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familiar smells of his father’s clothes evoked a sudden, unexpected welling of homesickness. There in his father’s strong embrace was the forge with its smoky heat, the ring of hammer on red hot iron and the stamp of a horse’s hoof, the snap of meadow grass underfoot and the dew frozen white by a hoar frost. There were the scents of the cottage too, of the stove in the kitchen where a rabbit or pigeon cooked in the oven, the sweet tang of hops from a glass of beer his father drank after his work and the smell of the pipe tobacco he smoked by the fire.
    When they parted, William tried to hide his tears, but his father’s eyes were as wet as his own and they sniffed and laughed at one another with awkward love.
    ‘You’ve grown, Will,’ Reynolds said when he could look properly at his son and then his brow creased in puzzlement. ‘Where’s your crutch?’
    ‘I can manage with a cane now,’ William told him proudly. ‘At least for a little way. My leg feels much stronger.’
    He explained his regime of walking, and talked about the encouragement Mister Watson had given him. As he spoke, William’s father looked increasingly bemused until in the end William had to ask what was wrong with him.
    ‘It’s how you talk, Will. You sound like a proper gentleman already. Your mam’d be proud as can be if she heard you.’ He smiled, though there was a shade of sadness in his eyes too.
    On the way back to the village in the cart, William answered his father’s questions about the school, elaborating on what he had already told him in his letters. He said that he was doing well in his classes, though Latin and Greek were difficult. He had a lot to catch up on, as the other boys already knew quite a lot, though he was getting better now that Mister Watkins was helping him.
    ‘Who are your friends, Will? You never write about them,’ his father wanted to know.
    ‘Oh, there are lots of them. All the boys in my dorm. There’s Thompson of course, you met him when you took me to Oundle on my first day, and then there’s Carmichael and Yardley, they’re in my dorm too.’
    His father seemed reassured, and if he noticed that William never mentioned any of their names again during the holidays he didn’t say anything. After he’d painted a rosy picture of his life at the school, William asked all about the village and his friends, and how things were at the forge, and for the rest of the journey they didn’t speak about Oundle again.
    William could hardly wait to see the cottage. During the months he’d been away it was the thought of home that he’d clung to when he felt most miserable, but when they came around the corner and through the gate he felt vaguely disappointed, though he wasn’t sure why. Nothing had changed. A broken wheel stood leaning against the wall, half of one of its spokes missing, just where it had been the day he left. A corner of the thatch still needed repairing, and there was a puddle in the yard where a pothole needed to be filled. He was glad to be home, but the cottage bore a faint air of neglect that he’d never noticed before.
    He went inside while his father saw to the horse. A fire was lit and the room was warm, and something was cooking on the stove. His mother’s books were on the shelves against the wall, and the scarred table where they ate their meals was where it had always been. William thought of his father there alone while he was away at school, imagined him reading the letters he wrote. Walking to the pub in the village in the dark to find the warmth of company.
    The following morning after breakfast, William told his father he was going to walk into the village. His father looked doubtful, but William assured him he could manage. He took his cane, and all the way there he imagined how surprised his friends would be when they saw him. He went to the cottage where Jim Coleman lived and found him and some of the other boys throwing stones at some jars they had put on the