“Oh, cheers,” the driver said.

“Good bye,” said Alistair, climbing out.

As the taxi drove away, Alistair walked up to the front door. He paused in the porch and looked at his watch. They would be here any minute.

After letting himself in, Alistair tucked his walking stick behind the front door and went into the kitchen. He checked the kettle - it needed filling - then put it on the gas hob.

As it began to bubble, Alistair tipped the contents of his wallet into his palm. He heard a car door bang out front; that must be them, he thought. He plucked a pound coin out of his palm then tipped the rest of the coins back into the wallet.

Sure enough, Alistair heard two pairs of feet run up to the front door, then childish voices squabble for who got to press the doorbell. In the end it was pressed twice.

Alistair walked into the hall, looking for places to drop the pound coin. He settled on a dusty spot under the radiator that wasn’t too conspicuous, and would probably take Ben and Claire a while to spot.

He leant over as far as he could without hurting his back then let the pound coin go. It landed on the carpet on its side and rolled in a brief spiral beneath the radiator until it hit the skirting board and fell flat.

Alistair went and let his grandchildren in.

NOTES:
Ben and Claire being, of course, the kids who found the coin in their grandfather's house in the very first chapter. The coin was always intended to return to where it started, despite this being unlikely (but not impossible), which is why I was considering calling this story "The Arterial Road". Arteries take blood away from the heart, but it always comes back in the end, and money kind of is the life-blood of society. As I originally envisaged it, the pound coin would never actually leave the Arterial Road in Cambridge, it would just pass through the hands of many of the occupants of that road. I didn't conceive of the town at the beginning being Cambridge, but fortunately by not naming it, when I decided that Cambridge it was, and started characters heading that way at the end, it meant it didn't disclose that the coin was returning home.