Danny had finished his tea and eaten all of the little iced cakes as he’d bombarded him with questions. He had answered as truthfully as he could, but as the birds piped their lovely music and the wind tossed the top of the trees, he felt a strange sense of peace. His decision to keep his survival secret had been the right one. Death was hard enough to understand and accept when you were as young as Danny and George, and to give any child false hope only to dash it away again would be too cruel – and ultimately very selfish.

He’d tried to ignore the gnawing pain in his gut, but it had become too demanding and he reached into his pocket for the small bottle of morphine pills. The doctor had warned him not to take too many at a time, but he slipped two into his mouth and swallowed them down with the last of the cold tea.

‘Are you crook?’ asked Danny with a frown. ‘You don’t look too good.’

‘I’ve just got a bit of indigestion,’ he replied, rubbing his chest. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

‘My grandpa gets that,’ muttered Danny. ‘He takes pills every morning, but I’m not supposed to know, cos he says it will worry Grandma Jane.’ He gave a deep sigh and poked a stick through the ashes under the billycan. ‘Grown-ups are really complicated, aren’t they?’

‘I reckon they are,’ he replied softly. ‘But then boys can be complicated too. I know I was when I was your age.’

Danny regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Did you hate your gran kissing you, and people patting you on the head, and your mum coming into your room when you didn’t want her to, even though you like it when she kisses you goodnight?’

He smiled as the pain began to ease. ‘All of that and more. I didn’t like girls either, and hated doing homework after school, and having to wash.’

Danny shot him a broad grin of acknowledgement. ‘Girls are silly, aren’t they?’

‘You’ll learn to appreciate them when you’re older,’ he replied with a soft smile.

Danny wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s better when it’s just me and Billy and George. Girls just complicate things and want to take over.’

‘I suppose you and your mates come up here all the time,’ he said thoughtfully as he tried to steer the conversation back to more important things. ‘Is that why you made this camp?’

‘George thought it was a stupid idea, so me and Billy made it on our own. We hoped you’d find it, so we could talk to you. That’s why we left a note and food and everything.’

‘Yeah, I saw the note. Tell me about your mates, Danny.’