‘He told you he didn’t have a son because I was no longer any use to him,’ he says, staring at the floor. ‘But the truth is I ceased to exist a long time ago. I stopped being his son the day he decided to replace me with Angus.’

‘The boy in the book?’ I say, trying not to think of his hands gripping my arms. Every sane part of me is yelling ‘get out’, but my feet are fixed to the floor.

‘Yes,’ he says, looking up at me. ‘Angus, the hero of Holly Maze House. You see, my father based that boy on me. And he got the idea of the ghosts and the gravestones and the bird from my life. I had lost someone I loved dearly. Mrs Perkins was her name. She was our next-door neighbour. Her husband gave me that glass bird when she died and when we went to visit her grave I told her that I would never forget her, that I would think of her always and that if she ever needed to contact me she could do so through the bird. It would be our messenger. It was kids’ talk. I was only six years old and trying to make sense of things. But he was there the whole time, good old Dad, he was there listening, watching, jotting it down. Never actually talking to me, never helping me with it all. He didn’t even like Mrs Perkins, thought she was common. No, all he wanted was to write something that would make him rich and famous – he took my life and sold it for cash.’

He puts his head in his hands and as I stand looking at him I’m overcome with a mixture of pity and guilt. I had been one of the kids who fell for Geoffrey’s stories, who believed in them, and in doing so had helped make him rich and famous. And all the while he had been taking advantage of his own child.

‘Why did you bring me here?’ I beg, collapsing on to the floor as the adrenaline seeps out of me. ‘What do you want from me?’

He looks up and smiles.

‘You haven’t changed,’ he says, his voice softening. ‘You’re still the same nervous little girl I met at the party.’

‘The party?’

‘Surely you remember it? Go on, look out there.’ He gestures at the window.

‘But –’

‘Go on,’ he hisses.

Shakily, I stand up and go to the window where I can see the garden fully. I see the maze in the distance, the topiary animals, and then all of a sudden I’m back there, weaving in and out of groups of children dressed in seventeenth-century costume. There’s a tap on my shoulder. I look up and see a young boy with dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes.