On Dean’s day off I leave him with Cara and head out to pick up the last supplies. The camping shop is in the next district but one, in a row of specialist traders. I’ve passed it before but never had any call to go in. As I push the door, a bell ting-tings. Proper old school. A skinny old man comes out of the back of the shop, newspaper in hand, and nods ‘Morning’ to me before taking a seat on a stool behind the counter and settling back down to read. I take out my phone and scroll down my list, brushing through the racks of cagoules, examining elasticated inner cuffs and breathable linings. I look at map protectors and whistles and torches, and then at thermal underwear.

‘Looking for anything in particular?’ says the man, eyes still fixed on his newspaper.

‘I’ve got a list,’ I say, going over to him.

He looks at it, then up at me. ‘Where you going?’

‘Spending the summer at my sister’s in Suffolk.’

‘And you’ll need a tent there, will you?’

‘We might do some camping while we’re there. Explore the countryside.’

‘Might you. Nothing firmly planned then?’

‘I’ll see what the prices are.’ I shrug and move away. ‘We’ll need the clothes anyway, got nothing suitable.’

I wander over to the small bookshelf and run my hands idly over the spines. Birdwatching… wildlife… birdwatching… birdwatching for children… angling… geology. I pick up a second-hand paperback, Foraging, and flip through the pages, stopping to read. I sense him watching me and snap it shut. It puffs up a cloud of dust.

‘When I was younger a lot of people used to do it.’ He smiles and looks at me intently.

The bell ting-tings and a middle-aged man comes in, asking for waterproof trousers in a Large. He buys them and leaves.

The owner watches me for a while as I try out binoculars, then eases himself up off his stool and beckons me to follow, round the L of the shop, through an archway.

In the inner room recess, three mannequins dressed head to toe in waterproofs – a man, a woman, and a child a little older than Cara, her dark hair cut into a bob with a blunt fringe – crouch round a campfire, in attitudes of rigor mortis. The mother, skin a waxy yellow, eyes full and staring, whistle dangling from a lanyard round her neck, clutches the cup from a thermal flask. Three silver sleeping bags – one junior-sized – sit neatly rolled in the pop-up tent behind them. Kendal mint cake and firelighters litter the groundsheet. A square of tinfoil lines the portable grill.

I inspect the tent, shiny green nylon, just big enough for one person, or one person and a child. ‘I’ll take the lot,’ I say, turning to him.

‘Sizes?’ he says, going to his stockroom, and I tell him, giving Cara’s next size up.