As things transpire, Daddy and Mr Symington go inside for sandwiches and tea, while Tommy is banished to the car. He sits in the back seat, staring blankly at the steamed-up window, shivering. When Daddy finally appears, he gets in and starts the engine without a word. Tommy is not asked to hold Daddy’s hat.

The car, heaving and rattling through bends and up slopes, is filled with an awful silence. It is as if there is a roll of barbed wire in the driver’s seat instead of Daddy, which is uncoiling itself and filling the small, damp space with cold, sharp thorns. Tommy is trying to keep his shoulder still. It hurts when he moves his arm and there is a horrible grinding feeling which he might be imagining but seems quite real. They have been driving for half an hour with nothing but the thump and squeak of the windscreen wipers for distraction and Tommy has almost fallen into a sour doze when he feels the car slowing down. He opens his eyes and sees they are pulling into a lay-by. The car stops abruptly. Daddy wrenches savagely at the handbrake and turns off the car. Tommy’s mouth goes dry. He has been waiting for his father’s rage to boil over, and now it has.

But Daddy doesn’t say anything for several long minutes. He lights a cigarette and draws on it so hard that half an inch turns to ash. When he inhales it sounds as if he is gasping in pain. In two or three more draws it is gone. Daddy grinds it out in the ashtray and puts both hands on the steering wheel. Tommy sees that his father’s knuckles have gone white. He pushes himself into the angle of the seat and the door, bracing himself. But when Daddy speaks, he doesn’t raise his voice. He just sits, gripping the wheel, staring out through the streaming windscreen.