“I know.” Malcolm understood this better than he wished: that the truth was what we felt, not what we knew. He forced himself to look it in the face, the mistake he and Heather had made. They had tried to distract Tommy in the aftermath, tried to take his mind off it, to help him move on. How ill equipped they had been to deal with a traumatized child. They had got everything wrong. If they had only talked about it properly, if they had only made space for Tommy to say the words, he wouldn’t have been forced to carry this guilt alone for twenty-three years. Malcolm would never forgive himself.

“But whether Nicky came into the room or not, you didn’t betray him,” he said to Tommy. “Whatever happened, you were just a child. Eight years old. Think of that.”

Tommy shook his head. He came to a stop again and furiously wiped the tears from his face. “He died while I hid. They all died while I hid. That part will always be true.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Malcolm said. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Tommy. You only survived.”

Tommy didn’t answer. At last they turned together and made for home.

Back at the cottage, Tommy went straight up to his room. Malcolm heard the door close and decided to leave him be. There was no further reassurance he could give that Tommy would accept. Malcolm couldn’t tell him exactly what had happened that appalling night. But whatever the truth was, nobody on earth would blame Tommy—nobody except Tommy himself.

Malcolm was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper when Tommy reappeared a few hours later. He heard him on the stairs and just had time to ready himself before Tommy came into the room.

“Hi,” Tommy said briefly, then went straight to the kettle and busied himself making tea. “Would you like some?” he said.

“Yes please.”

“Wind’s up again.”

“Aye.”

Malcolm wondered if they were really going to revert to small talk, then he thought, No. Not now. He wouldn’t allow it. He said, “How are you feeling?”

“O.K.,” Tommy said. He glanced over his shoulder at Malcolm, then added, “Well. Not great.”

“No.”

Tommy returned to his task, fetching the box of tea bags and two mugs from the cupboard.

Malcolm looked for the right thing to say. There didn’t seem to be a right thing. “I’m glad you told me,” he said.

Tommy paused on his way to the fridge. “Yeah. Me too. But . . . ”

“But what?”

“I wish I knew what happened. How can I bear not knowing? I’ve been going over and over it in my head, and I just can’t get the facts straight. I don’t trust myself.”

“What happened was that your father killed the others, and you lived. It doesn’t matter how.”

“It does.”