‘Quite different,’ said the Man. ‘Different altogether.’

It wasn’t easy finding Drywood Common because the signposting was bad around there. But the strange thing was that, once there, the whole lay-out of the common was familiar to him.

‘We’ll park,’ he said, ‘down by the lake.’

He found the lake with ease, driving along the main road that bisected the common, then turning left on to a smaller lane. There were ducks on the pond. It was surrounded by trees, but in the distance you could see houses and a little row of shops. He parked the car by the water and switched off the engine.

Barry was very calm and trusting. He listened intelligently to the policeman’s lecture on behaving himself and not trespassing, and he didn’t fidget or seem bored when the Man stopped talking about that and began to talk about himself. The Man had had a lonely sort of life, a bit like being in prison, and he’d never been allowed out alone. Even when he was in his own room doing his homework, he’d been watched – (‘Leave your door open, dear. We don’t want any secrets in this house’) – and he hadn’t had a single real friend. Would Barry be his friend, just for a few hours, just for that evening? Barry would.

‘But you’re grown up now,’ he said.

The Man nodded. Barry said later when he recalled the details of what his mother called that nasty experience – for he was always able to remember every detail – that it was at this point the Man had begun to cry.

A small, rather dirty, hand touched the Man’s hand and held it. No one had ever held his hand like that before. Not possessively or commandingly – (‘Hold on to me tight, Richard, while we cross the road’) – but gently, sympathetically – lovingly? Their hands remained clasped, the small one covering the large, then the large enclosing and gripping the small. A tension, as of time stopped, held the two people in the car still. The boy broke it, and time moved again.

‘I’m getting a bit hungry,’ he said.

‘Are you? It’s past your teatime. I’ll tell you what, we could have some fish and chips. One of those shops over there is a fish and chip shop.’

Barry started to get out of the car.

‘No, not you,’ the Man said. ‘It’s better if I go alone. You wait here. OK?’

‘OK,’ Barry said.

He was only gone ten minutes – for he knew exactly and from a distance which one of the shops it was – and when he got back Barry was waiting for him. The fish and chips were good, almost as good as those gran used to cook. By the time they had finished eating and had wiped their greasy fingers on his handkerchief, dusk had come. Lights were going up in those far-off shops and houses but here, down by the lake, the trees made it quite dark.