Now Paladin had been dismantled and boxed away, like he was ready to be thrown out but Father hadn’t quite got round to it.

‘You were only trying to protect us,’ I said. ‘And I’m grateful, Paladin. You didn’t deserve to end up like this, all broken and smashed. Not after all the years you saw.’ Then I thought back to Peregrine, and what that other robot had said to me. ‘I heard you might have been a hero, Paladin. But that they didn’t treat you right. I want to believe it. I do believe it. And I wish I could ask if you remember the Last Rains of Sestramor.’

Eventually it was more than I could stand. I gathered the parts and put them back into the boxes, more or less as I’d found them. I stuffed the shredded paper back around the globe and squeezed the flaps down on the boxes. But I was too tired to lift them back into the cupboard for now.

‘Arafura?’ my father asked, when he came to see me with more strong, honeyed tea. ‘Can you hear me? It’s been long enough since you returned. There’s something I need to tell you. It concerns you directly.’

‘What did you do with my things?’ I asked.

‘I kept the things we knew would mean the most to you,’ he said, as if I was expected to believe that. ‘The good things. Not the ones that would keep reminding you of the awful experience you’ve been through. The awful experience we’ve both been through.’ He cocked his head, looking at me with all the gentle affection a daughter could have asked for in a father, and it hurt that I wanted to escape from him and his house. ‘I can’t lose another thing so precious to me,’ he added.

‘A thing?’