I try to think, but I can’t.

“He … he’s alive?”

Mum screws up her face in puzzlement.

“Alive? Of course he isn’t alive.” She looks hurt and puzzled, but then her mouth starts to turn up at the corners and I just don’t know what to think. “Did I not tell you? He was shot dead in cold blood by a gang of trained weasels.” She pauses. “He’s in the bunker, daft lad, where he always is. Go and tell him supper’s nearly ready. Honestly, Al …” and she walks off into the kitchen shaking her head and smiling.

It’s at this point that I actually wonder if I can stand any more uncertainty and anxiety, and I feel like I’m going to throw up as I leave the back door and go down the steps to the bunker. The old metal submarine-type door is gone, replaced by a normal door and there’s a smell that is both strange and familiar. I step through the doorway and try to take it all in at once, but it’s very hard.

And there he is, with his back to me.

He hears my footsteps, he turns, and it’s definitely him. And for some reason, I don’t rush forward and hug him, I just stand there and he says, “Hello, matey,” without really looking at me.

I want to rush forward and hug him, but I can’t. I can’t move. Instead, I look around me. One wall of the bunker is lined from top to bottom with small wire-fronted cages, there must be forty of them, with water dispensers clipped on to the front and in each are one or two hamsters: brown ones, grey ones, big ones, small ones … One or two cages have rosettes tied on with wire, and there are framed certificates above the desk, and a bookshelf, and I immediately spot a copy of Hamster Fancying For Beginners by Dr A. Borgström, and I’m just staring at all this in delighted wonder when Dad comes up to me with his hands cupped.

“Look here,” he says, and he opens his hands to show me a tiny, brown baby hamster, “this is Alan Shearer. Here, take him.”

I can’t say anything, and even if I could it would only be something stupid like, “Wha? Eh? Huh? How?”

“He’s the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the hamster that I found in my shed when I was twelve,” he says, counting off the ‘greats’ on his fingers.He takes the baby hamster back and puts it in one of the cages.

And still I haven’t said anything. Dad turns to me and looks at me, a little quizzically.

“Are you OK?”

I nod. Then he checks out my clothes.

“Nice jacket, Al. I used to have …” Then he stops. And he’s just staring at me, and blinking, and I stare back, and it’s as if thirty years melt away in the space between us, there among the hamsters.

Eventually, after the longest time, he says:

“Al Singh.”

I nod.

And that’s when we hug. The longest, hardest, most intensest hug of all time.

“You trusted me,” I say into his chest.

I feel him give his little head-nod and say, “Like I’ve never trusted anyone before.”

After a few minutes, or an hour, or thirty years, he looks at me closely and smiles. “You and I have got a lot of catching up to do.”

And that’s great. Because my dad is hugging me. And I’m not going anywhere.