She looked at me coldly, and then she said: ‘A one-pound brick of plutonium can give cancer to every man, woman and child on earth.’

I moved away and, sheltering beside a blasted hawthorn tree, tried to light a cigarette. What a place to take a boy camping! My father took me to summery woods, and brewed up while I whittled sticks.

My father lied.

Lesley didn’t lie; I had to give her that. Lesley had given our son despair, and the messy breaking-up of a sort of marriage. She hadn’t kept her back turned and her voice down; she hadn’t told him to hurry out and buy some firelighters.

I shivered in the wind; it was icy. This wasn’t a regular stop on our coach schedule. I pictured the brochure. Come on our Mystery Tour! For that Special ‘Day Out with a Difference!’ Our Sunday Trip to Greenham Common, where the temperature is always minus zero! Have your Balls Frozen Off while a woman tells you about Nuclear Annihilation!!! Take a Sightseeing Stroll around the Picturesque Dwellings! Watch the Local Craft of Breaking Up Old Boxes to Build a Fire! Pause to Enjoy the Unique Sport of Attempting to Hang Out a Groundsheet in a Brisk East Wind! We wind our way homewards stopping for that welcome Cup of Tea and a Lively Discussion of our Sexual Failures!!!

Hilda was standing at the fence; a square figure in her tweed coat. She pointed to the wire. From a distance it seemed that a lot of rubbish had blown on to it. She beckoned me, and I came closer. Once I was near I realized my mistake; it wasn’t rubbish at all.

‘Well fancy that,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she’s left a message.’

Baby clothes were hung up, and toys. A teddy-bear dangled; one of its eyes was missing. Prayers and good luck messages were clipped to the fence; they were sheathed in plastic to protect them from the rain. ‘You are beautiful!’ said one. ‘The World is Listening!’ said another. ‘I’ll be Back!’ People had left their addresses: Hamburg, Montreal, Wolverhampton. Nobody seemed to have stayed here for long; they were all somewhere else.

‘Oh,’ cried Hilda. ‘Look at this dear little boy!’

Some children’s photos were pinned up: smiling boys and girls, some of them yellowed with age. It reminded me of a cemetery I’d seen in Spain. I felt sick; hung up like that, it seemed that the children must be dead.

Hilda was standing on tiptoe, inspecting them.

‘I don’t know what he looks like!’ I wailed.

‘Edward?’ She shook her head. ‘He’s not here. None of them are. They’ve vanished into thin air.’

We walked back to the coach. I was plunged into gloom. I wished we had never come; it was a stupid idea. I thought of all those children’s faces, lifting and falling in the wind.