‘What did she mean?’

He shrugged. ‘That you’d given her a sense of purpose, I think. Do you remember? After you found us, we had to go back inside the house to wait for Hartley to come and collect us, and that policeman’s case was at the bottom of the stairs. You caught us playing with one of the cameras, and we thought you were going to tell us off, but you sat us both down and showed us how it worked. You’ll have noticed from my efforts this morning that Alex listened better than I did.’ His fingers moved restlessly, absentmindedly fastening and unfastening one of the buttons on his jacket. ‘You showed her how to take her first photograph, and you promised to 266bring it to her when it was developed. I didn’t believe you, but you kept your word – that time, at least.’ Naylor reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tattered image of himself as a little boy, and the forced smile in the picture seemed out of place against the pale face and haunted eyes. ‘Alex treasured this. It killed her when you stopped coming to see us.’

‘It wasn’t my choice,’ Penrose said, compelled to explain himself by the guilt he had always felt for making promises that he could never keep.

‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t, but Alex hoped for a while that you’d take us in.’

‘I could never have done that.’

‘It doesn’t stop kids wishing, though, does it? We were split up not long after that. Alex was luckier than I was. The Fieldings were a nice family. Ordinary, but kind. They treated her well, and worked hard to give her what she wanted.’ It was what he didn’t say about his own fate that brought tears to Penrose’s eyes, that and the idea of two young, grieving children nursing secret hopes that a stranger would save them just because he had been kind. The regret was so sudden and so powerful that he had to look away, but not before Naylor had noticed. ‘Do you remember what I asked you when you found us?’

‘Yes,’ Penrose said immediately, the sadness of the question seared permanently into his memories of that day. ‘You asked me why you weren’t special enough to die with the others.’ The boy had been sent on an errand that fateful Christmas Eve, and Penrose could easily understand why the question would always haunt him: why, on the day that his mother chose to remove herself and everything she loved from the 267world, had he been sent away? ‘I couldn’t give you an answer then,’ he admitted, ‘and I can’t now.’

‘It’s all right. I have my answer.’

‘Go on.’

‘It was going to be a special Christmas for us,’ Naylor said. ‘The vicar had found my mother a position – did he ever tell you that?’ Penrose nodded. ‘It was something to do with his wife and one of her charities. We were moving away, leaving that terrible place behind and starting again, outside London.’