Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary

the sudden sad, mad hope that all the enmity and bitterness would be forgotten, though he had never been told or understood what had caused all the ill-feeling. He had just had the hope that as a family they would be together, as he had dreamed they might be. He had never confessed it to anyone, never could, never would, but he had always wanted the sort of extended family that he had read about in some books. He knew that family life on TV was all crap, but he had wished for something like it, to have a grandfather, even if he was a commo, who would tell him what life had been like when he