Can you imagine a more painful dilemma? Which of those you love will you save? That was the decision that faced me when my son, Thomas, met with a shadow from my childhood and within days he was being strangled in his sleep. As Thomas lay in hospital, I found myself slipping into a place of dreams and darkness, searching for a way to save him. My search opened up the old wounds of my father's sudden suicide and the tales of my ancestors' cruel execution of a child in the seventeenth century.