He blinks as if he is bringing himself back into the present day and points in the direction of the reservoir. ‘There’s a new pathway down here now,’ he says, ‘but follow me up through these trees a bit first.’

Under the cover of the trees, the wind doesn’t seem as loud. The rain is still falling, dripping through what is left of the leaves on the branches and landing in fat ice-cold droplets on the ground, on my clothes, on my face. I’m glad I put my wellies on, because the persistent wet weather of the last few days has left the ground slick and muddy. I tread slowly.

‘Do you remember playing here after school?’ Niall asks.

‘I didn’t play here all that often. Not after school, anyway,’ I said. ‘My mum was always terrified I’d get into some sort of trouble. Fall into the reservoir, break a bone climbing a tree, something like that. But I do remember having picnics here, in the summer. With my parents and a friend or two. The grass was so long it almost reached the top of my legs. I remember the smell of it.’

‘It doesn’t smell the same now,’ Niall says. ‘My memory of playing here is just like this, fallen leaves and branches. Mulch beneath our feet. Thick drops of rain, and the smell of the sap and the trees mixed with that of smoke from the coal-fired chimneys. Declan and I, we’d play here most days after school – go home in a state, our clothes mucked to the eyeballs. My poor mother had the washing machine constantly on the go and was forever drying uniforms for us around the radiators or in front of the fire.’

‘What sort of things did you play?’ I ask, watching as he looks around him, touching his hand to some of the trees, staring up through the branches to the sky – as if trying to re-familiarise himself with the place.

‘All sorts,’ he says. ‘Some days we pretended we were soldiers. Others we were stranded on an island somewhere. Some days we just threw stones or sticks into the rezzie. Or we climbed trees. We had a den, you know.’

His face is animated as he talks; I can see the traces of the child he was. Wide-eyed with wonder.

‘I say it was a den, but really it was just a small clearing and there was a fallen tree, which made for a great bench to sit on. The area was really overgrown, so it was the perfect place to hide, to get cover from the rain. We had a password to get into it, which was ridiculous really, seeing as it was only me and Declan who ever went into it. We were eejits, really.’