The music had started. The man was singing. His voice filled my whole brain. My head was blowing up bigger and bigger, like a balloon. I jammed my fingers into my mouth.

'Are you okay?' asked Mr Hardy.

'Not really.'

He sat down and waited.

'It never goes away,' I said. My voice sounded like Ben's when he's whining. 'It keeps coming back. This frickin' music.'

'What's the music like?'

'Singing. A man, singing.'

'Your father?'

'No. This man's got a really deep growling voice. I get this freaky feeling . . . I feel scared to death.'

Mr Hardy looked again at what I'd written. 'When you wrote these memories of your dad, did other ones come into your head?'

'I dunno.'

'I think there might be others.'

Dad things were all swirling around me, feelings and smells and pictures of things we did together. I didn't want to let them in. My eyes were stinging. 'No,' I said.

'None at all?'

'Only that he was my hero.'

'In what way was he your hero?'

'Because he was!' I searched for the words. 'He smashed everything in our lives. He never even bothered to come and see us. Not once. He didn't even phone. Why didn't he come? Didn't he care?'

I felt tears welling up in my eyes and sliding down my cheeks.

I was furious with myself for crying.

Mr Hardy passed me a tissue out of his big bag. 'Did you ask to see him?'

'We never say his name. Nobody does. We pretend he doesn't exist.'

'Do you think he was allowed to contact you, Scarlet? He was arrested by the police. Maybe he couldn't speak to you. Maybe he wasn't able to send letters from prison, either. Maybe your grandparents felt it would be best.'

I thought about this, with my nose shoved into the tissue. It was as though he'd turned a sand picture upside down. Suddenly, everything looked different. Not better, not worse. Just different. Perhaps Dad wasn't allowed to get in touch. Hannah and Gramps might have thought that because we never mentioned him, we wanted to forget about him.

'He used to look after us,' I said quietly. 'I remember him cooking our supper, bangers and mash. He did that a lot.' I could see Ben in a blue highchair, and Theo and me at the table. I felt happy. Dad had his sleeves rolled up and he was clowning around, pretending to dodge because the sausages were spitting at him. Ben was just a blob with a squashed nose, dressed in a little red hoodie. Dad made faces at him, so he shrieked and banged his tray with a spoon.

'You say you hate your father,' said Mr Hardy.

'Mm.'

'But I'm getting a sense that it's a bit more complicated than that.'

'No, it isn't complicated at all. I don't want to see him again, ever in my life, and neither do my brothers. He'll just have to deal with it.'

Mr Hardy started leafing through one of our photo albums. I didn't feel the subject was closed; I was sure he didn't either.

'Have you seen him?' I asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'And I'm planning to see him again very soon. Is there anything you'd like me to ask him?'

I had such a lot of questions. I was wondering whether Dad thought about me very often. I was wondering where he was living, what he was doing. I wanted to know what it was like in prison, whether it was terrible, whether he'd been raped. Some boys at my old shool told me men always get raped in the prison showers. These two boys were smirking, and they said my dad wouldn't even be able to walk properly when he came out, because he'd have been effed up his A-hole every day. I wanted to know whether Dad cried for Mum. I wanted to know why he'd waited outside my school. I wanted to know all these things, but I didn't ask any of them.

'Hannah and Gramps couldn't handle it if we saw him,' I said instead.

'What makes you think that?'

'It's obvious. Have you seen how old Gramps is?'

Mr Hardy smiled. 'In the end it's the judge's decision, Scarlet. You don't have to make a choice, and you don't have to worry about upsetting people. It's all down to the judge.'

I tried to imagine this stranger who had such massive power over my life. I pictured an ancient codger with a wig and robes banging a gavel. 'You'd better tell that judge from me: we won't go.'

'I like this one,' said Mr Hardy, pointing to a photo of me as Puck. 'When was it taken?'

We talked about the play. He was very ignorant about Shakespeare, but he seemed to want to know more-he wasn't doing what most adults do, putting on a fake interested voice which made me feel patronised. He asked me to describe my brothers, and that took me a while. I told him I was worried about Theo because he was wetting his bed again. I talked about how he'd attacked Ben on the way to school.

Mr Hardy asked how did I think he should meet them-should they come to his work, where he had a playroom, or should we all go out somewhere? He suggested maybe a park, but it was winter; and then I had a light bulb moment and came up with the brilliant idea of the Railway Museum.

'It's always a happy place,' I said, 'especially for Theo, who's a railway geek. He'll be less uptight there. Ben's completely off the planet, but if you take him to the platform cafe and buy him apple juice and a bowl of chips, he might sit still for five minutes.'

'Done,' said Mr Hardy. 'Thank you, Scarlet. And will you come, too?'

I sighed. 'I think I'd better. My brothers are a real handful.'

Scarlet struck me as an intelligent and articulate young woman who knows her own mind. She has strong loyalty to her grandparents and is painfully aware of their anguish at the loss of Zoe. She gave me a clear message for her father: loosely translated, this was that he should leave the family alone. Initially she described memories of him that were violent and negative, clearly arising from the last moments in which she saw him; however, I sensed ambivalence. At one stage she wept as she described him cooking for herself and her siblings. She appeared relieved when I reassured her that any decision about contact was out of her hands.

At Scarlet's suggestion, I spent a morning with all three children at the National Railway Museum. This outing proved to be a lively and stimulating event.

Oh my God, what a frickin' disaster. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.

Mr Hardy walked with us to the museum. He'd asked Hannah and Gramps to explain to the boys that our dad wanted to see us, and he was there to help the wise people at the court decide what was best. Hannah looked as though she was sucking on a lemon when she said the words 'your father'.

God knows how, but Mr Hardy persuaded her and Gramps to stay at home, which was a very good job because they would have had heart attacks at the way the boys behaved. I don't know what had got into Theo, but he was a monster from start to finish. At first he wouldn't speak to Mr Hardy at all. He dawdled along behind, looking like he hated everything and everyone. I tried kicking him to get him to be polite but he just kicked me back, really hard. He only started talking when we arrived at the Flying Scotsman. It turned out that Mr Hardy was a railway enthusiast too, and he acted like a little kid when it came to old steam engines. Theo didn't smile, but he did at least liven up a bit and even pointed out a few things Mr Hardy hadn't noticed.

All Ben wanted to do was play with wooden models, so we all did that for a while. He kept making the trains crash into each other. I was scared he was going to break them. In the end, Mr Hardy suggested it was time for lunch at the cafe. Once we'd found a table I went to the toilet, and I was just coming back when I saw Ben grab two empty glasses the last people had left on the table, and smash them together. And-you've guessed it-there was glass and mess all over the place. I tried to sweep it up into a serviette, but by the time a waitress arrived with a cloth and a bucket I was so embarrassed that I went to sit at another table. Mr Hardy was really nice about it. He delivered my toasted sandwich to my table and said it was okay if I wanted a bit of time to myself.

I couldn't hear their conversation, but the three of them seemed to get on better for a while. I'd almost decided it was safe to join them when all hell broke loose-Theo was yelling and pushing Ben onto the floor, and Ben lay there hamming it up like a football player, pretending his leg was broken. When I ran over to help, Theo stuck his middle finger up at me as though he really hated me and snarled, 'You shut your fat mouth, Scarlet.'

Suddenly, it all got on top of me. I very nearly cried. I asked Mr Hardy if we could please go home, and he agreed. As we reached Faith Lane, I took him out of earshot of the boys.

'This is all because of Dad turning up again,' I said. 'All this nastiness. We were doing okay before.'

Mr Hardy looked at me. 'Were you?'

'Yes,' I said firmly. 'We were. Tell him, will you? Tell him to leave us alone.'

Theo impresses as a sensitive boy with a keen mind. It was clear that he understood the reason for my visit, and at first he appeared unwilling to engage with me. However, he shares my boyhood interest in locomotives and we were able to spend some time exploring the exhibits.

Ben is a chatty four-year-old with a delightful sense of fun and mischief. He did not appear unduly concerned at being brought on an outing, and I suspect was reassured by the presence of Scarlet, who was most attentive towards him. He enjoyed using wooden model engines in an interactive area of the museum. I noted that a recurrent theme was the enactment of a violent assault by one engine on the other. A third engine then arrived to drag the miscreant to prison. I was struck by this role play, which appeared markedly joyless and angry.

I decided not to raise the subject of their father directly with the boys. For some time, both were happy to chat about their lives and interests. However, Theo abruptly told me that 'My friend's dad wants to bring back the death penalty for murderers.'

I asked him how he felt about this, and he shrugged. He looked extremely uncomfortable. A little later he returned to the subject again: 'My friend's dad says murderers don't deserve to live. They're costing the taxpayer good money. He says they should all fry in boiling oil.' I sensed that this image disturbed Theo very deeply.

Ben did not partake in the discussion and appeared more interested in ensuring that I had ordered chips. However shortly afterwards he began to play out the same violent scene as before, using two glasses. Unfortunately he smashed them together with such force that one broke.

One further incident is of note. Towards the end of our visit, Theo was telling me about his ambition to be a professional footballer. Ben interrupted, describing a football talent scout who had seen Theo playing. I am aware that Joseph Scott recently spoke to the boys in a park. Despite Theo's obvious agitation, Ben refused to stop talking about this man. In the end, Theo angrily pushed Ben onto the floor. I suspect that Theo is well acquainted with the identity of the stranger in the park. It seems likely that he enjoyed the interaction, and is struggling with conflicting feelings. I would hazard a guess that Ben, too, has some inkling that this stranger was significant.

Scarlet behaved with maturity throughout the day. She seemed painfully embarrassed by her brothers at times, which I regard as typical for her age group. She also took charge of them in an adult way, for example trying to clear up the mess when Ben broke a glass and running to comfort him when he was hurt. I felt that she took this responsibility more seriously than I would expect of a girl of her age. She is perhaps mothering them in the absence of her own mother.

My observations bore out Nanette Marsden's view that all three have flourished under the care of their grandparents, but that they are conflicted in their feelings about their father. I fully accept the grandparents' account that Joseph Scott's application has upset and destabilised the entire family. It is to all parties' credit that they have the best interests of the children at heart.

The decision regarding interim contact is finely balanced. I have not found it easy to reach a clear recommendation.

Nineteen.

Joseph In late January, winter gripped the moors. Snow spilled from heavy skies, roads became blocked by drifts several feet deep, and Brandsmoor was cut off from the world.

Joseph spent hours with a shovel each day, digging routes for himself to get to the farmyard and to enable him and Abigail to reach her stock. The sheep had been brought down for the winter, but tending them and the other animals was a daily polar expedition. Their fourth day of imprisonment found him and his two companions-Abigail and Rosie-playing Scrabble at Abigail's kitchen table. Joseph had been up and feeding animals since dawn, and Rosie had dug her way out of her van and come to help him. She'd appeared smiling by the tractor, smothered under a woollen shawl, her nose and cheeks crimson in the sub-zero temperatures. Once the job was done they left their boots in the hall, making ice-melt puddles, and sought refuge by Abigail's range.

The women seemed cheerful about their enforced seclusion, but Joseph was a caged lion. At nine o'clock he asked to use Abigail's museum piece of a telephone. He knew Richard O'Brien's number by heart.

'I'm on my way to court,' said the solicitor. He sounded harassed.

'Any news?'

'Not yet. He's going to write an interim report.'

'How long until we know?'

'Piece of string, Joseph. Piece of string.'

Abigail was winning the game. She always won. Her killer instinct at Scrabble was a delight to Joseph, who knew for a fact that she'd left school at fifteen. By contrast, Rosie seemed to have mild dyslexia, couldn't spell to save her life and always came last. It never dampened her spirits.

Joseph had just picked up the worst set of tiles in history-AAOOIIQ-when the phone jarred their peace.

'Bloomin' thing never stops,' grumbled Abigail. She hobbled over to the cabinet. 'Like Paddington Station in here.'

Rosie cupped her hand around her mouth. 'She means someone rang last year. A wrong number.'

'I heard your cheek, young woman,' chided Abigail, lifting the receiver. 'Button your lip . . . Yes?' She stood, listening. Joseph could faintly hear a male voice.

'Yes,' said Abigail.

More words.

'Yes,' said Abigail.

She carefully laid the receiver on the cabinet, returned to the table, and sat down. 'Does Joseph Scott live here?'

Joseph leaped across the room as though she'd jabbed him with a cattle prod. 'Hello? . . . Oh, hello, Lester. Sorry to keep you waiting . . . No, we're snowed in, I'm afraid . . .'

He listened for a long moment, then slapped his palm onto the cabinet. 'That's fantastic! Thank you! Wednesday? I'll get there if I have to ski from here to York. Thank you, thank you . . . Well, I know you're only doing your job, but all the same. Okay then! See you on Wednesday.'

He rang off and paused, gazing out of the deep windows. He felt stunned. Clouds were breaking apart; sun and shadow raced across the bleak hillside opposite.

'Zoologist!' crowed Abigail, from behind him. 'Triple word score. Eighteen times three, plus . . .'

'I knew a zoologist once,' said Rosie wistfully. 'He was chronically unemployed. He wanted to marry me.'

'And you turned him down?' Joseph heard Abigail sucking on her front teeth, a sure sign of disapproval. 'Daft lass! Hang on-where's my dictionary?'

Dimly, Joseph was aware that Abigail had left the room.

Rosie's steps crossed the kitchen towards him. 'Seen a vision?' she asked quietly.

'Maybe.'

'I saw a vision, once.'

Joseph raised one eyebrow. 'What exactly had you been smoking?'

She didn't answer, and he stole a glance at her profile. Her cheeks were rounded, faintly blushing under the wild hair. 'What was it?' he persisted. 'A ghost?'