Mr Keytes’s words repeat in my head. The whole school is behind me. The whole school, packed into minibuses and coaches following me down the motorway, cheering and blaring their horns, all the way to Birmingham. And when we get there they’ll all be watching me walk in, wishing me luck and patting me on the back because they think I’m going to win, but they don’t know I haven’t won a single match for a week. I’ve lost my game brain. I’m like Spider-Man without his webs, Thor without his hammer, Superman without his super powers.

I swallow hard, like I’ve got a golf ball stuck in my throat.

‘Felix,’ says Mr Keytes. ‘Are you okay?’

I shake my head.

‘No, sir, not really.’

What Mr Keytes Said

Mr Keytes said that it’s okay to cry if you are worried about someone. It’s okay to cry if you miss them. It just means you care about them.

Mr Keytes says he feels like it every day, that he still misses the person he loved and sometimes he feels like she’s with him even though she is dead.

I told him that my granddad isn’t dead, he’s just not very well; that he hasn’t been himself for ages because he missed my grandma loads, and still does. That’s when I told Mr Keytes that I miss her as well. That Granddad’s house feels empty without her and there’s a big empty space inside of me too.

Mr Keytes said he knew this, but caring about someone when they are alive is as important as caring about them when they are dead and that we should take the chance to tell them how we feel before it’s too late.

I said I told my grandma I loved her loads of times and I’ve told my granddad I love him as well. He said to make sure he knows I mean it, and that it shouldn’t be something I just shout without thinking when I walk out of the door. He said lots of people do that, like when they add ‘x’ at the end of a text message. It’s just a thing that’s become normal, like people have trigger-finger at the end of a text – they just add the ‘x’ automatically.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

But I’m very sure that Mr Keytes misses his wife.

Teatime in Germany, Again . . .

‘Now look where you’re going or you’ll spill the gravy.’