His father shot his son a condescending look. ‘Wake up, son, she’s out of your league. There’s no way her father would allow your relationship to continue – he probably had a word in her shell-like and got her to see sense. She’s only fourteen, after all – far too young to be placing all her eggs in one basket. All he had to do then was find a way of getting you out of the picture so that he could rest easy.’

Ted heaved a sigh. He knew how Olivia looked at him, and you didn’t look at someone like that unless you really liked them. He joined his father in the carriage and sat down heavily next to him.

‘What did he say exactly?’

Craig stared fixedly out of the window. ‘That he knew you and Toff, I mean Olivia, had been seeing each other because he’d caught you in the bottom of his garden by the pond, only you’d run off before he could grab hold of you.’

‘That was a year ago!’ Ted objected.

His father turned to face him, his face radiating disbelief. ‘You didn’t tell me he’d caught the two of you together.’

Ted blinked; he’d forgotten he’d kept that quiet from his father. He tried to bring the conversation back to the present. ‘But I didn’t nick any fish.’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Craig, exasperated. ‘Campbell knows who you are because he saw you!’

‘Only he didn’t,’ Ted insisted, ‘because I ran off with my cap pulled down over my face. If I didn’t see him, he couldn’t possibly have seen me.’

Craig drummed his fingers against the window. ‘Well, he must have.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

His father turned to face him wearily. ‘Only that if I didn’t want a fuss, I’d do as he asked. Oh, and he gave me a month’s wages if I promised we’d not come back.’

Ted frowned. ‘That just goes to prove he’s lying. If you suspected someone of nickin’ your stuff, you’d report them to the scuffers, not buy their silence!’

Craig lowered his voice as a middle-aged man wearing a pinstriped suit entered the carriage. ‘We both know that story’s a pile of cock and bull, to make sure you and Olivia stopped being friends …’ he shot his son a sideways glance, ‘… you were just friends, weren’t you?’

Blushing to his roots, Ted nodded quickly before his father could press him any further. ‘You know we were.’

Craig’s gaze bored into the side of Ted’s head. ‘Ted?’

Ted looked up rather sheepishly. ‘It was only once, after her father …’

Craig threw his hands up in exasperation, then hastily put them down again after realising he had gained the attention of the other man. ‘Just the once?’ he muttered. ‘You do know that’s all it takes …’ He clasped a hand to his forehead, but Ted quickly intervened.

‘Don’t worry, Dad, it’s not what you think, we weren’t that stupid.’