There were many other wrongs he would have liked to correct. How he had treated Caroline, for instance. But still, if he could go back, and if he wasn’t able to change the greatest crime he’d committed, he would choose this one. His mother would turn to him and ask for help with the laundry and he would say, “Yes.”

But you were a child, he told himself. Don’t magnify all of your actions.

Still, though. He had exposed his mother to his father’s anger. The argument between his parents had been one that he had provoked, and it had taken place only a few days before the murders. It was possible that he had done real damage. And in any case, regardless of whether the row had contributed to what happened next, it remained true that one of Tom’s final acts towards his mother had been to betray her.

He dozed off eventually and when he woke again it was the middle of the night and he was cold from lying on top of the covers. Sitting up stiffly, he found there was one clear question in his head, as though it was being spoken by somebody else.

Where was Nicky?

His mother was once again standing by the sink, and he was saying, No, no, he would not help with the laundry, and then he was going off to play with Angus. But where was Nicky?

This was a loose thread he had always ignored, so dwarfed was it by everything that had happened afterwards. Now, however, he pulled at it. Nicky had not been asked to help put away the laundry. That fact had never played much of a part in the story, although surely it must have fed his own sense of injustice at the time and strengthened his refusal to help. Had Nicky been out of the house? Carefully, as if picking gravel from a wound, Tom tried to take the memory apart. Both his parents were at home, so neither of them had taken Nicky out. Angus was waiting down the road for Tommy, so Nicky was not off somewhere with him.

It was the strangest thing.

Realizing he had to pee, Tom dragged himself up and groped his way along the corridor to the bathroom. How much longer would Malcolm let him stay? he thought. It had been eleven days already. Tom was certain his uncle didn’t want him here, however Malcolm might try (not very successfully) to pretend. Nobody wanted him here. The thought came to him without self-pity.

When he’d finished and washed his hands, he stared into the mirror above the sink for a while. He didn’t feel much sense of recognition when he looked at his own face, and he wondered if this was normal. Worse than the dissociation were the times when he saw only his father’s face looking back at him.