This was the worst thing: that somebody like her could love him, and still he would find, when it came to it, that he could not feel as he ought to.

He tried again. “I can’t do it. I thought I could, but . . .” Children of his own. He should have known it would be impossible. How stupid to have allowed himself to imagine otherwise, and to have allowed her to imagine.

“So what is it then?” she said, and he could hear in her voice that she was looking for a way to hurt him. “You’re worried they’ll inherit—what? Some kind of family disorder?”

“No, it isn’t that. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You should be more worried they’ll inherit your dress sense.”

Taken by surprise, Tom laughed unhappily. She’d never been easy to predict.

“Tom,” Caroline said. “That place. Why go back there? Won’t it make things worse?”

“I have to get away,” he said.

“Well, go to Brighton for the weekend like a normal person. Go to fucking Magaluf if you really need a break. Don’t go back to that godforsaken island.”

“I need to,” he said, not sure if this was true. He wasn’t sure of anything, except for the terrible heaviness in his body.

“I’m worried,” Caroline said, “that you won’t be O.K. You don’t seem O.K.”

Tom shook his head. He’d never been O.K.

Sometimes Tom wondered if there were other people in the world who carried a burden like his, and if so, how it felt to them, how they could bear it. Some days he wished he was dead. Survival had never felt like a blessing.

It wasn’t that he wished he had died at the time. Even now, the terror in his stomach felt like a living thing, making him want to run to the bathroom, to throw up, to shit himself, he wasn’t sure. His instinct, whenever he thought of it now, whenever he dreamed of it, remained the same: save your life. Animals are programmed to preserve themselves. As a child or an adult, Tom did not wish to be murdered. He did not wish to have his body blown apart by the explosion of lead-shot cartridges in his chest, his legs, his head. He did not want his blood and his brains all over the walls.