‘You can’t stop a train,’ Dad remarked, with a relish in the words, as if letting them in on something not many people knew. ‘You can hold it up, you can get in the way if you’re daft enough, but it will always get where it’s going.’ And even as the sentence finished, the train had jolted forward, settling almost immediately back into its thoroughbred trot, and James had rested his face against the window and felt the miles thumping by.

At the dinner itself, James wore the stiff white shirt Mum had sent him with, but Sally didn’t tease him because she herself was in a velour dress which she claimed several times was velvet. He could no longer remember what they ate, though he did recall Sally’s being offered a glass of red wine, which she drank with a display of insouciance but with shining eyes.

The main memory James came away with, and which he still held even now, was of how everyone seemed to love Dad. Red-faced, hearty men ruffled his thick black hair, calling him by a nickname – Sergeant – for reasons James couldn’t guess at. They asked James what he wanted to do for a job, and he said he wanted to make computer games, and they all said no no, you want to be in weather, pal, and young James laughed so eagerly at everything that his face started to get sore.

In the hotel room, which they returned to at an intoxicatingly late hour, Dad slept on the floor on an arrangement of sofa cushions, giving his children the bed. They lay side by side, wakeful, aware it was a little odder now to be sharing a bed than when they were really young. Although it had been a very long day, its events had elevated James to a high from which sleep was a distant prospect. He lay on his back, shuffling about, occasionally hearing Sally grumble and tut. He was almost certain that she was asleep, though, and that he was alone to face the unthinkable hours of the morning, when she rolled onto her side and took from the bedside cabinet the notepad and ballpoint pen. He saw her back arch as she began to scribble on the pad, and in the half-dark squinted to see what she had been working on. It was an analogue version of the games he liked to make.

You are in a spaceship bound for the Moon on a mission to collect rocks. Out of one window you suddenly see something strange. It looks like a planet that’s never been discovered before.

Write ‘A’ to carry on to the Moon as per your orders

Or

‘B’ to change course to check out this new place.

Please write your answer below to continue the game.