The Morning Friends Tapes

I was parked outside a 1970s semi-detached house in the Stratford Road area of Birmingham when Mum rang. The homeowner had just signed the work order for a faulty coaxial wall connection in the main bedroom, and I was entering the ticket number into the tablet mounted on my dashboard. It was Wednesday, 13 March 2024. The cold, flat West Midlands weather was bleak enough that I kept the engine running between jobs.

"Callum, love," she said without preamble. That was Mum. "I need a favour."

I finished logging the router model, a Virgin Media Super Hub 2. The system always demanded the model, though nobody ever seemed to check the records afterwards.

"What's up?"

"It's your nan's storage unit."

Her voice had that tight quality it acquired when she had already made a decision and merely needed me to agree. The unit was on an industrial estate near the M6 at Castle Bromwich, and the storage company had sent another notice. She could not keep paying month by month.

I pulled away from the kerb and checked the route to my next job. Solihull. Fifteen minutes if the lights cooperated.

"You want help clearing it out."

"Saturday morning would be best."

"Yeah, I can do that."

"Thank you." She sounded relieved, then quieter. "It's mostly furniture. It shouldn't take long."

That was it. She rang off before I could ask what we were meant to do with the furniture. Typical.

Mum did not like long telephone conversations. She never had. I did not think much about it for the rest of the week. Work stayed busy.

On Thursday I handled seven routine service visits: modems that needed resetting, loose connections, passwords people had forgotten. One woman in Sutton Coldfield had unplugged her router to hoover and could not remember which socket it had used. Friday was more of the same.

I clocked off at 16:30, picked up a Greggs baguette on the way home and watched half an hour of Aston Villa match highlights before falling asleep on the sofa.

On Saturday, 16 March 2024, I met Mum at the storage facility shortly before 09:00. It occupied a converted warehouse on an industrial estate near the M6 at Castle Bromwich, all corrugated metal and roller shutters painted industrial beige. The cold air clouded my breath.

Mum was already there, standing beside her Toyota Avensis with two empty Safestore packing boxes and a roll of parcel tape. She wore a navy cardigan over a cream blouse, dark jeans and the sensible flat shoes she always favoured. Her hair was pulled back.

"Morning," I said.

She nodded. "Unit 12. Down this row."

We walked past identical shutters numbered with peeling vinyl figures. She carried the key on a small ring with a faded Aston Villa key fob that had probably belonged to Nan Margaret Ward.

Mum opened the padlock, bent down and hauled up the shutter. Its metallic screech echoed along the row. The unit was perhaps ten feet by fifteen, dim and smelling of old carpet and stale air. A lamp without a shade stood just inside the entrance beside a stack of folding chairs. Farther back I could make out a chest of drawers, several boxes and a rolled-up rug standing in one corner.

"I'll take the chairs," Mum said. "You start on the boxes. Anything that looks like clothes or bedding can go to the charity shop."

"All right."

She picked up two chairs and carried them towards her car. I stepped inside and pulled the cord beneath the bare bulb overhead. Weak yellow light spread across the unit, dim but adequate. The nearest boxes were labelled in Nan's handwriting.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. KITCHEN MISC.

I opened the kitchen box and found old plastic containers, a hand mixer with a frayed cable and several wooden spoons. Nothing worth keeping. I pushed it aside and continued sorting.

Mum returned and took another load. We did not talk much. She was never conversational when concentrating on a task, and I had little to say. It felt like work, another job to finish.

I shifted the chest of drawers to make room, then began unstacking the boxes in the rear corner. That was when I saw it beneath the rolled rug, tucked against the back wall where the bulb's light barely reached. It was a white cardboard archive box with black edging and a removable lid. When I pulled it free, it was heavier than I expected.

I set it on the chest of drawers and lifted the lid.

VHS tapes. Perhaps twenty of them, packed upright in two rows. Most bore white WHSmith labels filled in with Nan's neat handwriting.

EASTER 1994. CALLUM'S SIXTH BIRTHDAY. SPRING 1996. CHRISTMAS EVE 1998. BOXING DAY 2000. ROYAL SHOW 2002.

The labels were careful and specific.

I remembered Nan filming everything: birthdays, Christmases, family outings and random weekends. She had owned one of those large VHS camcorders that had to be supported with both hands.

At the front of the box, however, sat a smaller group of six tapes with different labels. Instead of stickers, they had strips of masking tape marked in block capitals with black pen.

MORNING FRIENDS.

Every one of them bore the same two words.

I stared at the tapes. Something shifted in my chest. It was not recognition, exactly, but the echo of recognition. The title felt familiar in a way I could not place.

Not comfortably familiar. Something else.

I picked up one tape. Its plastic case was scuffed and cracked at one corner, and the masking tape had yellowed. There was no date on the front, only the programme title. I set it back, took out my mobile and rang Mum, switching to speaker.

She answered on the second ring. "What is it?"

"I found a box of tapes at the back. VHS. Most are labelled with family events and things. Nan's handwriting."

"All right."

Her voice was flat, waiting.

"But there's a stack with different labels. All the same. They say Morning Friends."

I kept my tone neutral, merely reporting what I had found.

"Do you know what that is?"

Silence for a beat. Then another.

"Probably some local children's programme," she said. Her words were clipped and careful. "There used to be all sorts of programmes on the Midlands community cable channels."

"Nan recorded them?"

"She recorded everything, Callum. You know that."

True enough, but something in her tone did not sit right. The answer had come too quickly and too dismissively.

"Do you want me to keep them?"

"No." Fast and definite. "Throw that stack away. You can bring the rest to my house if you like. I'll go through them later. But those ones... just get rid of them."

I looked down at the six identical labels.

"Callum?"

"Yeah. Got it."

"Good. I'm taking the chairs to the British Heart Foundation furniture and electrical donation centre. I'll be back in twenty minutes."

She rang off.

I stood there holding the phone. The unit was silent apart from the distant hum of traffic near the motorway. The archive box remained open before me, the Morning Friends tapes standing in their tidy row.

Mum had been clear. Throw them away.

But there had been something in the sharpness of her voice, in the speed of the answer.

I picked up one tape again and turned it over. The back was blank except for a handwritten Roman numeral in one corner: III.

I examined the others. I. II. IV. V. VI.

Exactly six, all numbered. Perhaps episodically, perhaps chronologically.

I returned the tape, replaced the lid and lifted the box. I glanced towards the open shutter, then carried it out to my van.

My work vehicle was parked two spaces from Mum's Avensis: a white Vauxhall Vivaro with the Virgin Media logo on its side and racks of equipment in the rear. I opened the back doors, shifted a coil of coaxial cable and set the archive box on the floor behind the passenger seat. I wedged it against the wall so it would not slide about.

I did not know why I was keeping it. Or perhaps I did. Mum had ordered me to discard it in precisely the tone that meant the subject was closed and questions were unwelcome.

I shut the doors and returned to the unit.

Mum came back forty minutes later. We finished clearing the rest together. The chest of drawers went into her car. I loaded the kitchen things and bedding into my van to take to the British Heart Foundation on Monday.

By 11:00 we were finished. She locked the unit, returned the key to the office and that was that.

"Thank you for helping," she said in the car park.

"No problem."

She paused with one hand resting on her car door.

"You threw those tapes away?"

I met her eyes. "Yeah."

She nodded, plainly relieved. "Good."

Then she climbed into her car and drove away. I remained there for a minute, watching her rear lights disappear towards the motorway.

I returned to the van and sat in the driver's seat. The archive box was directly behind me, its edge visible in the rear-view mirror. I started the engine and drove towards my flat in Birmingham.

Traffic was light. The sky was overcast, a flat grey ceiling that seemed to press down upon the city. Mid-March had brought no hint of warmth. I did not stop at the charity donation centre.

I drove straight home.

My place was a one-bedroom first-floor flat in a converted Victorian house off Pershore Road. I parked at the rear, took the box from the van and carried it upstairs. I put it on the kitchen table beside a stack of unopened post and my work tablet.

I stood there looking at it.

Morning Friends.

The title still possessed that strange weight, that echo. I no longer owned a VCR. Hardly anyone did. But I knew where I might find one.

I took out my phone and opened a search page.

It was probably nothing. Probably exactly what Mum had claimed: a children's programme made by a church media group for some short-lived Midlands community cable channel, recorded by Nan for no particular reason.

I did not believe that, though, and I intended to find out.

Currys at Selly Oak retail park occupied one of those large, anonymous units where every shopfront seemed interchangeable. I parked between a hatchback with a cracked bumper and a pickup straddling two spaces.

Inside, the air smelt of new plastic and air conditioning. Saturday afternoon had brought families wandering past the wall of televisions and two teenagers trying gaming headsets near the back. I passed phone cases and laptop displays on my way to the media accessories.

A young man in a purple Currys polo shirt looked up from restocking SD cards. His name badge read LIAM. He was probably in his early twenties, with sandy hair and a practised retail smile.

"Hi, mate. What can I help you find?"

"A USB capture device. Something that converts VHS to digital."

"Yeah, certainly."

He straightened and led me along the aisle. "We've got a few options. Are you transferring old home videos?"

"Something like that."

He stopped before a display holding four different boxes and pointed to one in the middle.

"This one's popular. Elgato Video Capture. Composite or S-Video connection, then USB into the computer. It comes with the software."

The displayed price was GBP 69.99, with VAT already included. I examined the box. Simple enough: red, white and yellow inputs at one end, USB at the other.

"It'll work with any VCR?"

"As long as the machine has the red, white and yellow outputs, yes." He lifted the box from its hook and handed it to me. "The software's straightforward as well. Plug it in, install the driver and press record. Is that one all right?"

"That'll do."

At the till he scanned it and asked whether I wanted the protection plan. I declined, paid GBP 69.99 by debit card and took the bag.

"Do you need any cables?" Liam asked. "Or have you already got the VCR set up?"

"I'll sort it."

"Lovely. Enjoy the trip down memory lane."

I nodded and left.

The drive home took fifteen minutes. I kept the Currys bag on the passenger seat and avoided thinking too hard about what I was doing. It was only a practical step. I had tapes and needed to see what was on them.

Except I still had no VCR.

I had already considered that. My downstairs neighbour, Priya Shah, had one gathering dust in a cupboard. I had helped move a bookcase for her the previous year and seen it beside a stack of old exercise tapes. But asking to borrow it felt like admitting I was doing something specific, and I did not want to explain.

Then I remembered Martin Cole from work.

Martin was in his late forties and still kept shelves full of DVDs. He seemed the sort of man who never threw away working equipment. Sitting in my parking space, I sent him a message.

"Have you got a VCR I could borrow for a day or two?"

His reply arrived in less than a minute.

"Yeah, one in the garage. Want me to drop it round?"

"I can collect it Monday if that works."

"Come round tomorrow if you like. I'll be in."

"Thanks."

I sat looking at the phone. Tomorrow was Sunday. I could have everything connected by Sunday afternoon.

The archive box remained on the kitchen table where I had left it. I set the Currys bag beside it and stared at them both.

My plan was simple. I would digitise everything, beginning with the ordinary family recordings: Easter, birthdays, Christmas. I would send those files to Mum so she had copies and would assume that was all I had kept.

Then I would examine the six Morning Friends tapes alone and discover why she wanted them destroyed.

Practical and methodical. That was how I worked.

I opened my laptop.

On Sunday afternoon, 17 March 2024, I drove to Martin's detached 1980s house with its integral garage in Solihull. He met me at the side door holding a black VCR coated with dust, its cables bundled around it with a twist tie.

"Haven't used this in about five years," he said. "It worked the last time I tried it."

"I appreciate it."

"You converting old family stuff?"

"Yeah. Found some tapes in Nan's storage unit."

He nodded. "I ought to do that with ours before they degrade. Are you using one of those USB capture things?"

"Picked one up yesterday."

"Let me know how it goes. I might do the same."

I put the VCR on the passenger seat of the van, drove home and carried it upstairs.

The setup took about twenty minutes. I cleared the kitchen table and pushed the archive box aside. I connected the VCR to the extension lead beneath the table, ran the red, white and yellow output cables into the Elgato device, and connected its USB cable to my laptop. I downloaded the software because the installation disc was useless in a laptop without a disc drive.

The programme opened to a clean, simple interface: a preview window on the left and a red record button on the right. Static filled the preview, confirming that the connection worked.

I pulled the box closer and selected the first family tape.

CHRISTMAS EVE 1998.

I slid it into the VCR and pressed play. The preview flickered, then showed our old sitting room, with an artificial tree and multicoloured lights in one corner. My father's arm reached across the frame to adjust the camcorder. My younger, higher voice said something about biscuits.

I pressed record. The software began capturing.

I let it run and watched the file size increase in the corner of the window. Each tape would take time, but the process itself was uncomplicated. Stop the recording when the tape ended, save the file under Nan's label, then start the next.

I converted three family tapes that afternoon: Christmas Eve 1998, Easter 1994 with my sixth birthday celebrations, and Boxing Day 2000. By 18:00, a folder on my desktop contained three video files and roughly four hours of footage.

I would send them to Mum later in the week and tell her I had kept a few family tapes so she could have digital copies. She would probably be annoyed that I had disobeyed her, but if I framed it properly she would not press the matter.

I ejected the Boxing Day tape and returned it to the box. Then I took out the six Morning Friends tapes with their masking-tape labels and Roman numerals.

I chose tape II. I thought I would begin near the start, though not with the first one, just to see what it contained.

I inserted it into the VCR, pressed play and started the capture software.

The preview turned blue for a second, followed by colour bars. Then the image cut to a brightly lit set.

It looked harmless, exactly as one might expect from a low-budget children's programme. Pastel-blue walls. A low bookcase topped with foam letters. A round rug patterned with primary-coloured shapes. Soft lighting made everything look slightly too cheerful.

A man entered from the right. He wore a yellow cardigan, beige trousers and brown shoes. His brown hair was parted at the side, and he appeared to be in his mid-thirties.

He smiled broadly and waved both hands, leaning so close that his face filled half the screen.

"Good morning, friends!"

His voice had the singsong quality used by every children's television presenter.

"Welcome back. Are you ready for a wonderful day?"

He stepped away and clasped his hands. The camera widened.

"Today we have some very special friends joining us. Let's say hello."

The camera panned left.

Three children sat cross-legged on the rug: two boys and a girl. Each wore a construction-paper name badge pinned to their clothes. The boy on the left had dark hair and a red jumper and looked about seven. The girl in the middle wore a denim dress and had blonde hair in bunches.

The boy on the right sat with his hands folded in his lap. He had a purple waistcoat over a white shirt, short brown hair and hazel eyes. His name badge said CALLUM in uneven black letters.

For a moment, I stopped breathing.

It was me.

I was about eight in the recording, which placed it in 1996. I recognised my face, though it was smaller and younger and I had no memory of being there. I recognised the rigid posture and blank expression because I still sat like that when I did not know what else to do.

I remembered none of it. Not the set, the presenter, the other children, the purple waistcoat or the rug. I had no memory of appearing on any programme.

The presenter's voice continued in the background, but I no longer heard the words. I could only stare at the child on the screen, who was me and yet could not be, because I did not know him.

It did not feel like panic. It felt like exposure, as though somebody had taken a piece of my past and stored it without permission. Now I was looking at proof that I had once been somewhere I could not remember.

I watched the rest of the segment. The presenter asked the children questions. The girl answered. The boy in the red jumper nodded. I remained on the rug without speaking.

The tape continued, but I stopped the recording and ejected it.

I leaned back and stared at the laptop. Static had returned to the preview window. My mobile lay beside my work tablet. I picked it up and found Daniel Mercer's name in my contacts.

Daniel was my older cousin, six years older than me, and a secondary-school history teacher living in Nottingham. We did not speak often, but we had always got on well. He was quiet and thoughtful.

I wrote:

"Found some tapes in Nan Margaret's storage unit. Children's programme called Morning Friends. I think we might have been on it when we were little. Do you remember anything about it?"

I sent the message, put down the phone and waited.

The reply came within thirty seconds.

"Don't send that to anyone."

I stared at the screen. Another message appeared.

"Where are the tapes now?"

"At my flat. Why?"

His answer was immediate.

"Are they the only copies?"

"I think so."

"Don't digitise them. Don't show anyone. I'm serious, Callum."

I read the messages twice. Daniel did not usually communicate that way. He wrote complete, measured sentences, took his time and never tried to push anyone.

"What's going on?"

Three dots appeared, vanished, then returned.

"I'll explain in person. Just don't do anything with those tapes until we speak."

I looked at the laptop, at the Morning Friends file I had already saved, and at the remaining tapes in the box.

For the first time since finding them, I felt something other than curiosity.

I felt fear.

I waited until about 20:00 before playing the next tape.

I should probably have stopped after seeing myself on that set. I should have sent the family files to Mum and destroyed the box as she had ordered. But I kept thinking about the way I had sat on the rug, hands folded, back straight, the name badge hanging crookedly from my waistcoat.

I did not recognise that child. Not really.

First I made a sandwich, turkey and mustard on wholemeal bread. I ate half of it while standing at the counter, then abandoned the plate and returned to the kitchen table.

The VCR was still connected. I selected the tape marked III. It had the same masking tape and the same block lettering.

I inserted it and pressed play, then record on the capture software.

Blue screen. Colour bars.

Then the set returned: the same pastel walls, the same bookcase with foam letters, the same round rug patterned with primary-coloured shapes.

The sound was wrong from the beginning.

It was not silence or static. Something wet and rhythmic lay beneath the programme, like somebody breathing through a drinking straw while trying to draw up the last drops from the bottom of a glass. The hollow sucking noise continued without interruption.

I reached for the volume control, intending to turn it down, but stopped when the presenter walked into view.

He wore the yellow cardigan again and gave the same two-handed wave. His mouth formed exaggerated words beneath the same broad smile, but the sound did not match. His lips moved first; the audio followed half a second later, garbled, as though somebody had made a poor recording over part of the tape or the magnetic strip had degraded in one specific place.

I had seen damaged tapes before. One of Nan's Christmas recordings contained a section where the picture rolled and all sound vanished for about ten seconds. That made sense. Magnetic tape deteriorated.

This was different.

The picture remained clean and sharp. Only the audio was misplaced, with that wet breathing beneath it.

The presenter stepped back and the camera panned left. The same three children sat on the rug: the boy in the red jumper, the girl with blonde bunches and me on the right in the purple waistcoat, hands folded in my lap.

The presenter asked something. I could not distinguish the words through the distortion, but the girl answered. My younger self sat motionless, staring ahead with the blank expression I had worn in every school photograph Mum ever took.

The presenter said something else. The boy in the purple waistcoat lifted a paper cut-out towards the camera: an uneven circle of yellow construction paper with crooked rays around it. A sun.

I held it up and smiled.

But the smile did not match the eyes.

I do not know how else to describe it. For perhaps two seconds, the child's face looked wrong. The mouth curved upwards, but the eyes remained flat. The expression seemed to sit on top of the real face rather than belonging to it, like a mask that had not settled properly.

Then it was gone, and there was only a child holding a paper sun.

I rewound the section and watched it again.

The same brief misalignment, then normality.

Tape corruption, I told myself. Some tracking problem causing part of the image to shift.

It had to be.

The episode continued. The presenter gestured towards a low table at one side of the set that I had not noticed in tape II. The camera zoomed closer.

It was a craft segment. Paper plates, felt-tip pens, glue sticks and other supplies had been laid out. The children rose from the rug and moved to the table. I watched myself sit on the left, hands folded once more, waiting.

The presenter's voice was clearer now, though still slightly out of synchronisation. He said something about making a special project, then something about being very careful.

An adult hand entered the frame from the right.

It did not belong to the presenter. Someone else was standing out of shot. The hand was pale, with short nails and no rings. It reached across the table and picked up a pair of blunt, orange-handled children's scissors.

The hand placed the scissors on the table beside the wrist of the boy in the red jumper, then pressed down.

Not quickly or violently. Slowly, casually, as though demonstrating how to keep an object in place. One blade lay flat against the table while the hand pushed the handle down until the other blade touched the side of the boy's wrist.

The boy did not move. He merely stared at it.

The camera did not cut away. The presenter kept speaking in that singsong voice, his words obscured by the distortion, while the hand remained there for three seconds, four, five, pressing the blade against the child's skin as though it were part of the instructions.

Then the hand lifted the scissors, placed them in the centre of the table and withdrew from the frame.

The boy picked up a felt-tip pen.

I slammed the laptop shut.

I struck it so hard that the hinge cracked and the corner caught the side of my left index finger. Pain came sharp and immediate. I snatched my hand away and shook it, then sat staring at the closed laptop on the table.

My finger throbbed. There was no blood, only a red line where the plastic edge had pinched it.

Tape corruption. That was what I told myself.

Perhaps it was part of the demonstration, and I had misunderstood because the sound was garbled and I lacked the context. Perhaps the presenter had been explaining safety and the unseen hand was showing the children where not to place their fingers.

That was reasonable. It made sense.

Except the hand had pressed down.

I rose, went to the sink and ran cold water over my finger although it did not need it. The laptop remained closed behind me.

The VCR was still running. I could hear the faint mechanical whirr of the tape passing through it.

I turned off the tap and dried my hands on a tea towel that needed washing.

Tape corruption.

I did not open the laptop again that night.

The next morning I rang work and said I needed a personal day because of a family matter. I asked whether my route could be reassigned. Gary Evans, the dispatcher, said it was no problem and that he would divide my appointments between Martin and another engineer.

I thanked him and rang off.

Then I got into the van and drove to Mum's house in Sutton Coldfield. She lived in one half of a modern semi-detached property with tan brick, an integral garage and a dark-green front door. I had helped her move there about three years earlier, after she and Dad had finalised their divorce.

Her Avensis was on the drive. I parked on the road, walked up the path and rang the bell.

She opened the door wearing a grey cardigan over a white blouse and black trousers. Her hair was tied in a low ponytail. Her face attempted to look pleased, but did not quite manage it.

"Callum," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. Can I come in?"

She stepped aside. I entered the hallway.

The house smelt of coffee and the lavender spray she kept in the bathroom. She closed the door and stood with her arms folded.

"I was about to go out," she said.

"This won't take long."

I followed her into the sitting room. There was a beige sofa, a coffee table with two magazines stacked on it and a television against the far wall. She perched on the edge of the sofa. I remained standing.

"I watched one of those tapes," I said.

Her expression did not change. She looked beyond me, towards the window behind my shoulder.

"One of the Morning Friends tapes," I added.

"I thought you threw them away."

"I kept them."

She said nothing. Her hands rested in her lap, fingers interlaced.

"I was on it," I said. "I was one of the children sitting on the rug."

"All right."

"You didn't mention that."

She breathed out through her nose. "You asked whether I knew what it was. I told you it was a local children's programme."

"You didn't tell me I appeared in it."

"Does it matter?"

I stared at her. She still would not look at me. Her gaze remained fixed on some point past my shoulder, as though something outside the window had caught her attention.

"Where was it filmed?"

"Somewhere in Walsall. I don't remember exactly."

"What do you mean, you don't remember?"

"It was a long time ago, Callum."

"Who ran it? What channel was it on?"

"I don't know. Your father dealt with that side of things."

That stopped me.

"Dad?"

"He was involved with a church media group at the time. They made programmes for a short-lived Midlands community cable channel. Community outreach and that sort of thing. He helped to co-ordinate some of it."

I had never known that. Dad had never mentioned it.

"You begged to be on the programme," she added, her voice becoming flat. "You saw it on television one morning and would not stop asking. So your father signed you up."

"I don't remember any of that."

Her jaw tightened slightly. "It was a difficult year. You were young. It's better not to dig into it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means leave it alone."

I watched her. She still had not looked directly at me.

Her mobile lay face down on the coffee table beside the magazines. She glanced at it once, quickly, then returned her gaze to the window.

"Do you have any other tapes? Anything else from that time?"

"No. Nothing. I got rid of everything years ago."

She stood.

"If you kept those tapes, that was your choice, but I don't want them here."

"I wasn't offering to bring them."

"Good."

She walked past me towards the hall. I followed.

At the front door she stopped and turned.

"Actually, perhaps you should bring the box over. I'll take care of it."

"You just said you didn't want them here."

"I don't want you keeping them."

"Why?"

She put her hand on the doorknob.

"Because they're upsetting you. I can tell. You look as though you haven't slept."

I had not, but that was not the point.

"Bring them round this week," she said. "I'll deal with them."

She opened the door.

I stood in the hallway, looking at her hand on the knob, at the phone still lying face down on the coffee table behind me, and at the way she refused to meet my eyes.

"I'll think about it," I said.

Her mouth compressed into a thin line. "Don't think for too long."

I left Mum's house and sat in the van for perhaps two minutes before accepting that I was not bringing her anything. Not the box, not the tapes, nothing.

I took out my mobile and found Daniel Mercer in my contacts. Mum had sent me his number three Christmases earlier, after he moved to Nottingham, because she wanted me to advise him about broadband providers. Until the previous night, I had hardly used it.

I wrote:

"Found the Morning Friends tapes in Nan's storage unit. Need to talk."

His reply arrived within a minute.

"Don't share them. Where are you?"

It read less like a question than an instruction.

"Birmingham."

"I'm in Nottingham. Meet halfway. Tesco Extra on Castle Boulevard. Two hours."

I checked the time. It was just after 10:30.

"All right."

I started the van and pulled away from the kerb. Mum's front curtain moved, but I did not look back.

The drive to Nottingham took about an hour and forty minutes. I followed the M42 and A42, passing the Ashby-de-la-Zouch and East Midlands Airport junctions beneath an unbroken grey sky. I kept the radio off.

Tesco Extra on Castle Boulevard stood beside a vast car park that was barely a third full. I parked near the far edge, away from the entrance and the trolley bays.

Daniel's car was already there, a silver Ford Mondeo parked three spaces away. I took my laptop from the passenger seat. Before leaving the flat that morning, I had copied every digitised file to its desktop: the family recordings and the two Morning Friends captures.

Daniel got out when I did. He looked much as he had the last time I saw him, perhaps two years earlier at a family gathering I could not clearly remember. He was tall, around six foot one, with a lean build and short dark-brown hair. He wore a fleece over a button-down shirt and chinos, his hands buried in his pockets.

"Callum," he said.

"Hi."

He glanced beyond me towards the road, then at my van.

"Did you bring them?"

"The digital files, yes. I converted them."

His jaw tightened.

"You watched them?"

"Two of them."

He stepped closer and lowered his voice, though nobody was near us.

"Which ones?"

"Tape II and tape III. Roman numerals on the back."

"What did you see?"

I told him about the set, the rug, the children, myself in the purple waistcoat, the distortion on tape III and the scissors.

Daniel's expression did not change, but his breathing did. It became slower and more controlled.

"I was on it too," he said. "Once. Green waistcoat. I was about fourteen."

"When?"

"Spring 1996. My mum got a ring from someone at the church. They said they were making a community programme and needed children for an episode. She thought it would be good for me."

He pulled his hands from his pockets. His nails had been bitten down.

"It went badly."

"Badly how?"

"I don't want to discuss it out here." He looked at the laptop. "The files are on that?"

"Yes."

"Only the Morning Friends ones, or all of them?"

"Everything I've converted. Family recordings as well."

"I only need the Morning Friends files. The rest don't matter."

"Need them for what?"

He hesitated.

"To make sure they don't spread."

"Mum already told me to bring her the tapes so she could destroy them."

"She's right."

"Then why do you want them?"

"Because I know how to handle them, and she doesn't."

I shifted the laptop to my other hand.

"I'm not simply handing them over, Daniel. I want to know what's on them."

"What I saw, what you saw, all of it. And I want to watch one with you right now, so I know I'm not losing it."

Daniel's eyes moved past me again, scanning the Tesco Extra car park. A woman with a trolley was loading shopping into a people carrier four rows away. A man in a Barbour jacket walked towards the entrance.

"Fine," Daniel said. "But not out here. Get in my car."

I sat in the passenger seat of Daniel's silver Ford Mondeo. It smelt of old coffee and something faintly chemical, perhaps hand sanitiser. On the back seat was a cardboard box full of books and a fleece blanket screwed into a ball.

Daniel got into the driver's seat and locked the doors. I opened my laptop and balanced it on my knees. The screen lit up. Daniel leant across to see.

"Play the first one," he said. "The one you haven't watched yet."

I had six files labelled Morning Friends I through VI, matching the Roman numerals on the tapes. I had watched II and III. I clicked on I.

The file opened on a blue screen, then colour bars, then the set. The same pastel walls, the same bookshelf with foam letters, the same round rug. The host stepped into frame from the right, wearing the yellow cardigan. He waved with both hands, leant close to the camera and said, "Good morning, friends. Welcome back. Are you ready for a wonderful day?"

The audio was clear. There was no distortion and no wet breathing underneath it.

The host stepped back and clasped his hands. "We have some very special friends joining us today. Let's say hello."

The camera panned left. Three children sat cross-legged on the rug. A boy in a red jumper on the left, a girl with pigtails in the middle and a boy on the right in a purple vest.

Me.

But this time the footage looked normal. The lighting was soft and even. The children smiled. The host asked about their favourite colours, and the girl answered, "Blue."

The boy in the red jumper said green. Young Callum said yellow and pointed at the host's cardigan.

The host laughed. It sounded warm.

I watched the entire segment. Craft time with coloured paper and safety scissors. A song about shapes. The host waving goodbye at the end.

Nothing wrong. Nothing off.

I felt foolish. Daniel did not relax. His hands gripped his knees, and his eyes remained on the screen even after the video ended and my desktop returned.

"Play the next one," he said.

"That one looked fine."

"Play the next one."

I clicked file II, the one I had watched the day before. Blue screen, colour bars, set, host in the yellow cardigan. The same wave, the same lean towards the camera, the same greeting.

This time the audio was clear again. No mangled words. No breathing.

The three children appeared on the rug in the same positions. The host asked about the weather. The girl said sunny. The boy in red said cloudy. Young Callum said rainy, and the host said that was all right because rain helped things grow.

There was another craft segment, with glue sticks and paper plates. Everyone made a sun with yellow rays. Young Callum held his up.

He smiled. A normal smile. His eyes matched it.

There was no hand holding scissors. No one pressed down on a child's wrist.

The episode ended with another song and a wave.

I stared at the screen. "I've watched this one already. It wasn't like that."

Daniel's voice was tight. "I know."

"There was distortion. The sound was wrong. There was a hand with scissors, and it pressed down on the child's arm."

"I believe you."

"Then what the hell is this?"

Daniel finally looked away from the laptop. He scanned the car park through the windscreen, checked both wing mirrors and turned back to me.

"The tapes don't show the same thing twice," he said. "Even if it's the same person watching. Even if it's the same tape."

"That's not possible."

"It isn't supposed to be possible, but it is."

I closed the laptop. My hands were trembling slightly.

"You're saying the content changes?"

"Yes. Every time, as far as I know."

"Then what did you see when you watched?"

Daniel's fingers tapped rapidly against his knee, the same movement repeated over and over.

"I only watched one, years ago. Someone sent me a digitised file after I mentioned the programme online. I thought it might help me remember things more clearly, help me work out what happened that day I was on it. The episode I received was normal at first, just like the one we watched now. But halfway through the craft segment, the boy in the purple vest stood up, walked right up to the camera and looked directly into it."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'We need someone younger next time. Bring them Tuesday.'"

The air in the car felt thin.

"Then the boy sat down again," Daniel continued. "The episode carried on. A song about shapes. A wave goodbye, as though nothing had happened."

"Did you watch it again?"

"No. I deleted it immediately."

"Why?"

"Because I was the only person watching, and that child was talking to me."

I sat with the laptop on my knees and my pulse beating unevenly in my chest.

"The normal episodes are bait," Daniel said. "That's my theory. You watch one and it looks fine, so you think perhaps you remembered it wrongly, or perhaps it was never that bad. Then you share it with somebody else, or you keep digging, or you watch another one. Eventually it shows you something worse."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But the pattern is consistent. The programme wants to spread."

I thought about Mum telling me to bring the tapes to her. Her hand on the doorknob. The thinness in her voice when she said, "Don't think too long."

"What happened the day you were on it?" I asked.

Daniel's fingers stopped tapping. He looked through the windscreen at the Tesco Extra entrance. A couple came out pushing a trolley.

"They kept us there longer than they said they would," he said. "Mum was supposed to collect me at midday. They didn't let us leave until nearly 16:00. There was no explanation. We just sat on that rug in the same places while they filmed the same segments over and over, different takes each time. The host kept saying we were doing brilliantly and that we'd be finished soon."

Daniel had been fourteen in spring 1996, six years older than me. I had been eight.

"Did anything else happen?"

"Yes, but I don't want to talk about it."

I did not press him.

Daniel turned back to me. "You need to delete those files. All of them. If you still have the physical tapes, destroy them."

"Mum wants them."

"She wants them gone. There's a difference."

"What if I need proof? What if I need to show somebody what I saw?"

"You just tried. You played two files, and both looked normal. That's the trap, Callum. The proof disappears when you need it most."

I looked down at the laptop. My reflection stared back from the dark screen.

"I'm not deleting them yet," I said.

Daniel's jaw tightened. "Then don't watch any more, and don't let anybody else watch them."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You said you needed them."

"I said I know how to handle them. That means keeping them contained. But if you're not ready to hand them over, then just..."

He stopped. His eyes moved to the rear-view mirror.

"What?"

"Great. That Discovery, two rows back. It was there when I arrived."

I turned to look, but Daniel grabbed my shoulder.

"Don't," he said. "Just tell me whether you recognise it."

I glanced into the wing mirror on my side instead. A grey Land Rover Discovery, an older model with tinted windows. I could not see anyone inside.

"I've never seen it before."

Daniel released my shoulder.

"Probably nothing."

"Do you think somebody followed you?"

"I think I'm careful."

I picked up my laptop and opened the door.

"I'm heading back."

"Callum."

I stopped.

"If anything else happens, if you see something, or somebody contacts you, or your mum pushes harder, ring me first. Don't deal with it alone."

"All right."

"I'm serious."

"I understand."

I got out of the Mondeo and walked back to my white Vauxhall Vivaro. Daniel stayed in his car.

I put the laptop on the passenger seat, started the engine and pulled out of the Tesco car park onto Castle Boulevard. In my rear-view mirror, the grey Discovery was still parked two rows back. Daniel's Mondeo had not moved.

I drove towards the A42 and M42 with my hands tight around the steering wheel and my laptop beside me, containing six files that would not show me the same thing twice.

I had gone to Nottingham looking for confirmation, for somebody to tell me I was not inventing it. Instead, I left with less proof than I had started with and much more dread, because normal suddenly felt like the trap.

I drove back to Birmingham on autopilot, passing the East Midlands Airport and Ashby-de-la-Zouch junctions. I stayed in the left lane for most of the journey and did not switch on the radio. My laptop remained on the passenger seat where I had put it after Daniel watched the tapes and went quiet for about thirty seconds before telling me to go home and watch no more of them.

I had not agreed to that part.

When I reached my first-floor flat in the converted Victorian house off Pershore Road, it was just after 15:00 on Saturday, 16 March 2024. The VCR was still on the kitchen table, still plugged in, its red standby light glowing. The Safestore packing box sat beside it, the lid half off where I had left it that morning.

I decided to treat it as a technical problem. That was what I did for work. A customer said the picture was wrong or the sound kept dropping out, and nine times out of ten it was the cable, the settings or something that had not been plugged in properly.

Perhaps the tapes had degraded. Perhaps the VCR was reading them incorrectly. Old equipment did that. Connections worked loose.

I sat down and opened the capture software. This time I went into the settings and changed the input format from composite to S-video, even though I was using composite cables. Then I switched it back and altered the resolution from automatic to 480p.

I had no idea whether any of it would help. It probably would not, but I needed to test it.

I took tape III from the box again. The same tape I had watched before. The same masking-tape label. The same Roman numeral on the back.

I inserted it, pressed play and began recording.

The same set. The same pastel walls. The same rug. The same wet breathing beneath the audio. The same host in the yellow cardigan. The same three children, including me in the purple vest. The same scissors.

I stopped the capture, ejected the tape and sat staring at the blank preview window.

The problem was not the VCR.

I thought about borrowing another one, just to be certain.

My downstairs neighbour, Priya Shah, had one. I had seen it the year before, when I helped her move a bookcase and she mentioned keeping the machine for old exercise tapes she never used. She was practical about things like that. She did not throw something away if it still worked.

I went downstairs and knocked. It took her about twenty seconds to answer. She wore medical scrubs beneath a zipped hoodie, her hair tied back in a low bun, and she held her keys as though she had been about to leave.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi." She tilted her head. "Do you need something?"

"Yes, actually. Do you still have that VCR?"

She blinked. "The one in my cupboard?"

"Yes. I'm trying to convert some old family tapes, and I think mine might be broken. I wanted to test them with a different machine."

She considered me for a moment, then nodded. "Of course. Hang on."

She left the door open and walked into her flat. I waited in the corridor.

She came back a minute later carrying a black VCR, an older model than Martin Cole's, with masking tape across the top. WORKS had been written on it in blue pen.

"Will you need it for long?" she asked.

"Perhaps a day. I'll bring it back tomorrow."

"There's no hurry."

She handed it to me. It was heavier than I expected.

"Are you getting anywhere with the tapes?"

"Not really. The picture is a bit messed up on some of them."

"That's usually the tracking," she said. "Sometimes there's a button on the side."

"I'll check. Thanks."

She nodded, and I turned to go, but then I stopped.

I do not know why. Perhaps I only wanted somebody else to confirm that I was not imagining things.

"Actually," I said, "would you like to see what I mean? It'll only take a minute."

She checked her mobile. "I've got fifteen minutes before I need to leave."

"It's just upstairs."

She followed me up. I felt slightly awkward about it. We were neighbourly, but not close. She did not seem bothered.

When we entered my flat, she glanced around as though she had never been inside before, which she had not. I put her VCR on the table beside Martin's and began unplugging the cables.

"It's this old children's programme my nan recorded," I said. "The audio is distorted and some of the pictures are wrong."

"What programme?"

"Morning Friends. A local production, I think."

She did not react to the name.

I finished swapping the machines, plugged hers in and connected the RCA cables. I chose tape II, not III, because I did not want to show her the scissors. Tape II had the strange smile, but that lasted only a few seconds. I could stop it before then.

I inserted the tape and pressed play.

The preview window on my laptop filled with blue, then colour bars, then the set. Priya stepped closer, folded her arms and watched.

The host walked on in his yellow cardigan, waved with both hands and leant close to the camera.

"Good morning, friends."

His voice sounded slightly clearer through her VCR. Not perfect, but better.

Priya said nothing.

The camera panned across the three children on the rug. The boy in the red jumper, the girl with pigtails, and me in the purple vest, hands folded and expression blank.

Priya's posture changed. Not much. Her shoulders became a little squarer, her head tilted forwards perhaps half an inch, and her expression smoothed into something flat and procedural. It was the look people wore while filling in forms or waiting at a council customer-service desk.

The host asked the children a question. The girl answered.

"Is that you?" Priya asked.

Her voice sounded normal, but her eyes remained fixed on the screen.

"Yes. I was about eight."

"Hmm."

The host gestured towards something beyond the camera and began talking about shapes.

I was about to stop the tape when Priya spoke again.

"Do you have children?"

I looked at her. "What?"

"Children. Nieces, nephews, anyone like that nearby?"

"No. Why?"

She did not answer at once. On screen, the host held up a foam triangle. Priya's eyes followed it.

"Just wondering," she said.

I stopped playback.

The preview froze on the host in mid-gesture, his mouth open and the triangle in his hand. Priya stepped away from the table. She looked at me, then at the laptop, then at the door.

"I need to go."

"Yes. All right."

She walked to the door, opened it and stopped without turning round.

"You can keep the VCR," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She left. The door clicked shut behind her.

I stood there for a minute, trying to understand what had happened. Then I ejected the tape, closed the laptop and sat down.

My mobile buzzed about an hour later.

A text from Priya.

You need to destroy what you showed me. Don't show it to anyone else.

I stared at the message, then typed back.

Why?

Three dots appeared, vanished, then nothing.

I tried ringing. It rang four times and went to voicemail.

I did not sleep that night. I tried at about 23:00, lay in bed for an hour with my eyes open, then gave up and returned to the kitchen.

The Safestore box was still there. Both VCRs were still there. The stack of Morning Friends tapes sat among the family recordings.

I began taking the family tapes out one by one and checking the labels.

Christmas Eve 1998.

Easter 1994.

Boxing Day 2000.

Callum's sixth birthday.

At the bottom, wedged sideways beneath the others, was one I had not noticed before. It bore a white WHSmith label in Nan Margaret Ward's handwriting.

Royal Show 2002.

I expected it to be normal footage of the Royal Show at Stoneleigh. Nan Margaret loved it. She went every year, filmed everything and returned with sunburn and a bag of biscuits shaped like vegetables.

I put it into the VCR and pressed play.

Blue screen. Colour bars. Then the showground in bright sunlight, crowded with families and children carrying clouds of candyfloss. The camera shook as Nan walked. Her voice came from behind it, saying something about the prize livestock.

The angle changed. Pens of immaculate cattle and sheep filled the frame, just as I remembered. Nan laughed.

The sound was clear. There was no distortion.

The camera panned right, past a family with a pushchair and a stall selling cloudy lemonade. A child in a red shirt ran by, and the camera followed him for a moment before swinging back.

Then it was the set.

There was no cut and no static. One second there were crowds at Stoneleigh, and the next there were pastel walls, the bookshelf of foam letters and the round rug, as though Nan had walked through a door I could not see.

The host stood in the centre holding a battered sausage like a microphone.

He leant towards the camera, far too close, until his face filled the frame, and smiled.

"Welcome back," he said.

His voice had the same sing-song quality, but there was no distortion this time. Every word was clear.

The camera drew back. Three children sat on the rug in the same positions. The boy in the red jumper on the left, the girl with pigtails in the middle and me on the right.

The same purple vest. The same posture. The same blank expression.

But the name badge on my chest was empty. No letters, only a rectangle of white paper.

The host turned towards the children, still holding the battered sausage. He gestured with it. When he looked back at the camera, his expression was no longer friendly.

It was knowing. Focused. As though he could see me.

I tore the cable from the VCR. The preview window went black.

I sat breathing harder than I should have, staring at the blank screen.

The programme had not merely been recorded onto the tapes. It was using them as an entry point, something it could reach through.

I grabbed my mobile and opened Daniel's number. It rang three times.

"Yes?" he answered.

There was movement in the background and the scrape of something being dragged.

"It's Callum."

"I know."

"I need to talk to you."

"I can't now. I'm packing."

"Packing?"

"I'm leaving Nottingham. Should have done it yesterday."

His voice was tight and clipped.

"You need to stop watching those tapes."

"I found another one. It wasn't labelled Morning Friends, but it turned into the set halfway through. There was no cut. It just changed."

Silence at his end.

Then he asked, "What tape?"

"Royal Show 2002. Nan filmed it."

More silence. I heard him breathe out.

"Don't watch any more," he said. "I mean it, Callum. You're making it worse."

"Making what worse?"

"I have to go."

"Daniel."

He ended the call.

I sat with the mobile in my hand, the disconnected VCR in front of me and the box of tapes to my left.

Then I stood, grabbed my keys from the Aston Villa key fob and walked out.

I drove to Mum's detached 1980s house in Solihull. I did not ring first. I did not text. I simply got into the Vivaro and went.

It was almost midnight when I arrived. Every light was off except the porch lamp and one upstairs window. I parked on the drive behind her Toyota Avensis and walked to the front door.

I rang the bell, waited and rang again. The porch light flicked off, then on.

The door opened. Mum stood there in a dressing gown over her pyjamas, her hair loose, her face without make-up. She looked exhausted.

"Callum, it's midnight."

"I need the truth."

She did not move. "About what?"

"Morning Friends. All of it. Right now."

Her hand tightened around the edge of the door.

"I told you to bring me those tapes."

"Where was it filmed?"

"I don't..."

"Mum."

She stared at me. Then she stepped back and opened the door wider.

I went inside. She closed and locked the door, then walked past me into the sitting room. I followed. Neither of us sat down.

"It wasn't in Walsall," she said at last.

Her voice was flat and careful.

"It was in Coventry, beneath a church off Foleshill Road. Your father helped set up the lighting."

Something cold settled in my chest.

"Dad knew?"

"He was part of the church media group. They made programmes for a short-lived Midlands community cable channel. Morning Friends was one of them."

"And you let me go."

Her jaw tightened. "You wanted to. You begged us."

"I was eight."

"I know how old you were."

I stepped closer. "What else?"

She looked towards the dark television screen.

"After the series ended, two children went missing. They found them three days later beneath a pedestrian bridge near the university. They were smiling. They wouldn't speak and wouldn't respond to their parents. They just sat there."

My mouth went dry. "What happened to them?"

"I don't know. Their families moved away. Nobody talked about it."

She looked back at me.

"I tried to forget. Your father did too. But your nan wouldn't stop. She kept filming around the church. She kept asking questions. She kept taping over things and finding it again."

"Finding what again?"

"The programme."

Her voice cracked slightly.

"It didn't matter what she recorded. It always came back."

I drove to Coventry because I could not stop myself. That is probably the most honest way to describe it.

Daniel gave me the address over the phone after I told him about the Royal Show tape changing halfway through the footage. He did not want to meet me there. He said so twice. But I told him I had to see where it had been filmed, and he fell silent for perhaps ten seconds before saying he would meet me there in two hours.

It was Sunday, 17 March 2024. The Safestore box sat on the passenger seat beside my laptop. I had packed both before leaving without properly considering why I needed the box. I had simply brought it.

The drive took about forty-five minutes. I followed the M6 eastbound into Coventry beneath a cold, flat West Midlands sky. There was no rain, only that colourless mid-March overcast that drained everything below it.

Mum had first claimed the programme was filmed in Walsall. Daniel confirmed the truth: it had been made in the undercroft of a former church off Foleshill Road, not far from the university area. The congregation had merged with another years before, and the building had been sold to a charity that scarcely used it.

It was now called Foleshill Community Centre.

I found it easily enough. Red brick, two storeys, white trim around the windows and a small car park on the eastern side, its tarmac split by long cracks. The sign outside read FOLESHILL COMMUNITY CENTRE in faded lettering.

There was one car in the car park: Daniel's silver Ford Mondeo.

I parked beside it and picked up my mobile. Daniel was already out of his car, standing near the front steps with his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked worse than he had the previous day, grey with exhaustion, as though he had not slept.

"You brought the box," he said.

"Yes."

He glanced through my passenger window, then looked back at me. "You shouldn't have come here."

"Probably not."

He did not argue. He turned and walked towards the side of the building. I followed.

A basement entrance lay around the back, with concrete steps descending to a painted metal door. Most of the paint had flaked away, but the outline of something remained beneath it.

Daniel stopped at the top of the steps and pointed.

"There used to be a sun painted there," he said. "A large yellow circle with rays coming off it. They painted over it about ten years ago, but you can still see the outline."

I looked. He was right.

A circle perhaps two feet across showed through the paint, with faint lines radiating from it like a child's drawing. It would once have looked cheerful.

Now it resembled an old stain.

"They filmed it down there?" I asked.

"Yes. It's locked, but I've got a key."

Daniel took a small brass key on a plain ring from his pocket.

"I rang the centre coordinator this morning. I told her I used to come to events here as a child and wanted to see the undercroft for a writing project. She said nobody uses it now and I could look round if I wanted. She gave me the spare key from the lockbox."

He did not wait for an answer. He walked down the steps and unlocked the door.

The air inside smelt of concrete, old carpet and something faintly chemical. Mildew, perhaps.

Daniel took out his mobile and switched on the torch. I did the same.

The undercroft was larger than I had expected. One broad room with a low ceiling, perhaps eight feet high, and fluorescent fittings that failed to light when Daniel pressed the switch beside the door. Folding tables leant against the left-hand wall. Stacks of chairs filled a corner at the back. Boxes marked HOLIDAY CLUB 2005 and CRAFT SUPPLIES lined the far side.

Daniel moved slowly forwards, sweeping his torch across the floor. I followed.

"The back rooms are through there," he said, nodding towards an open doorway on the right.

We went through.

The back room was smaller, perhaps fifteen feet by twenty, with the same low ceiling and concrete floor. In the centre stood a low platform, a wooden frame about six inches high covered with chipboard.

On the floor in front of it, strips of faded yellow tape marked three positions in a semicircle, evenly spaced.

I recognised the arrangement at once. The same positions as the rug in the tapes. Left, centre, right.

"They never dismantled it," I said.

"Apparently not."

My torch travelled across the rest of the room. More boxes. A folding table holding old paint tins. And, in the corner, a school-style CRT television and combined VHS recorder on a wheeled trolley.

It was plugged in.

A red standby light glowed beneath the screen.

I stopped walking. Daniel had seen it too. His torch remained fixed upon the television for a long time.

"We should go," he said.

The screen switched on.

Neither of us had touched it. We stood ten feet away, but the machine powered itself up.

There was no static and no blue screen. It went directly to an image.

The host wore the yellow cardigan and stood before the same set, but the camera was closer than on the tapes. He looked older. Not much older. Five years, perhaps ten. It was difficult to tell.

His face filled most of the screen, and he stared directly into the camera with the same knowing expression he had worn on the Royal Show tape.

He smiled. Then he pointed beyond the frame, to his right and our left.

I heard the sound before I turned.

Wet breathing. A breath drawn through straw.

It did not come from the television's speaker. It came from somewhere inside the room.

Daniel ripped the plug from the socket, and the screen went black.

My mobile buzzed in my hand.

I looked down.

A notification read: New memory available.

I did not touch it. It opened by itself.

A video I had not created began playing. The interface resembled the automated Memories feature in my phone's photo application, which assembled old photographs and recordings into montages. I had disabled it months before.

The video showed the same basement and the same back room, but now it was filled with perhaps twenty children, all wearing coloured vests over their clothes. Purple, green, red, blue and yellow. They sat in rows on the floor facing the platform, where the host stood with his back to the camera, gesturing.

I recognised the purple vest immediately. The same one from the tapes.

The child wearing it sat in the second row, his hands folded and his face blank.

Daniel leant over to see my screen. He made a sound, not quite a gasp, only a sharp intake of breath.

"The green one," he said. "Third row. That's me."

The host turned in the video. He did not speak. He merely gestured again, not pointing but inviting.

The footage did not end. It looped.

The host turned, gestured and turned away, over and over.

I tried to close it. I swiped upwards, but the video remained. I tried to switch off the mobile. The screen stayed lit.

Daniel backed towards the doorway. His breathing was fast and shallow.

"It doesn't need the tapes," he said. "It doesn't need the equipment. It only needs somebody to see it."

I shoved the mobile into my trouser pocket. The screen's glow remained visible through the fabric.

"We have to go," Daniel said.

I followed him out of the back room, across the main undercroft and up the steps. He locked the door behind us with shaking hands, then dropped the key on the top step.

We stood in the car park. Daniel leant against his car with both hands on the bonnet, head bowed, breathing as though he had run a mile.

"Every time we try to confirm it," he said. "Every time we look, every time we show somebody, it recruits them."

I took out my mobile. The video had vanished. Only my ordinary home screen remained.

There was a text from Martin asking whether I was working the next day, and a Virgin Media notification about updated service routes.

"I watched it," I said. "I showed Priya. I brought you into it, and now..."

"Now it's on your devices," Daniel finished. "And mine. And it can reproduce whenever it wants."

He looked at me. His eyes were red.

"I'm leaving," he said. "Tonight. I don't know where I'll go, but I'm not staying in Nottingham."

"Daniel..."

"You need to stop," he said. "Stop trying to show people. Stop trying to validate it. Stop treating it as something you can fix."

He got into his car without saying goodbye, started the engine and drove out of the car park.

I stood there for another minute. Then I climbed into my van.

I did not return to the flat. I stopped at an independent petrol-station shop near Castle Bromwich, bought a galvanised garden incinerator and a bottle of barbecue-lighting fluid, and paid cash. The assistant did not look up from his mobile.

I found a secluded industrial yard near the M6, behind a row of storage units. No cameras covered the far corner. There was only cracked tarmac and a chain-link security fence with weeds growing through it.

Using the incinerator there was illicit, reckless and desperate, but by then I did not care.

I pulled all six Morning Friends tapes from the Safestore box and stacked them inside the galvanised drum. I soaked them with the lighting fluid, struck one of the petrol station's matches and dropped it in. Then I closed the lid.

Through the vent holes, I watched the plastic warp. The labels curled and blackened. The tape inside melted, giving off thick black smoke that smelt of burning oil.

I stayed until nothing remained but a sticky, charred mass at the bottom.

It did not make me feel better. It did not repair anything.

The files were still on my laptop, still in the capture software's default folder and perhaps backed up automatically to cloud storage. I could not remember whether I had enabled that. The programme could reproduce without permission.

I had just seen it happen.

I drove home, parked in my usual place and went upstairs. Both VCRs remained on the kitchen table.

I unplugged them, carried them to the cupboard and pushed them onto the top shelf.

Then I opened my laptop and deleted every Morning Friends file. I emptied the recycle bin, cleared the capture software's recent-files list, checked the cloud folders I could remember, then shut the laptop down and unplugged it from the socket and extension lead.

I put the remaining family tapes back into the Safestore box: Christmas Eve 1998, Easter 1994, Boxing Day 2000, my sixth birthday and Royal Show 2002. I sealed the lid with packing tape and shoved the box into the cupboard beside the VCRs.

Physical solutions had limits. I understood that now.

Priya did not answer my messages. Over the next three days, I sent two, merely checking on her and saying I had destroyed what I had shown her.

There was no reply.

I saw her once in the car park. She was getting into her car when she noticed me walking away from the van. She climbed in more quickly and shut the door. She did not wave.

Daniel's number went to voicemail every time I rang. After the fourth attempt, I stopped.

Mum rang on Friday night and asked whether I had brought the box to her yet.

I told her I had dealt with it.

She asked what that meant.

"I destroyed the tapes," I said.

She was silent for several seconds. Then she said, "Good," and ended the call.

I kept working my routes. I arrived on time, cleared tickets and logged service visits. Martin asked whether I felt better after my personal day.

"Yes," I told him. "The family business is sorted."

But I began watching screens differently.

Every television I connected. Every monitor I tested. Every mobile screen I glimpsed while activating a Virgin Media Super Hub 2 or checking a faulty coaxial wall connection in a main bedroom.

I watched for anything I had not requested. Any video that began by itself. Any memory notification I had not triggered.

I disabled every automated Memories feature on my mobile and laptop. Every photo montage. Every anniversary reminder. Every suggested album. I switched them all off.

The safest choice left to me was to keep the programme unseen by anybody else.

That was it.

That was all I had.