“But no way of surviving would feel all right to you, Tommy,” Malcolm said gently. “Isn’t that where the problem is?”

Tommy didn’t reply. He finished making the tea and brought their mugs over to the table. Neither of them spoke for a while. Malcolm sipped his tea and looked across at Tommy, who was staring out of the window at the darkening sky.

“I wish we could have told you when you were eight that it wasn’t your fault,” he said.

Tommy shrugged. “I wouldn’t have listened.”

“We should have moved. After it happened. Heather suggested it, and I said no. But I was wrong. We should have taken you away from here.”

“It would have come with us,” Tommy said.

Malcolm again searched for the words he needed to help Tommy and couldn’t find them. No apology for the past would be sufficient now. At last he said, “I do know what guilt feels like, Tommy.”

“You’ve no reason to feel guilty.”

“I should have protected you,” Malcolm said. “He was my brother.”

“You didn’t know.”

“Because I never tried to.” He stopped, trying to arrange his thoughts. “There was something . . . off there. I should have seen it. It was there to see.”

Tommy shook his head. “You need to let that go.”

“Maybe. But it’s hard, isn’t it?”

Tommy rubbed his eyes wearily. “Yeah.” After a pause, he said, “Did you read all of the fiscal’s report?”

“He took me through it, over in Oban,” Malcolm said. “And I still have the letter that summarizes it all. If you’d like to see it.”

“No. I don’t think so.” Tommy waited a moment. “What does it say?”

“Just the facts of it. How they were killed and where. The results of the post-mortems. What the police concluded, and so on. That your father killed your mum and Beth and Nicky, and then himself. It doesn’t say why, though it does talk a bit about the money problems.”

“That’s not a reason,” Tommy said.

“I know.”

Tommy pushed his cooling tea away from him. “There is no reason really. Except for him. He was the reason.”

“Yes.”

“I keep thinking of how calm he was, that whole evening. Before it happened. We had chicken for tea.” Tommy stopped. “But who knows if even that memory’s real? Only I’m sure I remember him being calm. There was no warning, or none that seemed obvious at the time. I think he must have planned it all out very carefully. Way in advance.”

Malcolm nodded. That was the kind of man John was.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

“I hid,” Tommy repeated at last. “I hid while they were killed.”

“Aye,” Malcolm said. “And thank God you did.”

6