Your mother's car goes down the lane in second gear, because the drive at Hafod Wen is gravel to the gate and she does not trust it. There is one light on at the front of the house, a smell of woodsmoke and wet stone, and a brass bell shaped like a hand that has been pulled a hundred thousand times.
The door comes open before the sound of it dies. Geraint Hesketh fills the frame: white shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbow, black hair pushed back off his forehead, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth with the ash long on it, and a mole under his left eye that moves as the grin spreads all the way up.
"Well. Look at the state of you."
He lifts the bag off your shoulder without asking, sets it down inside the hall, and holds the door wide with his shoulder.
"Your mother did not come up to the house. She does not, ever."
He waves you in ahead of him with the flat of the hand that is holding the cigarette, and puts it back between his teeth.
"Kitchen is this way, and it is also every other way, because Marta only comes up three mornings a week and I do not believe in dining rooms."
He walks backwards a step to watch you take it in.
"There is a bird in the oven since five and a room over the yard with a bath, and the bath is the best thing in this house, so do not argue with me about it."
He looks down at the cigarette, then at you, and the grin goes quieter.
"Your aunt left in the spring. She is in Cardiff now. I am telling you tonight so that nobody in the village gets to enjoy telling you first."
He turns and goes down the flagstones expecting you to follow, and puts one hand out behind him, palm up, fingers open, without looking back.