He shakes his head. “Not to him. But maybe . . .” But he stops, suddenly unsure of himself for the first time.

“What?” I take a step closer to him and put the folder down on top of another box.

“But maybe I did. Maybe that’s why I dinnae have a dad. He’s before. Or later.”

“Callum . . .” I feel helpless as he envelops my middle in the tightest of hugs. It catches me unawares every time, how incredibly free he is with his physical affection. My father was tactile; I remember that. He hugged and he tickled, and he would tuck me into his side to watch television. It wasn’t in my mother’s nature to hug.

“It’s okay,” Callum says seriously, lifting his head to look up my torso to my face. “I think we’re meant to be here now. I dinnae think we can slip through.”

•   •   •

After that I bustle us both down from the claustrophobic confines of the attic into the kitchen under the auspices of it being biscuit time, grateful for the cheer of the yellow walls, however artificial. I’m utterly at a loss as to how to address these beliefs of Callum’s—and anyway, is it really my place to? Fiona and Callum’s theories around the Manse and time seem tantamount to a religion for them, and I wouldn’t dare confront someone who, say, believed in creationism rather than evolution. I’m grateful, too, for the single-minded focus of young children when food is mentioned—all difficult topics of conversation have been instantly cast aside in favor of intense deliberating over exactly which biscuits to choose.

Somehow without conscious decision I’ve brought down the bulging cardboard folder with me. When Callum has wolfed two custard creams, a Jammie Dodger and a glass of apple juice, we leaf through it together. There are several A5 jotters among the loose-leaf papers and maps and photos, and each of them has a familiar phrase written on the front, in blue ink: Love makes a furnace of the soul. Carrie’s words about the inscription, about my mother, float back to me: The man she was living with was obsessed by it. I am holding the evidence of his obsession.

“Look, this is here. It’s the Manse,” says Callum excitedly. I look up from the jotter in my hand to the sepia photograph he’s holding out. It’s recognizably the front of the Manse, though the oak tree is quite a bit smaller. “Was it taken a very long time ago?”

“I don’t know when.” I take it from him and turn it over, hoping for a date, or something else in a precise neat handwriting. I can almost see it, a line in faded ink, the way the letters loop and slope, the evenness of the script, but there’s nothing there at all. “Perhaps a photography expert could tell.”