Tom went to the right, to the first door. It opened easily, and he came into a room, bare except for a narrow single bed, a small wooden bedside table, a curtain flapping at the open window, and, sitting on the bed, his father.

‘Hello, old thing,’ said his father, looking up from a newspaper. He hadn’t shaved, so it must be a Saturday, and he was wearing an old grey shirt and some flannel trousers. His sleeves were rolled up. He folded the paper neatly, as he always did when Tom came to him to ask him for things, and put it aside on the bed.

‘I was just reading a fascinating piece about Iran.’

‘Daddy?’ Tom stepped forwards into the room. Suddenly he was nine again. He felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff. One push and he would be over.

‘What do you think we should do today, old thing? I thought we could go play some tennis? Then have some lunch in the park café? I know you like knickerbocker glories!’

‘That sounds … that sounds great, Daddy.’

‘Extra marshmallows, old chap!’

Tom stepped nearer to the bed. There was a hunger in his stomach and his mouth was dry. His father was here.

His father had never died, it was all a trick. This whole thing had been a trick, leading him here, to this house. His father was a Swinton, after all. This was his house as much as it was James’s.

‘Daddy! I’m here. I missed you.’

‘And after the park maybe we’ll go home and play some pool?’

Tom paused. His father wasn’t responding to him as if he hadn’t seen him for five years. Something else was going on. The sense of the vastness of the drop over the cliff engulfed him. Was there anything at the bottom, or was it just blackness?

‘What’s the matter, Tom? You look worried about something. Is it school?’

‘No, Daddy, it’s nothing. I’m just …’

‘Why don’t you come and give your old father a hug?’

Tom was about to do so, when he noticed his father’s eyes.

They were not quite blue, as his father’s had been. Instead they were grey, and misty wreaths passed over them. The whole figure seemed indeed to be slightly blurry at the edges, as if at any minute Tom might blow on him and send him away.

It was an apparition. A wraith.

Jack must have created it. Tom clenched his fists, his nails scoring into his palms.

‘I … you’re not my father.’

‘What are you saying, Tom?’ The apparition stood up. He noticed it was willowy now. He shouldn’t have been convinced by this thing.

‘You’re not my father!’