All the wood in the treehouse was warped. It’d groaned with the wind as he’d ascended the ladder, and now it groaned under his feet as he stood above the open hatch.

The interior wasn’t much to write home about. It was a small, square space, sparsely furnished, unless you counted all the dust mites.

Thomas pressed his cardigan sleeve to his nose, trying to stop the stench of mould settling in his nostrils and picked his way across the floorboards with care. The last thing he needed was to break an ankle.

After a minute of prodding and poking with the toes of his shoes, he made it to the window, flinging it open and taking deep gulps of air.

The motion startled several birds into flight, crows, by the looks of them. Fleeing from the bare boughs of the treehouse’s branches.

Thomas tried not to read into that.

Instead, he preoccupied himself with finding the toolkit his Aunt had mentioned, casting aside dusty blankets and cushions that stank of mothballs. Until he found the photo.

It’s frame was cracked, much like the treehouse, but the picture was clear enough. A spiral staircase, twisted round itself like DNA, that Thomas recognised as the one from the library was the backdrop. In front of the stairs, arms curled lovingly round each other and looking a decade younger than he remembered, were Jacob and Louisa Balham. His parents.

Enough time passed with Thomas staring at the photo that the light in the treehouse dimmed as the sun slipped to the horizon. He hadn’t even realised he was crying until the first tear hit the glass.

Wiping his face in his sleeve, he slid the photo from its frame and pocketed it, resuming his search for the toolkit.

One rusty lockbox later, and Thomas was descending the ladder. Sunset had bruised the sky purple, stained the skyline blue so that when he walked back up to the house it was almost like he was moving underwater.