Mrs Boyle had roasted three chickens, along with a mountain of roast potatoes, roast vegetables, sausages, bacon, bread sauce, onion gravy, and a basket of freshly baked rolls in case anyone had the odd corner that still needed filling. Roland’s father carved the chickens. He was a tough, wiry looking man not much bigger than his wife and Francis couldn’t help wondering how two such diminutive people could have produced a son who was bigger than both of them put together. When Jessica got Andi to ask Mr Boyle what he did for a living, they discovered he had started out as a crane operator, before borrowing enough money to buy his own crane and, finally, setting up his own company. ‘He goes all over the country,’ said Mrs Boyle proudly. ‘You want something heavy lifted, my Ronnie’s the man to do it!’ He had, it turned out, recently been involved in lifting railway carriages from a steep embankment after a passenger train had come off the line near Doncaster.
