‘What does your mum think you’ve been doing, anyhow?’

‘Hard drugs, probably. They’ve always said they don’t mind if we smoke pot, as they call it, but that anything else is a no-no.’

‘My parents would be really disappointed if they knew I’d even smoked,’ said Stephen.

‘Sometimes I think it’d be easier if mine were like that,’ said Cass.

‘Nah, you’re lucky.’

‘She doesn’t like me seeing Hamish, I don’t think. She’s been quite snippy with me.’

‘Well, maybe she thinks he’s not a very good, you know, influence.’

‘Yeah. Maybe,’ said Cass. But she looked doubtful.

Celia usually checked on the henhouse morning and evening now, although Stephen still topped up the hens’ feeder and water and cleaned out their bedding. He went out into the brightness of the day, to see to the birds. Sadie the guinea-fowl trotted along behind him and he threw her a little corn. The new birds weren’t in any case laying yet. When he came back down the post had arrived, bringing a letter from his mother. It was plump and crinkly. Stephen was always amazed that flimsy air mail paper could make it all the way across the world without tearing or falling apart. It was like the outer casing of garlic, so thin that the impress of the biro carried right through it, yet it had come all this way, undamaged. She’d enclosed a photograph of an old painting and a family tree, for Celia. When he saw how neatly she’d written it out, he felt a pang of missing her: her orderliness, her calm. On the back of the photo was a white sticker with ‘Portrait miniature of William Gale, later VC. Probably painted during the 1840s.’ The sticker, too, touched Stephen: how much thought she’d put into it, not writing directly on the back of the photo because the ink might’ve shown through the image, or smudged.

Enclosed, too, were notes from each of his sisters. Eight-year-old Karen had drawn lines across the page, so her writing wouldn’t dip as it came closer to the paper’s edge. ‘Dear Stephen, we miss you I went to sleep in your room I told your bear you wood be home soon. Is it nice in England? Send me a letter just for me, love Karen. xx’