He went over in his mind the details of the weekend. The penduline tit was a good bird to get. He saw it as he had seen it in the field, and regretted again that he had not been the person to find it. He remembered Tina, strong and alive, playing football on the sand, and the thrill of touch as they fell together, and the companionship of their shared conversation. He wished that he had made a definite arrangement to see her again. He wondered when they would next meet. He let himself imagine what it would be like to kiss her.

Yet, underneath these normal, teenage dreams, he was frightened. Important as Tina was, the fear dismissed any pleasure in the thought of her. There was no one to tell. No one would believe him. He had thought, for a moment, that he might tell Tina, but realized almost immediately that she was the last person to tell, and that she must not be involved.

He had always hidden in his room. It had been his room since he had been a baby. Once, in some gesture of paternal affection, his father had had a new room furnished and decorated for him, a big room in the attic. There had been a table with a huge and sophisticated model train set, already laid out on the green baize. He had come home from school at the beginning of the Christmas holiday to be greeted by the new room. He had not been able to face it and had refused to move. There had been a confrontation, but he had won. It was one of the few times he had won. In his small dark room, which he kept very tidy, but which had a slightly musty human smell, he felt safe. His father thought that he had been too young to remember his mother, but he remembered a sense of her, a scent which had become associated in his mind with the scent of his room.

He remembered too, very clearly, a number of incidents connected with her. He was sure that they had happened, but he had never discussed them with his father, so this had never been confirmed. He did not know where his mother was now. He knew that she had remarried, twice. He supposed that she was still alive.

Adam wondered sometimes if it was his mother who had caused the distance, the coldness between his father and himself. She still seemed to stand between them. A relative had once told Adam that he looked very like his mother. When he was a child he had tried to please his father, but had always felt that he was a disappointment. He had lived for years with his father’s mockery.

He remembered, still with embarrassment, the evening he had brought Tom French home to stay. Tom had been at his peak then, a celebrity, and he had given time, experience, even an old pair of binoculars to Adam. They had been together, to see a rarity, quite near to the village where the Andersons lived. For some reason Tom had not been able to get home, so Adam had invited him to stay at his house, proud to do something in return. His father, unusually, had been in, and although finally he had allowed Tom to stay, he had been offensive, rude, as if there had been some intense personal animosity between them. Tom had been understanding, of course, but Adam had felt awkward about the incident for a long time afterwards. His father’s obvious dislike of Tom made his concern now, to find out how the twitcher died, a little hard to accept. Adam tended to see it only as an attempt to meddle, but did not give the matter much thought. He had long ago given up trying to understand his father.