‘No.’

‘Are you going to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I heard what happened last night. It sounded bad…’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you going to talk to her about it?’

At some point, he’d have to. That was the adult thing to do. There would be no hiding from it now, not when they were so far gone in the relationship that he couldn’t get cold feet and back out. No, he’d be required to stick at it for some time before any of that could happen.

‘I’m sure you’ll work it out,’ Kasia said, though he could tell from her voice that she didn’t mean it.

‘Her birthday’s in a couple of weeks,’ he said.

‘What… what’s that got to do with anything?’

He shrugged, staring out of the window. ‘I don’t know.’ Then his eyes fell on the dashboard. It was 8:35. ‘You’d better go. Don’t want another late note from Miss Holloway.’

Her eyes flashed with fear.

‘You saw that?’

‘It’s fine,’ he told her. ‘I saw it on your report card the other day – snooping through your bag, sorry – but didn’t say anything. So on this one you get a free pass. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

Kasia responded by rubbing a circle onto her chest. Tomek replied in the same way.

A second later, she was out of the car, walking up the street, wearing a backpack that was two sizes too big for her, and texting on her phone. Tomek turned to look at the rest of the kids doing the same. Clones, carbon copies of one another: heads down, earphones in, their entire world encapsulated in a black mirror rather than the world around them. Even those in groups were listening to music with one earphone in while pretending to communicate in the real world.

Tomek was so focused on the kids from Kasia’s school that he almost missed his phone vibrating. He fished inside his pocket and pulled out the device. It was his dad, Perry.

‘Everything all right, Dad?’ he asked as he placed the call on loudspeaker and pulled away from the side of the road.

‘Everything’s fine.’

‘You sure? Unlike you to be calling this early. Aren’t you usually still struggling to get out of bed at this time?’

‘You mock, but this arthritis malarkey’s gonna catch up with you one day, son. So don’t get too cocky. Besides, I’ve already made breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, hoovered the downstairs, fixed the tap in the bathroom, and put a load of washing in the machine. And now your mother’s got me in the garage because the lamp on her bedside table’s broken and it needs immediate fixing otherwise she won’t be able to read her books in bed tonight.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Don’t get married. It’s never-ending.’

Tomek chuckled as he focused on turning at a junction.

‘How’s everyone?’ Perry continued. ‘Kasia? Work?’

Tomek gave him the SparkNotes version of the night before, keeping the details about the letter from Nathan, and the discussion with his brother, away from his dad.

‘Ouch,’ Perry replied.

‘Yeah.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘No. It’s okay.’

‘Okay. All right, well…’

That was all that needed to be said on the matter. They’d handled it like men, without actually saying anything at all, and now it was time to move on. Fortunately, there was something else on Perry’s mind.

‘While I’ve got you,’ he said, lowering his voice so that it was little more than a whisper. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask.’

The sound of tools and metal clanging rattled in the background as he spoke, presumably to stop his mum from overhearing.

‘Right…’ Tomek answered.

‘It’s about Nathan.’

Tomek hesitated. Had Dawid spoken to him?

‘Okay…’

‘When you went to see him the other month, you said that he told you he’d acted alone.’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

As Perry struggled to get the words out, the sound of tools moving gradually increased.

‘And I wondered… I wondered if, you know, if you believed him?’

‘If I believed him?’

‘Yeah. Do you think there’s still this second person out there or do you… do you think he really acted alone?’

Tomek wondered where his dad was going with this, and what had made him bring it up after several weeks. Tomek had told his family about his visit to Nathan Burrows at HMP Wakefield a few weeks before, and his dad hadn’t raised any concerns then. In fact, he’d sided with Tomek’s mother and finally, as a family, they’d agreed to let it go. After thirty years of constantly seeking closure, they’d decided that Nathan Burrows had acted alone, that nobody else had been with him, and that Tomek had imagined it. All that pressure, all the burdens had been lifted from their lives and they’d become closer. But now Perry had finally voiced his concerns, away from his mother’s listening ears.

‘What’s brought all this on, Dad?’ Tomek asked.

‘I was doing some thinking,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Just wondered whether you’ve changed your mind.’

‘I…’ Tomek hesitated. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what Perry was expecting him to say. He inhaled deeply, held it there, then let the air out of his lips slowly. ‘I don’t believe him,’ he said, unsure of himself. ‘I think… I think Charlie’s still out there, yes.’

‘And all that stuff the other week at dinner? That was for your mother’s benefit?’

Tomek mumbled, unable to answer.