‘I just …’ Jordy shifted from foot to foot, his brow furrowed above his eyes. ‘Just bloody Harry and Anabelle, sometimes! He’s getting big for his boots and she’s just cooing over him.’ He shook his head as if inviting disbelief at the load he had to carry.

Aaron felt his patience snap. ‘I don’t know what you want, Jordy. Harry’s home safely and he’s agreed to go to uni. Why not relax and enjoy it? Take him and Anabelle out for fish and chips to celebrate. Stop being a dick.’

Jordy scowled, gazing outwards instead of meeting Aaron’s eye. ‘Do you think there’s anything wrong with Harry?’ he asked abruptly.

‘No,’ Aaron answered truthfully and impatiently. ‘Do you?’

‘Dunno.’ Finally, Jordy smiled ruefully. ‘Maybe I’m worrying about nothing. I’ll just be glad when he goes to uni and meets more girls. He’s stuck in this bloody backwater where there are hardly any his age.’

‘He’ll meet whoever he meets,’ Aaron replied enigmatically. ‘He’s an adult now, Jord.’

‘And he needs to meet girls,’ Jordy repeated determinedly. But then he clapped Aaron suddenly on the shoulder and flashed a smile. ‘So you think Harry’s OK, do you? Maybe I will take them both out to celebrate. You’re right. Cheers, cuz.’

Parish Meetings were held wherever the Chair of the Parish Meetings decided. The present chair, Megan, had very stylishly had the ground floor of her red-brick house converted to open-plan, so recent meetings had taken place there, with people on sofas, dining chairs, footstools, borrowed chairs, garden chairs and perched on bar stools in a row behind the quartz counter that demarcated the kitchen area.

However, owing to the long, sultry days they were experiencing, tonight’s meeting had been moved out onto the lawn, with seats arranged in ranks. Aaron had agreed to his mum’s request to call at De Silva House so they could walk down together or, in the case of Aunt Norma, wheel, Yvonne having hired her a lightweight wheelchair. Their progress out of Frenchmen’s Way, passing Yvonne’s rows of hollyhocks and delphiniums before the hedges and cottages of Long Lane to Droody Road was severely hampered by the number of people who stopped to ask after her ankle.

‘It’s not bad,’ she told everyone, looping an elbow over the crutches racked up beside her in the chair. Then she’d launch into a discussion of whether she’d have to wear another cast after she’d returned to hospital for her next appointment at the fracture clinic or might get away with a boot or even a bandage. The meeting had begun by the time Aaron pushed his great-aunt up the drive of Megan’s house and up the side of the building.

He parked Aunt Norma and took one of the garden chairs. He instantly identified Clancy’s back view at the end of the second row. She’d changed out of the plain white T-shirt she’d been wearing when he saw her at the Roundhouse this afternoon because now thin blue straps ran over her shoulders, through loops each side of her dress, and tied together between her shoulder blades.