Gordon Wright looked out of his study bedroom, across the cricket field and towards the railway embankment. A train pulled into Holme Hill station: no-one got off, and no-one got on. If it had been a normal Monday morning the platform would have been teeming with workers clambering onto the soon-to-be-pensioned-off pacer trains to get into Hartley, Halifax, and Leeds or, going the other way, across to Manchester. The contra-flow of teenagers alighting the train to attend Holme Hill Academy would have made the fight for a seat all the harder.

Northern Rail really are useless! Thank God it is a Bank Holiday!

Gordon rearranged the folders on his desk and tried to work. This little area was his sanctuary. Not even his mother was allowed in. It must have been the maid’s room when old Riddles...

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