I think I already knew. Looking back, it’s hard to say for sure. But as I bent down and checked the hole for its other secrets, I understood. It was chock-full of a boy’s private things. The magazines that I pulled out of the space in the wall weren’t as filthy as the sketchbook. The pages and pages of naked ladies weren’t enough to turn my stomach. They were pretty girls with their tops off. Stockings and suspenders. Big smiles and lots of make-up. The pictures that James had done in his secret jotter were the ones that turned my stomach. It was all just so ugly. Naked ladies made up to look like animals; made up to look like birds. Naked forms with feathers stuck into their skin or bull horns emerging from their foreheads. Women stripped of skin clutching flowers to their bloodied chests. Each one had been signed in my son’s neat hand.

My legs went a bit and I had to reach out for the counter. These were James’s sketches. I recognized the style. They all had the same kind of feeling to them and they all made my skin rise like turkey flesh as the room span around me. This was his secret place; his hidey hole. He’d stolen the tape that I held in my hand from his brother’s own treasure trove inside the old tree. The one he’d stolen from the collections box inside the church. He’d taken it – and in doing so he’d ensured that the only story that the dead man wanted Fairfax to hear, was the one he never did.

With my hands shaking and my bones seizing up, I went to the cold living room and found Fairfax’s tape recorder. I’d placed it in the bottom drawer of the dresser, hidden beneath some old papers.

I wish I’d had somebody to talk to as I placed the reel in the device. I wanted to mutter something to make it all seem less important. But I was alone, listening to Christmas carols and the sounds of my home.

I pressed the ‘play’ button like Cordelia had. Closed my eyes as the voice, slightly accented, emerged from the tape recorder. I remember every bloody word.