My ex-husband invited the former wife he believed was still childless and miserable to his family’s Christmas at their military estate. He never imagined I would arrive on a government tactical helicopter — with four eight-year-olds who had his face.

Because here is what I found out in a side room eleven minutes later, with a door shut, from a woman sitting down because she could not stand for long.

One final time was not a turn of phrase.

Eudora Vail has about four months.

She has had it since the August. She has told about six people in total and her son is one of them, and he has known since before he sent me that message.

That invitation was not Grayson’s idea.

She made him send it. She told me so herself and he has not denied it and he was never going to.

She dictated it to him in a back room in the November, sitting down, with a blanket over her knees.

He typed it out and sent it, and he put his own flavour on that last line — make sure you’re there — which is the only four words of that entire message that were ever his.