And at last, Tommy brought it out. “Nicky came in,” he said. “Nicky came into the room. But I suppose you know that part too. The part you don’t know is that there was a pause before my father came in. He didn’t chase Nicky in there and kill him. Nicky came in alone. And he was looking around for somewhere to hide. And he was obviously in a panic and couldn’t think of anywhere. He wasn’t thinking straight. He must have seen my mother and Beth killed. And I was hiding in the wardrobe and I could see him through the slats and I didn’t say anything.” Now he’d started, the words were coming fast, almost running together. “I watched him looking for a place to hide and I kept quiet because I was so afraid, and then a moment later my father came in and shot Nicky dead. I watched him die. And if I’d said something, Nicky could have hidden with me in the wardrobe, and either we’d both have lived or we’d have died together.”

At some point during Tommy’s speech they had stopped walking, and now they stood motionless on the cliffs, looking out to sea. Malcolm opened his mouth to speak, but Tommy interrupted him. “I know what you’ll say. I know it all already. You’ll say that he would have found us both, that he wouldn’t have let us both live, he would have searched and found us. You’ll say Nicky would have died anyway, and the only difference would have been that I’d have died too. But I’d rather that. I always thought I was glad I survived, but now I’m certain it would have been better to have died with Nicky than to have survived all alone, knowing that I let him die, that I let him die to save my own life.”

Tommy came at last to a shaky stop. He rubbed his hands across his face and turned to look at Malcolm, as if readying himself for his uncle’s fury.

Malcolm waited a moment to make sure there was nothing else Tommy wanted to add, then he said softly, “It’s understandable, the way you acted, if that is what you did. You were a terrified child.” Pity swelled up so strongly in his chest and his throat that he found it difficult to speak. He put out his hand and took hold of Tommy’s arm. “It’s understandable,” he repeated. “But Tommy, I don’t think that can be right. Not exactly the way you remember it. Nicky didn’t die in the bedroom. He died on the landing. You couldn’t have seen it happen.”

He watched as his nephew frowned.

“No, Malcolm,” Tommy said. “I know what I saw.”