What follows is a transcription from a tape that Harry Vilbert made at the time. His confidence might have been shot to ribbons but he was still sufficiently alert to the possibility of personal advantage to be bothered with fiddling with a tape recorder while I was comatose. I think he tried to interest the BBC in what he had recorded and I can only suppose they turned him down because they were sick of him: he had badgered them for years about using action-replays to prosecute referees in the courts for criminally wrongful decisions. Later on, when he was sweet on Camilla, he made her a present of the tape – I think to put her off me. That was how I came to get hold of it; and I reproduce it now interspersed with my own recollections of what took place. Throughout my ordeal – I don’t think that is too strong a word – I retained a clear sense of who and where I was, and I never for a moment became unaware of Harry. It is possible that I was not as free then as I am now to speculate upon his motives and passions, but I am not going to begrudge myself the luxury of mingling present thought with past experience. I don’t respect verisimilitude enough, let alone Harry Vilbert, to make the sacrifice. That will teach him to have tried to put Camilla off me.

[5]

‘Are you there, Thomas?’ Harry’s tape begins. ‘It’s me, Harry. I want you to go back to when you were a boy with your mother and those that loved you. I want you to remember a day when you were happy and secure. You have an excellent memory. You can remember everything. What are you doing?’

‘I am sitting by the fire.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Eight.’

I ought to say that as I play all this back once more I am struck by the atrociousness of my Dorset accent; it is pure afternoon theatre West Country, that’s to say it could come from anywhere from South Oxford to the Scilly Isles. But then that was about as accurate a description as I could have given of where Dorset was. The other thing I detect is the great relief in Harry Vilbert’s voice. He was clearly very pleased with himself for finding Tommy young and happy and by the fire, in the full flush of cheerful, innocent boyhood. However, he was still cautious; he wasn’t counting his chickens yet.

‘Are you alone, Tommy?’

‘No.’

‘Who’s with you?’

‘My sister … and my mother.’

‘What is your sister doing?’

‘Playing.’

‘And your mother?’

‘Rocking.’