From Buckfast Harold took the B3352 via Ashburton, stopping overnight at Heathfield. He passed other walkers, and they spoke briefly, acknowledging the beauty of the land and the coming of summer, before they wished one another a safe journey and went their separate ways. Harold turned bends, followed the contours of the hills, his path always the road ahead. Crows scattered from trees with a clatter of wings. A young deer shot out from the hedgerow. Cars roared up from nowhere, and disappeared. There were dogs behind gates, and several badgers, like furred weights against the gutter. A cherry tree stood in a dress of blossom, and as the wind took up it loosened a drift of petals like confetti. Harold was ready for surprise, whatever form it took. Such freedom was rare.

“I am Father,” he had told his mother when he was maybe six or seven. She had looked up, interested, and it shocked him that he had been so bold. He had no idea what he was going to do next. There was nothing for it but to put on his father’s flat cap, and his dressing gown, and stare accusingly at an empty bottle. His mother’s face set like a jelly; he feared at least a slap. Then, to his shock and profound delight, she stretched back her soft neck and the air tinkled with her laughter. He could see her perfect teeth and the pink of her gums. He had never made his mother laugh like that before.

“What a clown,” she had said.

He had felt as tall as the house. Grown up. Despite himself, he had laughed too; first as a grin and then with a great bellyful that sent him doubling over. After that, he sought out ways to amuse her. He learned jokes. He pulled faces. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes he hit on things without even knowing how they were funny.

Harold walked the streets and lanes. The road narrowed and widened, and rose and curved. Sometimes he was almost flat against the hedgerows; others he walked the pavements freely. “Don’t walk in the cracks,” he heard himself call after his mother. “If you walk in the cracks there are ghosts.” Only this time she had looked at him as if she had never seen him before, and then stepped on every one of them, so that he had been forced to run after her, holding out his arms and flapping wildly. It had been hard to keep up with a woman like Joan.

A new set of blisters began to bulge on both Harold’s heels. By the afternoon, further blisters rose also on the pads of his toes. He had no idea that walking could hurt so much. All he could think of were plasters.