I sat in the church with my sketchbook and drew the window. Today was two years since Trudy had died, two years since Mr Tom had saved me and two and a half years since Zach had died. Yeah it wasn’t a great day for me. All I could think about was Trudy dying, I kept wondering if I could have saved her, kept feeling guilty because I was alive on this beautiful summer’s day and she, wasn’t.

Everything I looked at reminded me of her, the window would make me think about how much she would have loved the bright colours, milk would remind me of feeding her by hand, rope would remind me of her being tied up looking cold, sick, dead.

The door opened behind me and I turned to see who it was, there stood a man with brown hair, brown eyes and pale skin. There’s nothing unusual about that but, I recognised him from somewhere, he reminded me of someone, or something. Suddenly I had a flash back and I knew who he was, no, surely not.

The man spoke first “William, do you know who I am? I’m back and I can take you away, we can face the cruel world together.” He smiled, a full smile but something just wasn’t right.

“But you’re dead, you died a week after I was born, you drove Mum mad. You killed her.” I turned and started to run but his cry was low and urgent, it seemed to say everything in one word.

“No.” I turned round and stopped in my tracks. “William I left because your Mother was mad, every time I did something she didn’t like she’d hurt you. I couldn’t stand you being hurt so I thought,” he sighed, “If I left she’d stop, clearly she didn’t. I only just heard about her death.”

I stared at him, I believed every word of what he said because it all seemed right but, I just needed to check one thing, just in case.

“Dad?”