Gareth sat with his back against the ramparts, eight hundred feet above the valley floor. He peered intently through squinted eyes into blurring haze, trying to identify the familiar landmarks. The golf course, bounded by the Dee, was obvious enough and knowing the line of the canal, that too took its place in the shimmering vista. Further east, where the narrow boats chugged for a fifth of a mile across Telford’s aqueduct, a hundred and twenty feet above the river, not one of the nineteen arches were visible in the smudged Turner landscape. Up the valley to the west, the Cistercians had built their abbey in the Valley of the Cross, but a blotch of woodland concealed the ruins. His nain always called the place Llyn Egwestl. He could just make out the cottage where she’d been born and lived all her life. Remembering the Sunday teas, he felt himself slide even further into the pathos of nostalgic memories. He got to his feet and willed himself out of the self-pity that had tinged the edges of his day since breakfast.

To impress her mother, Beth-Ann had squeezed fresh orange juice and warmed a bag of Sainsbury’s croissants. There was unsalted French butter, a jar of good blackcurrant jam and a box of deluxe muesli. Gareth quipped something about Aldi not being good enough anymore and she gave him a look that could kill, mouthing, ‘Shut up and eat.’ Louise pretended not to notice and became a loud American, effusive about her daughter’s efforts and the sunshine streaming through the kitchen window. The coffee, dark and continental, had carried Gareth back to the café on the Piazza Anfiteatro in Lucca and a much happier time with Gwion. Louise distracted him, wanting to know what to look out for in Liverpool, but as their breakfast progressed Gwion broke through her prattling and Gareth felt the bleakness of their estrangement seep through him.

He declined Louise’s invitation to go and be a tourist with them, thinking he’d be miserable company. As he washed up the breakfast dishes, though, he realised that being on his own all day would only make him feel more depressed and he began to regret his decision. Then the idea came to him that he could cycle himself out of it; strong physical exercise would get the hormones pumping around his body and lift his spirits. In less than an hour Gareth had crossed the bridge and was cycling along quiet country roads around the old estate to meet the lane that followed the river Clywedog up to Esclusham Mountain. There he’d take the forestry track to World’s End.