'Best of British.' Mr Rhydd closed my fingers around the paper bags. 'And ta very much.'Black Swan Green's the Village of the Dead today 'cause Moonraker's on TV. Roger Moore's last James Bond film, they're saying. Our TV's in the back of the removal truck. I'd've gone to Dean's to watch it normally, but he and his dad're walking to White-Leaved Oak to see his gran, over Chase End way. My feet took me out towards the lake in the woods. Mr Rhydd was kind to give me the Rhubarbs and Custards for free, but today they tasted acidic and glassy. I spat mine out.

Woods in winter're brittle places.

Your mind flits from twig to twig.

Dad came to pick up the rest of his stuff yesterday. Mum'd left it in black vinyl bags in the garage 'cause she needs all the suitcases. Her and Julia were at the gallery in Cheltenham. I was sat on a packing chest watching Happy Days on my portable TV. (Until Hugo told me that Happy Days is set in the 1950s, I thought it was about America now.) An unfamiliar engine pulled up our driveway. Through the living-room window I saw this sky-blue VW Jetta. Dad got out of the passenger side.

I hadn't seen Dad since the night I kissed Holly Deblin, when he told me him and Mum were splitting up. Two whole weeks ago. We'd sort of spoken on the phone at Aunt Alice's on Christmas Day, but that was horrible, horrible, horrible. What was I s'posed to say? 'Thanks for the Advanced Meccano set and the Jean Michel Jarre LP'? (That's what I did say.) Mum and Dad didn't speak to each other, and Mum didn't ask me what he'd said.

When I saw the sky-blue VW Jetta, Maggot hissed, Scarper! Hide!'Hi, Dad.'

'Oh!' Dad's expression was a mountaineer's, the moment his rope snaps. 'Jason. I didn't expect you to-' Dad'd been going to say 'to be at home' but he changed his sentence. 'I didn't hear you.'

'I heard the car.' Obviously. 'Mum's at work.' Dad knew that.

'She left some things for me. I've just come to pick them up.'

'Yeah. She said.'

A moon-grey cat strolled into the garage and settled down on a cushion of potatoes.

'So...' Dad said. 'How's Julia?'

Dad meant Does Julia hate me? But not even Julia could answer that. 'She's...fine.'

'Good. Good. Say hi from me.'

'Okay.' Tell her yourself, why don't you? 'How was Christmas?'

'Oh...fine. Quiet.' Dad looked at the pyramid of bin-bags. 'Horrendous. For obvious reasons. Yours?'

'Mine was horrendous too. Are you growing a beard, Dad?'

'No, I just haven't...maybe I will. I don't know. Are the Richmond relatives all well?'

'Aunt Alice's as you'd expect, all clucky 'cause of...y'know.'

'Of course.'

'Alex just played on his BBC computer. Hugo's smarmy as ever. Nigel's doing quadratic equations for fun. Uncle Brian...' Finishing the sentence about Uncle Brian was hard work.

'...got drunk as a lord and prattled on about me?'

'Dad, is Uncle Brian an idiot?'

'He can act like one.' Something's unknotted in Dad. He looks hollow and unhappy but he's definitely more peaceful. 'But how someone acts isn't what they are. Not necessarily. Best not to be too judgemental. Maybe there's stuff going on you don't know about. You know?'

I do know.

The horriblest part was, being friendly to Dad makes me feel disloyal to Mum. However much they say 'We both still love you' you do have to choose. Words like 'maintenance' and 'best interests' don't leave you alone. A figure sat in the sky-blue Jetta. 'Is...' I didn't know what to call her.

'Cynthia drove me over, yes. She'd like to say hello, if...' (a mad organist thumped my panic chords) '...if you'd like to.' A pleading note bent Dad's voice. 'Would you?'

'Okay.' I didn't want to. 'Okay.'

Outside the cave of the garage, rain fell so lightly it wasn't even falling. Before I'd got to the Jetta, Cynthia'd got out. She's not a big-boobed bimbo or an evil-eyed witch. She's frumpier than Mum, any day, and mousier. Brown hair in a bob, brown eyes. She doesn't look a thing like a stepmother. Which is what she'll be, by and by.

'Hello, Jason.' The woman Dad'd rather spend the rest of his life with than Mum looked at me like I had a gun pointed at her. 'I'm Cynthia.'

'Hi. I'm Jason.' This was very, very, very weird. Neither of us tried to shake hands. In the back of her car was a BABY ON BOARD BABY ON BOARD sticker. 'You've got a baby?' sticker. 'You've got a baby?'

'Well, Milly's more of a toddler now.' If you just heard her voice next to Mum's you'd say Mum's posher. 'Camilla. Milly. Milly's father my ex-husband we're already...I mean, he's not on the scene. As they say.'

'Right.'

Dad watched his future wife and his only son from his ex-garage.

'Well.' Cynthia smiled unhappily. 'Come and visit whenever you want, Jason. Trains go to Oxford from Cheltenham, direct.' Cynthia's voice is less than half the volume of Mum's. 'Your dad would like you to. He really would. So would I. It's a big old house we're in. There's a stream at the end of the garden. You could even have your-' (she was about to say 'your own bedroom'.) 'Well, you're welcome, any time.'

All I could do was nod.

'Whenever it suits.' Cynthia looked at Dad.

'So how-' I began, suddenly scared of having nothing to say.

'If you-' she began in the same second.

'After you-'

'No, after you. Really. You go ahead.'

'How long' (no grown-up's ever made me go first) 'have you known Dad?' I'd meant the question to sound breezy but it came out all Gestapo.

'Since we were growing up,' Cynthia was working hard to iron out any extra meanings, 'in Derbyshire.'

Longer than Mum, then. If Dad'd married this Cynthia in the first place, instead of Mum, and if they'd had a son, would it have been me? Or a totally different kid? Or a kid who's half me?

All those Unborn Twins're a numbing prospect.I got to the lake in the woods and remembered the game of British Bulldogs we'd played here when the lake froze last January. Twenty or thirty kids, skimming and shrieking, all over the shop. Tom Yew'd interrupted the game, scrambling down the path I'd just taken, on his Suzuki. He'd sat on the exact same bench I was sat on remembering him. Now Tom Yew's in a cemetery on a treeless hill on a bunch of islands we'd never even heard of last January. What's left of Tom Yew's Suzuki's being picked apart to repair other Suzukis. The world won't leave things be. It's always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where's the sense in that? Mum and Dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love, Julia moves off to Edinburgh, Mum to Cheltenham and Dad to Oxford with Cynthia. The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making.

But who says the world has to make sense?In my dream a fishing float'd appeared in the water, orange on glossy dark, just a few feet out. Holding the rod was Squelch, sat on the other end of my bench. This dream-Squelch was so realistic in every detail, even his smell, I realized I must be awake. 'Oh. All right, Mervyn? God, I was dreaming about...'

'Wakey wakey stiffy shakey.'

'...something. Been here long?'

'Wakey wakey stiffy shakey.'

My Casio said I'd only been asleep for ten minutes. 'Must've...'

'It'll snow soon. It'll stick an' all. School bus'll get stuck.'

My joints clunked as I stretched. 'Aren't you watching Moonraker?' My joints unclunked.

Squelch gave me this tragic look like I was the certified village idiot. 'Ain't no TV here. I'm fishin', I am. Come to see the swan.'

'Black Swan Green hasn't got any swans. That's the village joke.'

'Crotch rot.' Squelch shoved one hand down his pants and gave his grollies a good scratching. 'Crotch rot.'

A robin landed on the holly bush, as if posing for a Christmas card.

'So...what's the biggest thing you've caught in this lake, Merv?'

'Ain't never caught bugger all. Not down this end. I fishes up the narrer end, up by the island, don't I?'

'So what's the biggest thing you've caught up the narrow end?'

'Ain't never caught bugger all up the narrer end, neither.'

'Oh.'

Squelch gave me a lidded look. 'Got a big fat tench one time. Roasted the bugger on a stick, in our garden. His eyes was the tastiest bit. Last spring, that were. Or the spring before. Or the spring before that.'

An ambulance siren's wail bagatelled through the bare wood.

'Somebody dying,' I asked Squelch, 'd'you reckon?'

'Debby Crombie off to hospital. Her babby's poppin' out.'

Rooks craw...craw...crawed, like old people who've forgotten why they've come upstairs. 'I'm leaving Black Swan Green today.'

'See yer.'

'You probably won't.'

Squelch lifted one leg and out flubberdubbered a fart so loud the robin on the holly flew off in fright.

The orange float sat motionless in the water.

'Do you remember that kitten you found, Merv, last year, frozen stiff?'

'Don't like Kit-Kats. Only Creme Eggs and Twixes.'

The orange float sat motionless in the water.

'Want these Rhubarb and Custards?'

'Nope.' Squelch stuffed the bag into his coat pocket. 'Not partick'ly.'Whatever it was swooped so low, so close, over our heads, I could've brushed it with my fingertips if shock hadn't curled me up on the bench. I didn't see it for what it was at first. A glider...My brain grappled with the shape of the thing, a Concorde...a mutant angel falling to earth...

A swan slid down its slope of air to meet its reflection.

A swan's reflection slid up its slope of lake to meet the swan.

Just before impact, the giant bird splayed open its wings and its webby feet pedaloed cartoonishly. It hung there, then crashed in a belly-flop of water. Ducks heckled the swan, but a swan only notices what it wishes to. She bent and unbent her neck exactly like Dad does after a very long drive.

If swans weren't real myths'd make them up.

I uncurled myself from panic position. Squelch hadn't even flinched.

The orange float bobbed on the riplets and cross-riplets.

'Sorry, Mervyn,' I told Squelch. 'You were right.'

You're never sure where Squelch is looking.The wild bushes that'd muffled the House in the Woods'd been sawn back to size. Naked white branches lay in a neat pile on a lawn not used to the light. The front door stood half open and a power tool was being used inside. It fell quiet. Nottingham Forest were playing West Bromich Albion on a paint-spattered tranny. Loud hammering broke out.

The garden path'd been hacked clear. 'Hello?'

More hammering.

'Hello?'

Down the hall, a builder my dad's age but musclier had a sledgehammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. 'Help you with anything, son?'

'I...don't want to, uh...bother you.'

The builder made a Hang on a mo gesture and switched off the radio.

'Sorry,' I said.

'Nah worries. Cloughie's mob are flamin' stuffin' us. It's damagin' me ears.' His accent could've come from another planet. 'I could use a breather anyhow. Puttin' in damp courses is a killer. I must be stark raving mad doin' it meself.' He sat on the bottom stair, opened his Thermos flask and poured some coffee. 'What can I do for you, anyhow?'

'There's...does an old woman live here?'

'Me mother-in-law? Mrs Gretton?'

'Quite old. Black clothes. White hair.'

'That's her. The grandmother from the Addams Family.'

'Sort of.'

'She's moved into our granny flat, just across the way. You know her, do you?'

'I' (Hangman choked 'know') 'expect this'll sound weird, but one year ago, I hurt my ankle. When the lake in the woods froze over. It was late. I sort of hobbled up to here from the lake, and knocked on her door-'

'So that was you?' The builder's face lit up with surprise. 'She fixed you up with a whatchamagooey, a poultice, right?'

'That's right. It really worked.'