Tonight the yellow moon played hide and seek with scurrying clouds as the threatened thunderstorm moved rapidly closer.

Sam knelt on his bed, his nose pressed against the windowpane trying to take in as much sky as possible.

An enormous clap of thunder had jolted him awake. Thunder didn't scare him; it was the lightning bolt that preceded each clap he had always hidden from.

Still he hadn’t been prepared for the full impact of that first bolt of lightning when it streaked across the sky. It had rocked him back on his heels and away from contact with the window.

For seven-year-old Sam it was a little scary. His only memory of previous thunderstorms was the protective arms of mum wrapped around him and the gentle shushing of her voice to soothe his fears.

Now though, Sam reckoned, Mum would be proud of him if she could have seen him perched here, conquering the panic in his chest, which, with every flash changed subtly to excitement. He counted between the flashes and the thunderclaps as Dad had explained, to gauge how far away the storm was centred.

Another great roar of thunder seemed

to be coming from directly over their little cottage on the South coast of England. Sam waited, his mouth open with anticipation. Within three seconds the sky directly in front of his window lit up.

It was a beautiful sight. It reminded Sam of his dad’s road atlas. It had become his responsibility to read the town names as they journeyed each Saturday to visit mum’s grave.

They had moved many times in the past four years. Dad was a Sergeant in the army and he had served on various bases in Germany, until he had been posted back to England earlier this year.

Mum had died when Sam was three years old. He sometimes found it difficult to remember her face, so dad would bring out the photograph album and pointing to each picture in turn, would remind Sam of the day it had been taken. Dad always remembered everything! He was Sam’s hero. Not those footballers all the other kids at school were always talking about. All they wanted to do when they grew up was play football, earn lots of money and live in big house.

The only future Sam wanted was to stay always close to dad and perhaps one day, he might find a lady as beautiful as the mum he looked at in those photo albums, and who right now spoke to him in the forks of lightning which were lighting up his world.