It had never been such a beautiful May. Every day the sky shone a peerless blue, untouched by cloud. Already, the gardens were crammed with lupins, roses, delphiniums, honeysuckle and lime clouds of lady’s mantle. Insects cricked, hovered, bumbled and whizzed. Harold passed fields of buttercups, poppies, ox-eye daisies, clover, vetch and campion. The hedgerows were sweetly scented with bowing heads of elderflower, and wound through with wild clematis, hops and dog roses. The allotments too were burgeoning. There were rows of lettuce, spinach, chard, beetroot, early new potatoes and wigwams of peas. The first of the gooseberries hung like hairy green pods. Gardeners left out boxes of surplus produce for passers-by, with a sign: HELP YOURSELF.

Harold knew that he had found his way. He told the story about Queenie, and the garage girl, and he asked strangers if they would be so good as to help. In return, he listened. He might be offered a sandwich, or a bottle of water, or a fresh set of plasters. He never took more than he needed, and gently refused lifts, or walking equipment, or extra packages of food to keep him going. Snapping a pea pod from a curling stem, he ate it greedily, like sweets. The people he met, the places he passed, were all steps in his journey, and he kept a place inside his heart for each of them.

After the night in the barn, Harold continued to sleep outside. He chose dry places, and was always careful not to upset things. He washed in public lavatories, fountains and streams. He rinsed his clothes where no one was watching. He thought of that half-forgotten world lived in houses and streets and cars, where people ate three times a day, slept by night, and kept each other company. He was glad they were safe, and he was glad too that he was at last outside them.

Harold took the A-roads, B-roads, lanes and tracks. The compass quivered northwards and he followed. He went by day or by night, as the mood took him; mile after mile after mile. If the blisters were bad, he bound them with duct tape. He slept when the need for it came, and then he returned to his feet and walked again. He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.