Will looked around and then, feeling like a cartoon thief, crept towards the alcove where the desk stood, its chair neatly aligned in the central gap, with the filing cabinet beside. A small pile of paperwork was on the desk, held down by a clay paperweight in the shape of a crude hedgehog made by a child, one of Daisy’s kids, perhaps. The top letter bore the logo of the building company working at the old holiday park, Loxton’s. Will peered down to read the first line: ‘Ref: Your complaint about heavy vehicles driving through Severn Sands.’ Ha! The old bugger would have more to complain about than a few lorries now! Will reached down to pick up the letter, but at that exact moment his phone rang in his pocket. The noise startled him and in his rush to silence it he dropped it and it slid under the fringe at the base of an upholstered armchair. As he scrabbled on his hands and knees to retrieve it, he heard a key in the lock of the front door. He grabbed the phone and muted it as the door swung open. Mr Bradshaw, in the hallway, coughed, sighed, shut the door, and walked past the living room along the hallway passage beside the stairs and into the kitchen. He moved painfully slowly, the floorboards creaking with every step. Will’s heart was beating so hard in his chest he was afraid the vibrations might alert the landlord to his presence. A moment later, he heard the sound of a kettle being filled in the kitchen and he crept quietly back into the hallway, and trotted up the stairs. Halfway up, it occurred to him that he should have pretended to have come in through the front door, opened and closed it, but by then his phone was ringing again and the opportunity for any subtler subterfuge had been lost.

He answered the phone as he ran up the second flight of stairs. It was his mother.

* * *

Angharad Jones had emigrated to Majorca to live with her sister when she retired from her role as bar and entertainments manager at Channel View holiday park. Now, most of her contact with Will was via FaceTime, although she came back twice a year to spend weekends in London so, as she used to say with tedious predictability, she could be introduced to Will’s latest fling. Age had not made her quieter, nor less flamboyant, and she expected to be taken out to dinner and to the theatre, or treated to some other form of glamorous entertainment. She flirted outrageously with Will’s male friends, and tried to befriend the female ones by lavishing them with compliments and gifts. Will was never quite sure if he looked forward to his mother’s visits, or dreaded them.