‘I won’t keep you too long, Father.’ Harry started across the room. ‘It’s something you said last night – I just want to put your mind at rest.’

Silas made no answer. Instead, he kept his head down, seeming not to have heard.

‘Father?’ Gingerly, Harry came nearer.

When he was close enough to see his father’s face, his heart froze. Silas was looking down, his forehead touching the work still clutched in his hands. His eyes were wide open, almost as though he was inspecting the sewing he had just completed. But there was no life in those old eyes, and for a terrible moment Harry found he couldn’t move.

He stood there, looking down on that kindly old man. His heart felt like a stone inside his chest as he struggled to believe what his eyes told him to be the truth. His father, the man who had been his mentor for all his life, was gone from this world. And the world was suddenly a lonely place.

With a great searing gasp, Harry took the old man in his strong arms and rocked him back and forth, shocked to find that the frail figure was still warm to the touch. ‘No!’ Over and over, he cried out, ‘Oh, dear God, no!’ The grief took hold of him and tore him to shreds. He learned pain of a kind he had never known before. In that moment, when he held his lifeless father in his arms, willing him back but knowing it was futile, he realised that nothing in the world mattered but what he had lost.

He did not hear the door open. He did not see Alice come into the room, brought there by his awful cries. When she saw what had happened, she fell to her knees beside Harry.

For a long time, neither of them spoke, each suffering in their own way. Then, after a while, Alice stood up. ‘He’s gone,’ she said softly. ‘Leave him, Harry. You can’t bring him back.’

When he merely stared at her, she said, ‘I’ll have to get the doctor, but you can see there is nothing he can do.’ Reading his mind, she told him, ‘I haven’t got the courage to tell Mother. You will have to do that.’ She looked once more at the face of her father, a man she had never been close to. Then she left them there, father and son, together for the last time.

Harry spoke to his father as if he could hear. ‘I needed you to know how much I love you,’ he murmured, stroking that dear face. ‘I wanted to say how wrong you were in thinking you had not been a good father.’ Pausing, he choked back his grief. ‘I would not have wanted any other but you.’

There was something else too. ‘You said your greatest regret was that I had not taken up your trade. I mean to put that right. I promise you now, Father, I’ll carry on your name. I won’t let all your good work come to nothing.’ It was the least he could do. ‘Besides, it will be a fitting penance for my sins.’