‘In denial?’ he says, but I don’t have to say anything about my looming birthday because he’s off on one, telling me how he wishes he was thirty again, whole life ahead of him, the choices he’d make… ‘Don’t give up your freedom,’ he says. I’m not the only one in denial.

‘Thanks, mate, you’re the man!’ Joe says, clapping me enthusiastically on the back when we return. He doesn’t say anything about the Tupperware container that I now see sticking out of his bag, full of what looks like chopped kale.

‘You’re a rock star,’ Bethany says, taking one of the hot, greasy packets. Through a mouthful of bread and cheese she says, ‘Do you remember that time we went to Uphill beach?’ A tenner she only eats half of it.

‘What time? We went, like, every weekend in summer…’

‘Autumn, winter, spring,’ Amy joins in.

Lotte and Theo have lined up all their buckets and are arguing over who’s caught the most fish.

‘That beach in Weston-super-Mare?’ asks Matt.

Bethany starts talking at fifty miles an hour about how incredible Uphill is – how perfect that stretch of sand was; the time we tried to dam the river; the day Amy fell in with all her clothes on.

I nod and say to Matt, ‘Far end of Weston. Uphill’s a village – you know, past the golf course?’ The Flowers, when they get going, have a tendency to leave other people out. Amy joins in.

‘Do you remember that time you “borrowed” a dinghy? You just untied it and rowed out to sea!’

‘Dad didn’t notice, he was so busy marking student papers, sitting on a bench by the car park.’

They’re right: it was pretty amazing – the River Axe running down one side, the quaint little village behind, the long, rabbitbitten length of hyper-green grass of the golf course flanking it, and those great, empty skies Somerset is so famous for. It had felt safe. It had been safe. In my memory, every time we went there the sun had shone, and we’d spent hours playing with balls and Frisbees, building sandcastles, stealing people’s boats and screaming at how cold the water was. The three of us kids together. Usually it was only Dad looking after us, because Mum was at home painting, but it still felt like we were on a family outing because, back then, we knew where she was, and if her painting had gone well, she’d be pleased to see us. Dad would buy us a Chelsea bun from Banwell Bakery, and chips to eat in the car on the way home.

Yeah, I think, we were happy then.

18

NICK