His gaze moved on around the table to be met by his grandfather’s. Ron winked at him and Charlie winked back. Ron hadn’t really changed except his hair was tidy and laced with silver, but he still wore old trousers tied at the waist with garden twine and a jumper that had more holes in it than a colander – and that ancient, smelly old poacher’s coat was still in evidence.

Charlie was glad he was the same, and just as robust as he remembered, and was impatient to go onto the hills with him and Harvey again, and perhaps even go down to the beach beneath the cliffs to inspect Uncle Frank’s marvellous new fishing boats that he’d seen moored there. The summer holidays stretched before him with all sorts of glorious possibilities, and he firmly ignored the dark clouds that waited for him when it was time to return to school, because he would have to get used to a new one that in all probability didn’t have a rugby team. Thinking of the loss of his hard-won place in the Somerset County junior fifteen took the shine off his summer plans, and he pushed back from the table, making the chair scrape against the worn linoleum. ‘Am I still in the same bedroom?’ he asked Peggy abruptly.

‘I’ve put you in Ron’s old room,’ she replied, suddenly looking flustered. ‘I hope it will be all right.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ he replied shortly.

Collecting his bags from the hall, he felt the curious eyes follow him in the enveloping silence as he stomped back through the kitchen and down the concrete steps, slamming the kitchen door behind him. Stepping into the room he closed that door too, dropped his bags on the floor and stared at the toys on the end of the bed.

His mother clearly thought he was still a kid, for what on earth could he possibly want with these old things? His interest was piqued by the train set which he remembered very well, but he gathered everything else up and dumped it all in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Charlie slumped down onto the bed and sadly regarded the bare, impersonal room before nudging the boxed train set away. He felt a tightness in his chest and the unfamiliar sense of loss and despair. An overwhelming wave of longing swept over him and a tear rolled down his cheek to be angrily brushed away. He wanted to be back in his comfortable bedroom at Owlet Farm, and to be with lovely Auntie Vi, for he missed her dreadfully. He also missed his friends and the other boys in the rugby team, and wondered if they’d already forgotten him.

Charlie curled up on the bed and buried his face in the pillow so they couldn’t hear him crying.

‘I should go down and see if he’s all right,’ said Peggy fretfully.