Theo ignores her. ‘Did a pirate slash you with his cutlass?’

‘I got in a fight with an alien,’ Nick says. ‘In fact, it was a pirate alien.’

‘Wow,’ says Lotte, ‘that’s awesome!’

Joe claps his hands together. ‘The ladies will go wild when they see those scars. You look like one tough mother. Grab your kickers and let’s hit that hill.’

Matt hasn’t stopped staring at her brother. ‘Is that from—’

‘Yep,’ says Nick.

Bethany still has her back to them.

‘They don’t look quite as bad now, Son,’ their father says.

Nick shrugs on his T-shirt and grins at Amy. ‘Don’t want to scare the natives,’ he says, studiously avoiding looking at Bethany.

Amy doesn’t respond; she can’t bear him smiling at her when he still doesn’t know the truth.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, SOMERSET

23

NICK

I must have been about Lotte’s age. It was probably late May, because it was coming up to my birthday. I can’t remember if it was the end of term or a weekend – there was no school, but in other respects it was a usual day for us – Dad was at work and our mother was painting and didn’t want to be disturbed. Bethany was supposed to be looking after me. To be in Bethany’s charge meant that she would tell me what game we were playing and what I had to do, but there was nothing actually comforting or caring about it. We’d stolen some stale Jacobs crackers and the tail end of a packet of mixed dry fruit from one of the kitchen cupboards. I was picking all the bits of orange peel out of my share and moaning about the burnt taste of the raisins. I left a trail of crumbs and rind on the lawn and was followed by a robin, as if I was a juvenile Pied Piper.

It was definitely Bethany’s idea to play in the ruin at the bottom of the garden. I would never have dared, because it was strictly forbidden by our father. Once the valley where we lived was well populated: there was some kind of industry here and there’d been a railway. Now all that was left was a flat length of track that had been turned into a cycle path for hobby bikers, and the tumbledown ruins of cottages, hovels, pigsties and kilns. We had one of the better-preserved cottages in our garden: two walls remained, one had a chimney and the remnants of a bread oven. The outline of the house was marked out in crumbling brick and the whole thing was festooned with ivy. Buddleia and brambles sprouted from cracks in the masonry, and sycamore saplings had invaded the living room.

‘I bet you can’t climb to the top!’ Bethany said.