Not that he wanted to leave. But the RAF ground their pilots at fifty, and rather than take up a desk job, Tiger had settled for a pension and the chance of staying in the pilot’s seat. He now flew for a civilian helicopter company–executives to and from Battersea Heliport, well-to-do passengers to Ascot and Goodwood, bits of filming for TV companies, that sort of thing. It wasn’t combat flying, but then the combat part of the job had not been the attraction. He was up in the air, in his own craft; he ‘danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings’, and that was what mattered.

Wing-Commander Wilson died the year after his son married, so he never saw his grandchildren. While Tiger’s nickname had been bestowed as a mark of his father’s fondness for the Tiger Moth, Tiger’s own children’s names–Aisling and Kirsty–were the product of his wife Erica’s Scottish and Irish parentage.

So here he was. Sitting pretty with two pretty daughters away at uni. Still married, still flying helicopters and quite comfortably off. And yet he knew that his best days were behind him. The days of high achievement. The days of excitement and hunger. A time when everything seemed to be in front of him; his children young, his wife laughing and carefree. Now that they were all older a different mood prevailed. Not unhappiness, not even discontent. Just some general all-enveloping cloud of acceptance.

Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. Maybe you just had to get used to a gradual winding down. It was a thought that left him sometimes frightened and more often dispirited.

And that’s why he had mentioned the secret society. Though, if he were honest, the moment he had done so he felt a bit of a fool.

‘So what exactly do you mean by a secret society?’ Christopher Devon laid down a three and a two against Tiger’s double three.

‘Sounds like the Masons to me,’ Gary Flynn muttered into his pint.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Tiger, opening a packet of peanuts.

‘Well what then?’

‘I don’t really know. It’s just that it might be a bit of fun to try and make a difference, have a bit of excitement, instead of just whinging about things the whole time and feeling powerless to do anything about them.’

Christopher looked at him sideways. ‘You sound like Robin Hood.’

Gary leaned back in his chair and shrugged. ‘Why don’t you join the Rotary Club?’

‘Because I’m happy to play doms with you two but I’m buggered if I want to be surrounded by any more old men.’ He picked up a handful of peanuts and tipped them into his mouth.

‘Well thank you very much,’ said Christopher. ‘Are you knocking?’

Gary said, ‘Not just yet, thank you,’ and put down the five and two.