‘What like those half sugar ones?’ I hate those reduced sugar baked beans. They taste like crap. ‘Oh, right.’ I got the pantomime reference a little too late.

‘Never mind,’ he said, then he opened a cupboard and shook his head. ‘Crisps and biscuits but only the cheap ones. Okay?’ He handed me five pounds.

I grabbed my rucksack, earbuds and coat and I left. I’m glad he didn’t ask me why I was going into the village. I’m not sure it’s my best idea but it’s worth checking out. A few kids from my school live in the village but nobody I’m friends with. Farah Shah lives between my village and town. I don’t know how I know that. I’m not a stalker; it’s just something I heard and chose to remember. Farah is in some of my lessons but we don’t speak. She’s the popular girl. All the boys want to go out with her and all the girls want to be her. I’d like to be able to say hello without turning into something that resembles an overripe vegetable.

*

I kept an eye out for her, just in case, as I walked past the row of shops: a barber’s, a hairdresser’s – of the old lady variety – post office, art gallery (go figure) and corner shop. On the other side of the road there’s the pub – the Limping Fox, where Dad used to go – an Indian restaurant, which is apparently well nice, a florist and a printer’s that was almost never open. There were a few people about but I kept my head down and nobody noticed me. It was February and it was cold so no one was hanging about.

It was a short walk past the village green and its olde worlde stocks that the tourists loved and the giant cedar tree that everyone fretted over when we had high winds. Tucked behind a row of terraced cottages was the village library. It had been years since I came here. I must have been at primary school. It looked exactly as I remembered it and there was something reassuring about that.

According to the fancy stone over the door the library had once been the old schoolhouse and was built in 1837. It had automatic door buttons, which weren’t here the last time I visited. I stepped inside and the warmth overpowered me. There was a blow heater above the door and I moved quickly out of the way. Coming in from the cold the blast of heat was nice at first but if I overheated I’d sweat and I hate that. Inside it had barely changed. It still had the high ceiling with its wooden-beamed roof trusses, arched windows, rows and rows of books and that aroma that only libraries have.