‘As if any of this is for me.’

‘Excuse me?’ He turned to Matilda, and this time he didn’t give a fuck about the look in her eyes.

‘Okay, I’m going to head upstairs and see where Theo’s got to,’ Sonja announced suddenly, and she walked off towards the stairs to the first floor.

‘I said, none of this is for me,’ Matilda repeated, preventing him from calling after Sonja to thank her for her tremendous support.

‘That’s interesting. Who’s it for, then?’

‘You. Who else?’ The answer came without a moment’s hesitation and, unlike him, she hadn’t raised her voice at all so far. ‘This is about you feeling guilty. Nothing else.’

He was about to object and launch into a rant. The thing was, though, that she was right. His thirteen-year-old daughter had hit the nail on the head. ‘Of course I feel guilty,’ he managed at length, and he clapped his hand to his cheek as though he’d just been slapped. ‘You were this close to dying because of me and my job.’ He illustrated his words with his thumb and forefinger. ‘How could I not feel guilty? If not for Theodor coming home just then with that gun… I don’t know. I can’t even—’ He broke off and realized he was crying.

A whole month had passed without him being able to squeeze out so much as one tear and now, suddenly, the tears were streaming down his face, even though the only thing he could feel was anger.

‘But you shouldn’t. None of what happened was your fault.’

‘Matilda, listen to me.’ He dried his tears as best he could. ‘If not for my investigation, none of this would have happened. Okay? If I hadn’t prioritized everything else over the most important thing in my—’

‘If, if, if,’ Matilda cut him off. ‘You can list as many ifs as you like. It doesn’t change anything. What happened, happened and no matter how badly you wish there was something you could do to change it, there isn’t anything.’

And so it came back to this. All her talk about Ouija boards and how nothing really meant anything because everything was predestined anyway. ‘And what does Mum say about all of this? Or have you not told her you’re convinced that she, Theo or I will die soon because you survived?’

‘Fabian, it’s not something I think. I know it,’ Matilda said with a serenity that indicated she had made her peace with it.

‘Matilda, you’re thirteen years old. That might feel really mature. But I’ve lived a bit longer than you, and—’

‘How can you be so sure of that?’