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said. ‘How long are you going to live in this thing, day and night? What’ve you got stuck on the back?’
    He wriggled away from her touch, but not before she’d picked off two or three tiny green burrs. ‘Where’ve you been? You’ve got lots of these stuck on you...’
    He shrugged. His face darkened, and he pretended to be preoccupied with poking a knife deep inside the toaster to dig out a smouldering crust. With his other hand he started scratching at the bare skin of his neck. He had a new rash of nettle blebs there.
    ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside. I’d had that dream again. I thought Dad was back. I went outside and down the garden ’cos I thought he was back.’
    ‘Silly boy,’ she said very softly. A shadow had crossed her face too, the same one which had darkened his. She stood up and behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. ‘You and your dreams, you big bony silly boy...’ She pressed her mouth between his shoulder blades. ‘Phew, you’re a bit whiffy, aren’t you? Throw this old thing into the wash and run upstairs and get a shower. You’ll feel a lot better and you and Christopher can spend some time together.’
    ‘What about the birds, Lawrence? The swifts?’ I said. ‘We can get a good look at them from your tower, with your binoculars. You must have a bird book or something in the house, we can read up about them and...’
    ‘I got a better idea,’ he interrupted. ‘But we might get a bit dirty. So I’ll keep this shirt on a bit longer. For this morning, at least. Hey, Mr Chris, are you any good at climbing?’
    Juliet tried to dissuade him, but she couldn’t. She wheedled at him to go upstairs and get changed and spend some cool, calm, quality time with me... He ignored her.
    She carried on trying to dissuade him, as we followed him meekly out of the French windows and into the woodland. But he hardly seemed to hear her, as he strode ahead. He was wresting the initiative back from her. She had had her time with me and told me who-knows-what family secrets and rumours and tittle-tattle, lubricated by wine and gin and snuggled into the sofa all night, and now, on a brightening summer’s morning at the beginning of June, he was in charge and we were going to do what he wanted to do, never mind the so-called grown-ups who were fuzzy and fuddled and hung-over.
    We came to the foot of the Scots pine.
    First of all we appraised the car. It was impossible not to. Shabby and neglected, a hulking ton-weight of rust and blistered wood and wormy leather, it was still amazing: a Daimler hearse, in a Lincolnshire woodland. It wouldn’t matter how often you strolled down there, on a frosty winter’s afternoon or a moonlit midsummer’s night, it would always be something to happen on, an extraordinary thing to behold.
    So we paused and cocked our heads at the car. We couldn’t help it. With its showering of twigs and moss, and the smash in the glass as though it had had a wonderful adventure with gangsters and shotguns, the mighty machine was a picture. For a moment I thought – and I was sure Juliet was thinking and hoping too – it might be such a distraction, such an anomaly in the scheme of things which might or might not happen that morning, that Lawrence’s idea might be forgotten.
    To prolong the moment, and to postpone what the boy was wanting to do, I skirted the car and had a closer look. I kicked at the tyres. I rubbed at the rust on the radiator grille. And, my hand going instinctively to the handle of the driver’s door, I saw that it was ajar.
    ‘Funny,’ I said, opening the door wide. ‘I’m sure I closed it properly. Leave it open and the courtesy light stays on and the battery goes flat...’
    Sure enough, no light. No soft green light from the little bulb in the headlining of the car. I felt under the front seat, where I’d left the ignition key, slotted it in and turned it and heard the reassuring