Terence tried his best to ignore her as they bounced and jolted over the ruts and half-buried tree roots. He was concerned about the damage such a rough track might inflict on his treasured car, for it was never meant to withstand such a journey, and the last thing he needed now was to break down and have to force Sandra to walk the rest of the way in those ridiculous shoes.

As the engine whined and the suspension complained Terence fought the steering wheel in an effort to keep the car on the track and away from the encroaching trees, which threatened to scratch the immaculate black paintwork or snap the heavy straps that held the pile of suitcases on the roof.

Then, at last, the track began to widen, and he could see a glimmer of white ahead. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said excitedly. ‘Look, Sandra, there’s the hospital and Granny Gwyn’s side porch.’

She shrugged, making it all too clear she didn’t care one bit about the hospital or anything else to do with Morgan’s Reach.

Terence came to the end of the track and let the engine idle as he drank in the sight of his boyhood home.

The broad main street was almost empty, but for the police-department utility parked outside the police house and the few dozing horses tied to the hitching post outside the pub. Smoke streamed from the forge where a mongrel dog sat guard by the neighbours’ fence, a couple of women were gossiping in the shade of the boardwalk outside the general store and a group of small boys was haring about on bicycles, kicking up the dust in the road as they executed sliding twists and turns.

He noted the neat but yellowing gardens, the white picket fences and the rusty windmill which had stood sentinel over the town’s waterhole long before he’d even been born – nothing much had changed during the years he’d been away; it was as if he was a boy again.

Terence began to relax for the first time in ages as the sight of this wonderfully familiar place warmed his heart. For this was home. This was where he belonged, where he would be welcomed back into the heart of his family and given the chance to put things right again.

‘Is this it?’ said Sandra with scorn. ‘You’ve brought me all this way for this … this backwoods slum?’