‘What if I’d taken the boxes to the charity shop?’

Mark shrugs. ‘I didn’t think. It was just a temporary thing. I was going to get it out again and then … stuff happened, life carried on and I forgot. I just forgot, Claire.’

I give him a long look. He was incredibly stressed a few months before Billy disappeared but Mark being Mark he refused to discuss it with me. Maybe finding the photo album was one step too far. ‘But why would he do that? Why would he black you out of the photos and write those things?’

He unknits his fingers and gazes down at his hands, as though the answer lies in his cupped palms. ‘Why did he stop wanting to go to football with me? Why did he start walking out of the room whenever I walked in? I don’t …’ Mark’s voice cracks and, as he coughs to try and regain it, a well of sadness opens up within me. ‘I keep telling myself that it’s one of those things that happen between fathers and sons. I clashed with my dad when I was in my teens. I called him far worse things than “wanker” and “tosser” – never to his face though – and I told myself that would never happen with my sons.’

‘It didn’t happen with Jake.’

‘No, it didn’t happen with Jake. That’s why I couldn’t understand it. Imagine, Claire. Imagine if you opened up that album and saw what I saw but it was you he’d blacked out. Imagine if it was you Billy hated?’

Was it the Sunday lunch? Was that what sparked such anger in our younger son? When Mark tore the two boys apart, bellowing that they were an embarrassment to the family? Or was it when Mr Edwards called us in to the school to tell us about the graffiti incident and Mark said to Billy, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just toe the line and do what you’re fucking told?’ Mr Edwards was visibly shocked. He said he didn’t think swearing and accusations were a helpful way forward, but I could see the effect Mark’s words had on Billy. When he was younger he had such a strong sense of justice. Once, when Jake came home from school with a black eye, Billy was so upset that he burst into tears. Mark was horrified and kept telling him to pull himself together, repeating over and over again that only girls cried and he needed to toughen up if he wanted to be a man. Billy looked up into his daddy’s face and fought to control his wobbling chin, swallowing back the tears that shook his little body.

‘Good boy,’ Mark said when he finally quietened. ‘Proud of you.’