It took the rapping of the cottage’s heavy bronze front door knocker, to the accompaniment of what sounded like pounding fists, for Dylan to tear out of the room. At the top of the staircase, he took a deep breath, gripping the broad wooden banister rail, and beginning to descend very slowly, one step at a time. Music must be faced. His grandfather was in the sitting room, he knew, in the weathered leather armchair with the studs round its edges, immersed in a book on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of his many heroes. Beside him was the fire Dylan had laid, roaring in the grate, warming the thinning, still elegant frame, legs covered with a moth-eaten, tartan blanket.

There was another round of pounding and rapping and Dylan halted. Music. Must. Be. Faced. Oh, God. But his grandfather shuffled into view in the same moment, allowing him to remain where he was, hovering in a confusion of hope and fear and guilt, halfway down the stairs. From this vantage point he could see the full baldness of the old man’s head, smooth as a bared skull beneath the white feathers of his hair. He was still reaching for the handle when the door flew open, presenting a person who at first glance looked too crazed to be his father – arms flung wide, snow coating his hair, eyebrows and the shoulders of his heavy black coat, his mouth wide and roaring. ‘How dare you… my child… how dare you… how dare…?’

Dylan heard his grandfather say, ‘Hello, Lucas,’ but his dad’s explosion into the hall continued, with shouting, swearing, and pushing his whole body into him. The old man put his arms up as if to defend himself, staggering backwards, losing his balance in the process. He began to topple, slowly, like a tree felled. Dylan hurled himself down the stairs, arriving just in time to cushion the fall as he landed.

‘Dylan.’ His father was aghast, breathing hard. ‘Are you okay?’ A flurry was going on around him, with his sister and mother pushing round the sides of the doorway and his mother winning the elbow-fight to get to him as he tried to help the old man to his feet.

‘Dylan, darling…’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘John… are you both all right?’ She tried to pull his grandfather by the arm, but he waved her away, leaning just on Dylan.

‘Hey there, all of you…’ Dylan grunted, not knowing how to sound, or what on earth to say. The old man, now upright, was gripping his arm so tightly that it hurt, and Dylan was holding him in return, as if, in the face of this invasion, they were each clinging to the other.

‘We’re here for Dylan,’ his dad barked like an army sergeant, his eyes boring into the old man as if he were ready to draw a weapon if he so much as moved.