His grandfather ate his methodically, like a task to be completed, before neatly putting his knife and fork together across his spotless plate. ‘Bloody good. Thanks, boy.’ He picked up the honey jar, which was almost empty, and the last from the shelf in the outhouse. Dylan knew he was thinking of the bees, which – he had been told – were originally acquired and tended by his grandmother; long-time residents of the two wooden hives under the big apple tree behind the outhouse, the entire swarm had disappeared overnight, back in October. Dylan hadn’t minded unduly, the honey-collecting, dripping and scraping the stuff off the frames, had been the least favourite of his chores – worse even than scrubbing the shit from the hen house; but his grandfather remained downcast at the loss. Bees went for a reason – something had spooked them, he had declared, as doleful as Dylan had ever seen him. Even now, two months on, whenever he was outside, Dylan noticed him skirting the empty hives, throwing dark, hopeful looks at the sky through the bare branches of the apple tree, as if longing alone might bring the cloud swarming back.

‘The broadband is down again,’ he barked now. ‘So, none of your games today.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dylan said, even though it did. The Internet was slow, but at least it mostly worked, which was more than could be said for the palm-sized pay-as-you-go phone – bought as a precaution against his mum checking his bills – that rarely managed to find a signal. Gaming felt like a major part of why Dylan had somehow ended up staying so long. He had made new friends through it, loads of them, including a girl called Zee, who lived in Perth, and to whom he had started chatting outside their online battling. Recently, they had had a joking exchange about meeting up for real, somewhere halfway like New York. Though, I’d really like to visit London, she had said. Dylan had been holding the sentence inside him, enjoying its possibilities, as well as the absence of pressure to do anything about them. Not yet anyway.

‘And no studying required today. It being Christmas Eve.’ The old man flashed a rare grin, revealing the strong white teeth that seemed at increasing odds with his skeletal frailty, and which Dylan found as unnerving a reminder of his father as the framed boyhood photograph of Lucas nailed to the wall beside the wood-burning stove – even through the age-speckled glass it didn’t take a genius to spot the echo of his own features there. ‘Though you shouldn’t have stayed,’ his grandfather added with the sudden gruffness that swept in from nowhere, especially after he had said something soft or kind. ‘Iris knows I want her to put you on the train at Ludlow. Music needs facing, Dylan, and that’s a fact.’