He’d done that as a child too, Malcolm recalled. But it was a habit for many people. “You know where everything is,” he said, unsure whether this was a question or a statement of fact.

“Yes.”

“Well. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Tommy said. He paused a moment longer, then got himself a glass of water and left the room.

Alone at the kitchen table, Malcolm breathed out a slow sigh. He was glad Tommy was turning in early, avoiding the awkwardness of their carrying out their bedtime routines at the same time, stepping politely past each other on the narrow landing on their way to the bathroom, taking it in turns to brush their teeth, each clad in pyjamas.

He went to put the kettle on and longed again for Heather. She would have known what to do; she would have made all this feel easier. Malcolm allowed himself to admit, just in this moment, just while he was alone, that he did not want Tommy in his house. He knew—he would be the first to say it—how many ways he’d failed that boy. How many ways they all had. But still, he did not want Tommy here, this young man he did not know but who looked so eerily like John. He did not want to talk to him and he did not want to remember. Most of all, he didn’t want to acknowledge that by the time Tommy had left the island, Malcolm had started to feel afraid of him, however much he’d battled the feeling, however much he’d hated himself for it, reminding himself that Tommy was just a child, and such a damaged one at that. But there had been violence in Tommy by then. He had already started to hurt people.

Nevertheless, Heather would have been desperately glad Tommy had come back, and so Malcolm tried to see it this way too. Heather had always been so much better, so much kinder and braver, than everybody else. It must have been a terrible blow to Tommy, Malcolm realized, to return here and find Heather gone. Of course it had not been Malcolm he had come to see.

But besides Tommy’s cousin in Canada, they were each other’s only living family now. That counted for something. And perhaps family still meant something to Tommy as well, even now, even after everything that had happened. What else might have brought him back here, twenty years later, all this way across the sea? Blood runs thicker than water. The phrase came unbidden into Malcolm’s head. It was not an expression he liked. He had spent many years trying not to think about blood.

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