‘Hence the note and the settled bills.’

He nodded eagerly, still the child at Christmas that every adult yearned to be. ‘I was so excited. She sent me to pay the bread bill, and it seemed significant, like she’d trusted me with something that was symbolic of a new start. I remember running home that evening and thinking to myself that I wouldn’t want to be anyone else in the world. That was a change for me. Normally, I’d have been ready to swap places with anybody, and just for an hour or two I understood what it was to be happy.’ His face darkened and Penrose waited impatiently for him to continue, sensing that the narrative wasn’t going to be the one he had most feared. ‘I heard my ma screaming and shouting halfway down the street, and as I got closer, I heard Alex, too. She was crying, and I couldn’t get upstairs fast enough. All I could think about was how Maisie and Emily could possibly be sleeping so soundly with such a racket coming from the next room. Then I saw that they weren’t asleep.’ Perhaps it was because Penrose had seen the aftermath of the tragedy for himself, but the pictures were so clear that he felt as if he were there at the boy’s shoulder, watching the scene unfold. ‘When I went next door, Tommy 268and Alfie were already dead and Ma and Alex were fighting over the knife. She had it at Alex’s throat and Alex was trying to push it away. If I’d have been a couple of minutes later, that would have been it.’

‘So you did rescue your sister,’ he said, resisting the temptation to ask why you would save a life, only to take it years later.

‘Somehow I pulled her away. She was hysterical, they both were, and I was so frightened but I managed to get in between them. Ma just kept coming, though. She tried to get at Alex again, and I knew she was going to kill her.’

He looked at Penrose, pleading with him to finish the story and say the words he couldn’t bring himself to speak. ‘Did you kill your mother, Jack?’

Naylor nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to. I just wanted her to stop, so I grabbed her hand and pushed her against the wall. The next thing I knew, the knife was in her neck and everything was quiet. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. It all happened so quickly.’

‘But it was self-defence,’ Penrose insisted, trying to reconcile the remorse that was so evident in Naylor’s face with the ruthlessness it must have taken to kill Richard Hartley. ‘People would have understood. I would have understood.’

‘Really?’ He shook his head, unconvinced. ‘As it was, some people thought I’d killed all of them. You were thinking that just now, when you brought me in here. I could see it in your face – you didn’t want to believe it, but you did.’