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against the great blue sky.
    Cas hears the sound of a car driving down the lane half a mile away. He hears an airplane’s low whine, heading south toward France. He hears the breeze clicking the stiff leaves of the corn.
    Then a voice calling. Too far away to pick up words, but he knows both the sound and its meaning. His mother is calling him home for supper.
    He jumps up, suddenly aware how hungry he is, and runs home through the rattling corn.
    Sunshine pours through the open window onto the kitchen table. A plate of lasagne waits for him, and a glass of apple juice. His mother is at the sink, cleaning the pans used for cooking.
    â€œYou can eat in the garden if you want,” she says, not turning round.
    â€œIt’s okay.”
    Cas likes to eat at the table. It’s the table they had in thekitchen of their old house, so it’s familiar but it’s also strange. You sit at the same table, there’s a window in front of you like before, but what you see out of the window is completely different.
    â€œBeen watching the rabbits?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou and your rabbits.”
    Actually it was one of the reasons they moved house, or that’s the family story. Cas’s famous passion for wildlife. “Cas will love it,” they told each other, his mum and dad. “There’ll be badgers and woodpeckers and squirrels and rabbits.” He hasn’t seen any badgers or woodpeckers, but he has seen the rest. The other reason for the move is so that Mum and Dad can have space to do their work. Dad is going to have a big new study in one of the empty buildings across the yard. Then Mum and Dad will each have their own places to go and they won’t get cross with each other so much.
    His dad comes into the kitchen.
    â€œIs it too early for a drink?”
    â€œHelp yourself,” says his mum.
    His dad gets a beer out of the fridge and drinks from the bottle, which Cas knows his mum doesn’t like.
    â€œI’m worried about Bridget,” says Cas’s mum. Bridget is Granny’s carer. “She says Mum’s getting very difficult.”
    â€œShe’s always been very difficult,” says his dad.
    Cas hears everything. He knows how his mum finds Granny difficult, and how she feels bad about that, and how she thinks she should be a better daughter. He knows other things too. He knows they’re worried about money because of buying the new house. He know his mum worries she might lose her job at the
Telegraph
and has to work extra hard to keep it. He knows his dad feels angry because his film story about the sheepdog hasbeen changed. The people in the film are assholes, he says. They don’t care what he wants, they make him do what they want, and so he’s sad and angry.
    All these things Cas knows because he sits quietly in their midst and they forget he’s there, just as the rabbits do. And at night as he lies in bed waiting to go to sleep—it takes longer to go to sleep in his new bedroom—he tries to think of ways to make them be happy again. He doesn’t like it when Dad does something that makes Mum snap at him, especially when he can see that Dad only does it because he’s feeling sad about his film.
    This sunny summer evening he eats his supper and listens as they talk past him.
    â€œI should go over and see her,” says his mum. “I don’t go and see her nearly enough.”
    â€œYou could go every day and it wouldn’t be enough,” says his dad. “She’s a bottomless pit of need.”
    â€œEven so. I’m the only family she’s got.” She’s finished her washing up at the sink but she’s still standing there, head drooping. “It makes me tired just thinking about it.”
    â€œWhy don’t you have a drink?”
    â€œBecause I don’t want to turn into an alcoholic.”
    That’s a criticism of Dad. Mum thinks he drinks too much.
    â€œWell, just