“Yes. Quite a lot of them. For quite a lot of money.”

“Really.” He reflects. “Maybe she got better at it,” he says generously.

I laugh out loud and tousle his hair, and think that I will tell Pete and Carrie about this. It will tickle them both.

Callum moves to a different area of the room to explore. “Who is M. Cal . . . Cal-der?” he asks, reading from a label on one of the boxes, and stumbling over the pronunciation.

“Call-der,” I correct him. “My father.” The box he’s reading from is the one that was under the photo envelope. I haven’t got to it yet. I pull off the lid, expecting more photos and albums, but instead the box is full of a bulging cardboard folder, ripped at one end.

“Where is he?” asks Callum.

“Who?” I lift the folder out to leaf through the contents.

“Your dad.”

“I don’t know. He disappeared when I was seven.”

“Disappeared.” He digests this for a moment. “I dinnae have a dad, neither.” I glance up from the folder. “Maybe your dad went into before. Or later.”

“I don’t . . . What do you mean?”

“Like the bird. Maybe he slipped through.”

“Through . . . time?” I venture.

He nods, pleased I’ve caught on. “Cos it’s funny here. I cannae tell anyone at school. They’d think I was mental—the teachers would, anyway. They already think I’m thick because of the reading.” I’m so relieved to hear that he’s keeping Fiona’s nonsense under wraps at school that I’m rather slow in gearing up to reassure him on the reading, but he surprises me by suddenly smiling. “But I’m the best at football, so my friends dinnae care if I cannae read well.” He looks across at me. “Anyway, you can see the bird, so you ken it’s funny here.”

“Well, I can see the bird,” I say helplessly. It’s all I’m prepared to admit.

“I bet Carrie cannae.” He takes my silence as agreement. “She wasnae born here, like us.”

“I was born in town at the big hospital, not in the actual Manse.”

“But you were here as a bairn.”

“Yes.”

“I was born actually here.” He looks around thoughtfully, as if he can see through the walls of the attic. “I dinnae ken which room, though.”

I stare at him. “Wait, I thought it was your mum who was born here.”

He nods. “And me too.”

“What? How did that happen?” Can he be right? Could it really be the case that both Fiona and her son were born in the grounds of the Manse?

His brow furrows. “I dinnae ken, exactly. But Mum says that’s how we know about time being funny here. Things slip through.”

“Is that . . . is that what you think happened with your dad?”