Lightness flashed from her mouth to her eyes. Then she seemed to collect herself; she looked away from him: at the wall, at the ceiling. 'Just tell me why you killed my mother. Then I'll go.'

Behind her, Lester Hardy quietly closed the door. He moved to a small table by the window, picked up a biro and appeared to immerse himself in reading notes.

Joseph fiddled with the toy tractor. He made the wheels run over the palm of one hand. 'Things had been . . .'

'You aren't going to blame Mum, are you? God. That's pathetic.'

'No.'

'Sounds like you are.'

'No. I lost my temper. I never . . . I was an idiot. I was an idiot.'

'Pathetic,' Scarlet said again, but without emphasis. She seemed uncertain of what to do next, twining her wrists around one another and shifting her weight from left foot to right. 'Us three kids just want you to piss off.'

'I wrote to you after I saw you in York,' said Joseph, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. He'd already shown it to Lester, who'd turned a blind eye to this evidence that Joseph had breached his licence conditions. 'I had no way of getting it to you. Here. You could sit down while you read it.'

Scarlet folded her arms, lips pressed together.

'Please?' Joseph was holding out the thin sheet. It shivered in his hand.

With a snort, she snatched it up and plonked herself unceremoniously into a small vinyl armchair. She suddenly looked much younger, jumbled inelegantly with one leg tucked under her.

Joseph watched apprehensively as she unfolded the note. 'I've rewritten it twenty times,' he said. 'Wrote it again this morning. It still doesn't say what I want it to say.'

She frowned at the page, narrowing her eyes. The more he recalled the words he'd written, the more hopelessly inadequate he knew them to be.

Scarlet, I want to say sorry. I want to say sorry for everything. I want to say that I have never stopped despising myself for what happened, and I never will. I took your mother from you and you must hate me for that. It was complicated, what was going on. She was very unwell and did some things that hurt me very much. I know that sounds as though I am trying to make excuses, but I'm really not. I deserved to get sent to prison. All the same, I don't believe that I am a bad person through and through. I think I can still be your father, even though I can never undo the terrible harm I did.

I have thought about you and the boys every day for the last three years. I have thought about you every hour of every day. Please know that I have never ever stopped loving you and your brothers with every last ounce of me.

With buckets of love,

Dad

P.S. I like your new hairstyle. It looks very striking. For a moment there I didn't recognise you. Sorry again. It was stupid of me to say your mum's name, I wasn't thinking. I miss the lion's mane, of course, but I am probably way behind the times.

A car horn sounded out in the street, followed by a shout. Scarlet seemed to read the letter many times over. She said nothing, though once or twice she shook her head. Lester sat peaceably writing in a notebook, and gave no sign that he was aware of what was happening.

Joseph took a step back and sank onto the brown sofa, the tractor still gripped in one hand. This was his little girl, a person he'd known since the second she was born; so impossibly precious that he would give his life for her without hesitation. Yet over the past three years she had become a new person. It wasn't just that she looked like a young woman; it was that she'd suffered. She'd suffered without him, and because of him. He didn't know her anymore.

She was folding the letter.

'Lovely,' she murmured sarcastically, sliding it into the pocket of her jeans.

'I mean every word, Scarlet.'

'You can't turn back time! You can't make it not have happened just by saying sorry. You'll always be the one who . . .' She covered her face with a hand.

Joseph crossed the carpet and crouched beside her chair. 'Look, I know saying sorry isn't enough, but it's all I've got.'

For a moment she seemed to freeze. Then her hand lashed out and caught him on the chest. 'Piss off!' It was both a snarl and a sob. 'We hate you. Piss right off!'

'No.' Joseph felt his own throat tighten. 'I can't, you see.'

She pushed him away. Pressing her hands over her ears, she curled up in the chair. Every muscle seemed taut, as though her entire body was charged. Joseph waited for a moment, then tentatively stretched out a hand and laid it on her head. The blue beret was falling off, and he carefully replaced it.

'We've got so much to catch up on,' he said. 'I don't know what you've been doing all these years.'

She shrugged, so he knew she was listening. Finally, hesitantly, he began to talk. She didn't interrupt. He told her about prison, about the photographs he'd kept of her and the boys. She uncurled a little as he described Akash, and how he'd bored his cellmate with constant bragging about the three best children in the universe. He talked about living in the caravan, and Abigail, and the snowplough he'd followed up the valley yesterday, and how he'd spent a night in the youth hostel in York to be sure of being on time that morning.

When he ran out of words, Scarlet lifted her face. 'I remember a dog called Jessy.' Her voice was flat, and she wasn't looking at him-but at least she had spoken.

Joseph smiled. 'Jessy's still there-an old lady now. She likes to come and snooze by the gas fire in my caravan. She pretends to hunt for rabbits but they laugh and maypole dance around her.'

'Is the tabby cat still there?'

'Digby? Fat as butter! He climbs on my knee and he's so massive he hangs down on each side. Abigail took him to the vet and they had to give him a dog's worm pill because he weighed so much.'

Her mouth curved. The movement was brief, swiftly smothered and utterly glorious. 'You were in our park.'

'I was.'

'You spoke to the boys.'

'I did.'

She nodded to herself. 'You and Theo had a talk about football.'

'Yes.'

'He knew it was you.'

'Did he?'

'Of course he did, you idiot! He's been in a real state ever since. Ben told on you.'

'I know. I got into hot water.'

'Serves you right.'

'Scarlet . . . I'd missed you all, I was so looking forward to seeing you. It wasn't such a crime, was it, to try and catch a glimpse?'

A roll of her emerald eyes, and a world-weary sigh.

'Ben's quite a young man nowadays,' persisted Joseph.

'Drives me up the wall.'

'I bet he worships you, though. What year are you in at school?'

She swivelled around to face him, though she kept her knees drawn up in front of her. 'This is just small talk. I can't believe you really want to know how I'm doing at school.'

'I want to know everything! Must be . . . no, don't tell me, hang on . . . you're year nine. Of course you are. Doing history?'

'Mm-hm.'

'Who's your teacher?'

By a very lucky chance, it turned out that the teacher was a girl Joseph himself had taught, ten years previously. Scarlet was so impressed that she actually deigned to look at him. He felt the thud as his heart flipped over.

'You're kidding!' she cried. 'Miss Four-eyes Faraday? But she's as old as the hills!'

'Well, I'm even older.'

'What was she like?'

'Um . . .' Joseph dredged his memory for anecdotes about a pupil he barely remembered. 'Never got her essays handed in on time, if I remember right.'

'Ha! She goes ballistic if mine's even a nanosecond late.'

Joseph felt emboldened. 'I once saw her outside the school gates, passionately kissing a boy with a dreadlocks and a skateboard.'

'Oh my God, I don't believe this. Miss Faraday was playing tonsil hockey outside school? A guy with dreads? Can't wait to tell Vienna!'

Perhaps unwittingly, Scarlet had made space on the edge of her armchair. Joseph squeezed onto it. 'Vienna?' he asked.

'A friend. A best friend. Sort of.' The next moment, Joseph was being taken on a tour of Vienna's opulent lifestyle-the fur bedspread and the home cinema and the predilection for chocolate that was starting to show on her bum. He listened and smiled, captivated by his daughter. She was so funny, so wry, so vital. She was beyond anything he had imagined.

Children's voices floated from somewhere in the building. A door swung shut. Footsteps, running and thuds.

Scarlet looked at her watch. 'Oops. That'll be the boys.'

'Already? Help!' said Joseph, making an agonised face. 'Will you help me, Scarlet?'

This time it was unmistakeable. A smile: reluctant, wary, cynical; but a smile all the same. It teased the corners of her eyes and flickered unbidden around her mouth. 'You don't need help, Dad. What you need is earplugs.'

Dad. Joseph felt something warm drape itself around him. She'd called him Dad. For now, it was enough.

Twenty-one.

Scarlet So. I finally saw my dad. I finally got to tell him to piss off. But he didn't piss off.

On our way out to Gramps' car after the visit, I warned Ben and Theo to keep their traps shut.

'Why have I got to keep my trap shut?' asked Ben.

'Look, just don't talk about Dad,' I said. 'You'll only upset Hannah and Gramps if they think we've had a nice time. Make out it wasn't a big deal, okay? Make out it was boring.'

For once they listened to me. When we got home, Hannah had lunch ready. She served up crumbed fish and oven fries, which she knows is the way to our hearts. It was a school day but she gave us the rest of the afternoon off. She was as fussy as a mother hen, ruffled and clucking and peering anxiously at us all with beady eyes. I knew she was busting to know how it had gone. I also knew she didn't like to ask.

'Well now,' she began, when she couldn't bear the suspense any longer. 'Um, you saw your . . . um, father?' Her teeth were actually gritted.

I kept eating. 'Yup.'

Theo yawned noisily, which may have been overacting. Ben clapped both his hands across his mouth and blinked up at her, which was definitely overacting.

'How was it?' she asked me.

'Non-event. Do we have any ketchup?'

'Yeah,' chanted Theo dutifully. 'Bo-ring.'

'I've got my trap shut,' said Ben.

Gramps stood up. 'I'm unaccountably weary,' he said to Hannah. 'Might go and catch forty winks.'

He did look tired. He was sagging across the back of his chair like washing on a line. That wasn't his usual style.

'Thanks for all the fetching and carrying,' I said. 'Are you okay, Gramps?'

He saluted me like a naval officer on the bridge. 'Never better, ma'am,' he replied smartly. I saluted back.

Soon after he'd gone, I said I had homework to do and sneaked up to my room. I needed space in my head, because I had too much to think about. I felt churned up. Once I'd got the wedge under the door I sat down on the bed, looking at Mum's collection of costume dolls. I imagined her sitting on this same bed at my age. I tried to let my real self sink away, leaving me free to merge with Mum as I had merged with the character of Puck. I tried to be her.

It made me feel wrong. I felt as though I was losing myself. So I stopped doing that.

Instead, I dragged my memories box out from under the bed and unpacked it. I arranged everything in a circle, with a space for myself in the middle. I held the photo of me and her at the caravan in both hands. For a long time I sat cross-legged, staring at us. I tried to imagine the smoothness of her cheek pressed next to mine, the smell of sandalwood and the singing brightness of her voice. I tried to bring her back. I strained every muscle in my memory to bring her back to me.

And yet, try as I might, I could hardly remember her at all now.

'Mum,' I said quietly. 'Are you there?'