But perhaps Katrina had a hardness in her, too. No good making her out to be a saint, because nobody was. She had absorbed so much from other people, who poured out their secrets to her (“Thank you for listening to me,” Malcolm would hear them say to her down by the harbour, or on the road outside the school); but Katrina offered so little of herself in return. Was this selflessness, as you might assume, or was it miserliness? Later, Malcolm thought it might have been self-preservation.

How much of this could he say to Tommy, who was still waiting patiently for an answer?

“Your mother,” Malcolm began, “was very kind. She had time for everyone.” Poor Katrina, he thought, reduced to these colourless phrases, as though she’d been as bland as Heather had once believed. Malcolm knew he had to do better. He said, “I know she must have been unhappy, but she never showed it. We knew so little.” Here he was again, trying to defend himself. He changed tack. “She adored you children. She . . .” He’d been about to say, She would have died for you, and stopped himself just in time. “She would have done anything for you,” he amended. “You three were her whole life.”

Tommy had turned to face him and was listening closely, his head slightly on one side. When Malcolm stopped, he said, “That’s how she made it feel to us, too. I suppose that’s what good parents do—make you feel like you really matter.”

Malcolm was quiet, thinking of his own mother.

“My father didn’t like her to talk to other people too much,” Tommy said.

Malcolm considered this. Another thing he should have seen at the time. Had seen, but hadn’t acknowledged properly, hadn’t seen in the right way. He remembered John hurrying Katrina away after church, saying they had to be getting the lunch on. He remembered the closed look on Katrina’s face when her husband was beside her, how much quieter her voice and her laugh became. Or maybe he was misremembering.

“I think your father had a lot of problems,” he said. “Most people wouldn’t have guessed. But I always knew he had . . . anger. A lot of anger. I just didn’t realize—’

“No, I know that,” Tommy said. “I was upset last night, that’s all.”

How is it, Malcolm thought, that we can both see and not see what’s in front of our faces? He had known something wasn’t right in that marriage. He had always felt it, even if he’d never articulated it. He knew John and Katrina were not like him and Heather. But it wasn’t as though John had treated Katrina like their own father had treated their mother—no shouting or hitting so far as Malcolm had been aware. He hadn’t realized there were other kinds of danger.