and then he looked at her, and he said, “There are two hundred of them.”

And she said, “Roland—”

And he said, “You told me you couldn’t have children.”

Then he walked out to the car park and he did not come back in, and about ten minutes later somebody’s headlights went down the county road.

Sabina turned on Junia. She got about six words into something before my daughter cut her off.

Junia said — and she did not raise her voice either, and I do not know where in the world she got that from — “You didn’t come here for me. You came so your husband would see you being a mother. So I made sure he saw it.”