Lucas had appeared in the doorway in the same moment, clutching bags and looking business-like, saying that the upper road would be gritted and they were leaving now. John had turned, but only to fix a wry, maudlin gaze on the small latticed window beside the hearth, an empty noughts and crosses grid against the sheet-white outside.

Lucas squinted at the car tracking up the hillside, willing it on. Wind was picking up the snow now, blowing it off the ground into his, Dylan’s and Lily’s faces, adding to the onslaught already tumbling out of the sky. Pushing the car, a team of three, with him in the middle and the children on either side, had felt good. When the wheels, after lots of slithering, had managed at last to get a proper grip, they had all cheered, slapping their frozen hands together as they had started to jog in its wake. The direness of the situation had so far called for action, not conversation, and Lucas was glad of that, too. He wasn’t sure he could have managed proper talking yet, not with all the words that had passed between him and his father, still lodged in his throat like stones.

Pushing the car, he had been dogged by flashbacks, his body prickling all over again at the feel of the thin, hard cage of bones beneath the old darned jumper as he had steered his father into the sitting room. A dark part of Lucas had wanted to shove then all right – with as much force as he had exerted on Esther’s spluttering Ford; to make the lanky frame sprawl and tremble, not just for the obvious crimes – kidnapping Dylan, driving his mother to her grave – but so that the bastard might feel as crushed as Lucas once had, a little boy, powerless and ashamed, crouching in corners.

‘You don’t fool me,’ he had hissed, releasing his hold once the door was closed, trying not to be riled by the self-pitying hang of his father’s head, the exaggerated rubbing of his arms where he had been gripped, the meal he was making of his tottering, just as he had in the hall, getting everyone running to his aid. Dylan in particular. Soon, there would be crowing about that. Sneering. Lucas knew his own parent. ‘And if you have fooled Dylan, it is because he is a good kid.’

‘I did no fooling…’ His father had shuffled round to face him, his hawk-eyes fixed, and blinking slowly, sizing up their prey, it felt like.

‘You stole my child.’

‘I did no such thing, Lucas. I reached out, as I believe they say these days. And when Dylan reached back… it was… I couldn’t… I don’t have much time left…’

‘Bullshit. You bought him. And Lily. You disgust me.’