Unlike most boys of his age, when Ellis decided to blank his dad completely, he could actually carry it off. Indefinitely. And this is what he did when Denny O’Rourke told him that he was going to a new school.

“But you can still cycle to school, Ellis, like we agreed,” Denny offered. “From time to time, when the weather’s nice, I mean. You can cycle to your heart’s content when the conditions are safe, but not in winter.”

“That’s not the point! And it doesn’t matter if it’s raining or snowing, I’m going to cycle on my own every day, every single day! I will never want a lift from you. You promised me I could catch the train alone to school in Orpington when I was thirteen. You promised and you’re a liar. I am never going to talk to you again because there’s no point because you’re a liar.”

Denny expected Mafi to understand.

“When I made that agreement with him, I meant it. But it’s come round too fast. He’s too young. He’s not ready.”

“You mean you’re not,” she said.

Chrissie was indignant on Ellis’s behalf and looked for an opportunity to make her point. She found it in the pages of the spider book.

“This is interesting,” she announced over dinner. “Baby spiders go ballooning! It’s on page one hundred and fifty-four.” She looked her dad in the eye. “It’s how they leave home.”

“Don’t read at the table,” Denny muttered.

She ignored him and read aloud: “‘Dispersal of many spiderlings involves simply wandering off, or finding the nearest unoccupied space which will support a web. However, for moving quickly to a completely new area, spiderlings go by air. This aerial dispersal – known as “ballooning” – is most effectively carried out when warm days follow a cold spell and air currents are rising. The spider moves to a relatively high point, points the abdomen skywards, and lets out strands of silk from the spinners. Success comes when they are carried upwards.’”

Denny snatched the book away. “I’ve read that bit too.” He read aloud. “‘The down side to ballooning,’” he repeated the words with emphasis, “the down side … is being eaten alive by swallows, caught in the webs of other spiders, frozen several thousand metres up, drowned in the sea or lakes or landing in other unfavourable environments.’”

“Wow,” said Mafi, missing the point, “isn’t that amazing and wonderful, Ellis?”

“No!” Denny snapped. “It’s dangerous, that’s the point. Lots of these spiders die when they leave the nest.”

“What nest, Dad?” Chrissie taunted him. “We weren’t talking about birds …”

“Oh, belt up for once, Chrissie!”

The venom in Denny’s voice was foreign and excessive.

“That book suits you when it suits you, doesn’t it?” Chrissie said.

Denny gritted his teeth. His face reddened. “I’m just trying to protect you both and all you’ve got is smart-alec comments,” he muttered.

“Protect us from what? Look at us! We’re so bloody safe it aches. We don’t do anything or go anywhere!”

“That’s exactly what—” Denny stopped himself.

He stared at the tablecloth. Then he marched across the room and rammed the spider book into the waste bin and walked out.

Ellis placed the book under a stack of Chrissie’s LPs, to flatten it out. He woke next morning curled up under the bed sheet and drenched in sweat. He could feel the weight of thousands of tiny spiders on top of the sheet. Determined not to break his vow of silence by calling out for his dad, he lay motionless until Mafi found his small, coiled shape in the bottom corner of the bed and realised that he had visitors. She climbed in under the sheet and lay alongside him.

“They’ve gone,” she whispered.

Together they looked through the cotton sheet at the bedroom window framing squares of sunlight. Ellis cuddled against his great-aunt and fell asleep for a few more minutes. When he woke, the sheet was away from them and it was a beautiful summer’s day. He smiled at Mafi and whispered, “Thanks.”

But to his father, he remained mute, until Reardon’s arrival, ten days later.

“I was thinking,” Reardon said, “he might like to spend time on the farm. Maybe it’ll help him forget his worries.”

I don’t have worries! Ellis protested. He was spying from the top of the stairs.

“What about spiders on the farm?” Mafi asked.

“I’m confident he’ll be distracted by bigger creatures,” Reardon replied, his face lit by a compassionate smile. “He must come! It’ll do him the world of good. We’ll work him to the bone, of course! That’s what this is about, child labour!”

The vitality in Reardon that Denny O’Rourke admired was precisely what scared Ellis. Nevertheless, he wanted to go to the farm. He wanted it so much he was willing to say so.

When he stepped on to the track that led to Longspring Farm for the first time, Ellis felt that a new life was beginning.

He passed the head herdsman’s house at the entrance gate and walked through an avenue of lime trees. White-painted cast-iron railings ran at a slant between the track and the farmhouse. Dried orange lichen peppered the Wealden brickwork and moss clung to the peg tiles. The farmhouse was old and perfectly square, with a large lawn to one side which ran down to a pond, and an oast roundel and cooling barn to the other side, where the sweet smell of honeysuckle laced the afternoon.

Ellis glimpsed movement behind the hay barn and headed up there, having no better idea of where he was meant to go. Tractor wrecks waited obediently in the stone pens of the old cowshed. Next to it, the machinery and piping of the modern milking shed hummed and clanked. Ellis waited a while in the foldyard, hoping to be seen. The plinths and crumbling walls of an old granary jutted out from a manure heap, like bones from a burial mound. A dragonfly darted back and forth above crusts of manure. Beyond it, in the pasture, there were dozens of butterflies, mostly Common Blue. The remnants of last year’s hay lay low in the barn. A pitchfork stabbed into a bale had a child’s T-shirt draped over it. Ellis breathed in the musty smell of dried cow dung. He shut his eyes. A breeze drifted towards his ear and curled itself into a weightless seashell bearing sounds of cattle in the yards and tractors in the fields. He stood in rapture. When he opened his eyes dizzy speckles of light danced in front of him and dissipated to reveal blue sky above. This was heaven and he knew, he knew with twelve-year-old certainty, that he wanted to be here for ever.

“Poof.”

Ellis looked round. A boy emerged from behind a large steel milk tank. The boy was similar in age to Ellis. Similar, too, in height, build and hair colour. He had wellington boots on and jeans but no shirt. He was skinny but muscular. His hands were grubby and most of his fingers had plasters on them. His arms and face and neck were tanned but his torso was pale in the sun. He made sure Ellis was watching and lifted open the lid of the tank. He ladled out a small pool of milk and nodded to himself expertly. He checked the dials on the side of the tank, furrowed his brow knowingly, and wandered off.

“Come on,” he said, with a swagger.

Ellis ran a few paces to get alongside the boy.

“You’re not really a poof,” the boy said.

“I know I’m not,” Ellis replied firmly.

They sat in the hay barn on the low bank of bales.

“When the hay is in and stacked up the sides,” the boy said, “we’ll cross the girder, all the way across the barn.” The boy sized Ellis up. “You’ll be strong enough, no problem.”

Ellis gazed upwards. A steel girder ran across the width of the barn in the apex of the roof, fifty feet above them.

“You’ll be fine,” the boy repeated.

Ellis was not convinced.

“If not,” the boy muttered, “well …” and he slapped one hand flat on the ground and made a squelching sound.

The boy stretched his legs out and took a small rusty tin from his front pocket. Inside were loose tobacco and some papers. Ellis looked out across the fields, framed by the walls of the yawning hay barn, but he kept one eye on the boy to see how he was making the cigarette. The boy rolled it expertly, put it between his lips and handed Ellis the tin.

“I don’t know how to,” Ellis said.

The boy took the cigarette from his mouth and handed it to Ellis. Ellis placed it between his lips and watched, openly this time, as the boy rolled another. They rested back on the bales and Ellis copied the boy’s nonchalant exhalation of smoke.

The fields nearest to them were flat and gave way to layers of hillside, which stacked up towards Ide Hill. There were cottages dotted amongst these rolling fields and, in the distance, a dilapidated barn at Reardon’s boundary. Ellis felt dizzy and his mouth was dry but he liked the look of the cigarette between his fingers.

“Tim,” the boy said.

Ellis copied the boy’s detached tone. “Ellis.”

A bull raised its head above the half-door of the oast roundel. The boys watched it as they smoked. Ellis wanted to ask Tim if the bull had a name, but he couldn’t decide if this would be a mistake. It wasn’t a pet, after all. Then again, if it did have a name, Ellis ought to know it.

“Let’s go,” Tim said, and headed purposefully out of the barn. Ellis took off his T-shirt and hung it on the same pitchfork as Tim’s, then ran to catch him up.

“Never ever leave a gate open,” Tim said, without breaking stride. “Reardon will kill you.”

“I never do,” Ellis boasted. “Has the bull got a name?”

“Yeah,” Tim said earnestly. “He’s called Bob.”

I knew it would have, Ellis congratulated himself.

“And all the cows are called Daisy, you prat,” Tim added. “Of course the bull hasn’t got a name.”

They reached a large bell that hung from a piece of rope on a gate. Tim took the bell and led Ellis up to a plateau of rich pasture where Jersey cattle grazed above a ribbon of small hills not visible from the farmyard. Tim rang the bell, the boys wafted their arms and the docile herd wandered obediently down to the farm.

Reardon was in the yard with Michael Finsey, his herdsman. The men saw the herd into the milking shed. Tim led Ellis through a metal door into a narrow, raised concrete alleyway where a wall of metal bars separated them from the cattle.

“You don’t want to get squashed between these ugly fuckers!” Tim shouted, above the roar of the milking machines. “That’s why we have to stand here.”

Reardon and Michael Finsey pushed and punched the cattle into their bays and attached the pumps, using their shoulders to prise the cows apart. When he wasn’t using it to prod the beasts, Reardon wedged his stick into his wellies to free up both hands.

Later, the farmer walked the herd with the boys. The heifers grazed the fields furthest from the farm and the dairy herd were kept on the pasture nearest to the milking sheds.

“A beast cannot graze if its feet and teeth are no good. If they seem bony, check the feet and teeth. If they hang back when you herd them in, check their udders for a thing called mastitis because they can get sore from the milking. A healthy cow has a straight back and a large udder.”

Then he was gone, marching back towards the farmhouse as if prolonged exposure to children would bring him out in a rash.

I will never leave my dad, Ellis told himself, as he watched Reardon go. If my dad was left all alone, he’d become like that. I will never leave his side.

The boys put their T-shirts on and sat again in the hay barn. Ellis looked proudly at the grazes on his arms and the grime on his hands. His skin smelled of cattle. They drank fresh milk and ate bread and jam. The black cherry jam was cold from Reardon’s fridge and it was sweet and spread thick on crusty white bread. Food had never tasted so good to Ellis in his life.

Tim Wickham’s parents lived in a former tied cottage on the northern edge of Reardon’s land. The steep slopes of the garden were covered in black knapweed and wild dog roses tumbled to a fast-flowing brook. The grass was lush and long, especially in the shade of the apple trees, where a hammock was slung. The ground about the brook was never dry, not even in summer. The only flat piece of garden was alongside the lane where an unkempt medlar tree stooped towards croquet hoops lost in the grass.

Mr Wickham was a teacher and he always wore the same brown wool blazer and light green shirt, whatever the season. He was always nice but rarely laughed. Tim’s mum was gregarious and loving. She deliberately embarrassed her son by kissing him on the lips in front of Ellis. Tim called her “mad” when she did this and they both laughed about it. Ellis watched in awe.

Ellis liked Mrs Wickham a great deal but thought it strange that she never offered him anything to eat or drink. There were no biscuits or cake or bread or fruit for them when they got in from the farm. Ellis would have noticed this anyway, but was all the more aware of it because since going to the farm he had been perpetually hungry. At least, it was either working on the farm or staring inertly at the naked women in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. One of these was giving him an appetite.

In the long grass by the brook, the boys talked about girls. The little that Tim had glimpsed was of his mum. She sometimes walked around the house in just a bath towel, he said, and every now and then he had got a peep when she was rewrapping it round her body.

“That’s so good,” Ellis sighed.

“Have you seen your sister doing it ever, with whatsisname?” Tim asked.

“Not actually doing it, I don’t think. But messing around. No, I don’t think I have.”

“I reckon you’d know,” Tim said.

They closed their eyes. Ellis felt the blades of grass pushing against his skin and wondered exactly what he hadn’t seen Chrissie and James doing. He pictured Mrs Wickham taking him upstairs and explaining to him that the way young boys find out about women is for their new best friend’s mum to get into bed with them and show them. He imagined Mrs Wickham taking off her clothes and climbing into her bed and telling Ellis to climb in beside her for a cuddle. Ellis fell asleep with his head pressed against her skin and her fingers drawing lines over his clothed body. When he woke, the grass was cold in shadow. He was alone. He went into the kitchen. Mrs Wickham was cooking supper. Her husband was drinking a glass of water at the kitchen table and reading the post. The cottage was dark inside. None of the glorious sunshine of that first summer at Reardon’s seemed to make it through the windows.

“Tim’s taking a bath before supper,” Mrs Wickham said.

“I fell asleep,” Ellis muttered, disorientated and embarrassed.

Mrs Wickham ruffled his hair, took his hand and led him into the sitting room. She sat Ellis down on an old sofa with a pattern of faded ivory flowers against pale green. The sofa cushions were deep and swallowed him up.

“You make yourself at home.”

She planted a kiss on his forehead and shut the door behind her. Ellis looked at the room. There was no TV and there were no books. The ornate moulding in the centre of the ceiling had been painted carelessly. The room was dark and hollow. He wondered if they ever used it. The black slate fire surround looked as if it belonged to a room twice the size of the house. On the chimney breast there were brown photographs of faded people. From beyond the closed door came the sound of the Wickhams’ dinner time. Cutlery scraping on plates and Mrs Wickham’s laugh. Ellis slung his legs over the arm of the sofa, cuddled the cushions and fell asleep again. When he woke the next morning he was in his own bed and his stomach was churning with hunger. Mafi was sitting by his side.

“How did I get home?” he whimpered.

“Mr Wickham drove you home and carried you up to bed and you never stirred for a minute,” she whispered.

He smiled and turned on to his side, clasping Mafi’s hand.

“I’ve never known a boy sleep like you, Ellis O’Rourke.”

Chrissie’s bike was leaning against the front of the cottage. She sat on the front step drinking a cup of coffee. Ellis poked his head out of the window above her. He knew from her sunglasses, bikini top and skirt that she was going to see James at the reservoir.

“If you’re trying to get a look at my tits from up there you’re a sad, pathetic bastard,” she said, without turning.

“What tits?”

“Cheeky boy!” she muttered, pretending to care.

Ellis ran downstairs and joined her on the step.

“More coffee, pesky rat!” She held her mug out to him.

“Yes, your grace.” He came back with her mug filled and with a glass of milk for himself. “I’ve seen better tits than yours anyway,” he mentioned, casually.

“I’m happy for you, earthling.” She soaked up the sun.

“Are you going to see James?”

“Si.”

“Are you going to be a journalist?” he asked, following his own, weaving train of thought.

“I’m going to train to be one, from September.”

“So you’re not leaving home, you’re going to be a commuter?”

“I’m not leaving home.”

“Are you absolutely sure Dad doesn’t mind? I think he was looking forward to it just being me and him and Mafi living here.”

“Nice try, piss-face,” she said, delivering an effortless slap to the back of his head. “He’s over the moon about it ’cos I’m his favourite child.”

“You’re his favourite daughter.”

She gave Ellis a lift to Longspring Farm on her bike. He had, after all, brought her coffee. Gary Bird was waiting for him at the gate where Treasure Island Woods ended and the farm track began.

“Where have you been?” Gary asked accusingly.

“Don’t know,” Ellis mumbled.

“I’ve been waiting for you at Treasure Island every day!” Gary yelled and marched off.

“What was that about?” Chrissie asked.

“Dunno.”

“Ellis! You can’t just ditch friends like that. You go and say sorry!”

Ellis watched his sister cycle away. He thought of doubling back through the woods to find Gary and apologise. He could ask Reardon if Gary could come with him to the farm and then, from tomorrow, they’d go together and both be friends with Tim. He hesitated, torn between turning left into the woods or right to the farm. He squinted against the sunlight and headed up the farm track, ignoring the bad feeling in his stomach and aware that for some reason he didn’t want to share with Gary Bird the new world beyond the lime trees. Everything was coming together on that blazing hot morning. The naked bodies of women lined up for him on a page at home, the smells of cattle and diesel drifting under his nose at the farm, the sight of a rolled cigarette between his fingers, the dark red of his own blood scabbing painlessly on hairline cuts across his forearm and making him feel so very grown up, the feeling of straw prickling his back, the bikini tops his sister would be wearing for the next couple of months, the satisfaction of herding cattle into the yard and the sensation of belonging at Longspring Farm.

Then, Ellis felt a new sensation. Rather, he felt a series of them in quick succession. First, a stinging sense of rock-hard impact across his face. Then a howling noise pouring through his ears, joined by the illusion of ice-cold fluid trickling into his throat. Then a scorching numbness across one eye socket. Finally, a piercing pain at the bridge of his nose and the sound of cartilage squelching as he instinctively and blindly pushed his nose back into place.

He lay with his head in the dust and shit, listening to the storm in his ears abate, feeling his heartbeat roar out of control. He saw the world through liquid eyes but he wasn’t crying. He knelt up and rubbed his face. There was blood and snot streaked across the back of his hand. He blinked his eyes to clear them of fluid and saw Gary Bird walking away down the farm track, a large piece of wood in his hand. He climbed over the gate and disappeared into Treasure Island Woods.

Ellis hid all day, knowing that when his dad saw him he’d not let him out alone again. At the hospital they told Denny that if Ellis had been brought in earlier they’d have been able to do a better job of fixing his nose. The doctor asked Ellis his name and what day of the week it was.

“He doesn’t necessarily know that at the best of times,” Chrissie said.

Ellis refused to reveal who had hit him.

“I can’t remember a thing about it!” he insisted.

Denny banned Ellis from the farm. Then, after rehearsing his lines with Ellis in a phone call, Tim appeared at the cottage with his father.

“It was me, Mr O’Rourke … me and Ellis were mucking around and I belted him with a plank of wood accidentally. He wouldn’t let me tell ’cos he thought I’d be in trouble.”

Denny looked to Tim’s father, who shrugged.

“We weren’t fighting. It was just messing about and I overdid it a bit …”

“You did a bit, didn’t you?” Denny said. “Why don’t you go up and see Ellis in his room?”

Tim ran upstairs.

“I’d like to believe it,” Denny said.

“Then do,” Robert Wickham replied.

Having shut his bedroom door, Ellis opened the encyclopaedia at page 252 and laid the five naked women down on the bed.

“Fucking lovely,” Tim said, admiringly.

Ellis took a piece of paper from the desk in the corner of his room and laid it over the page. He had cut a square out of it so that the girl and the oldest woman were hidden, leaving only the three women in the centre visible.

“That’s better,” Tim muttered.

“Yes,” Ellis said, expertly.

Ellis put Chrissie’s Led Zep 3 album on, glanced in the mirror to admire his facial injuries and leant out of the window. Mafi disappeared round the corner of the cottage, working her way along the flowerbeds with a weeding fork. The boys shared a cigarette and looked out across the village at their known universe.

“Page 252 …” Tim reflected, dragging lazily.

“Page 252 …” Ellis confirmed.