None of the boys he’d made any kind of friends with lived near him. Soon his route home left him alone with the November dark, which he could have imagined the houses were hauling down from the sky. The dark had moved into his grandmother’s house. The faltering light of the streetlamp beyond the unreasonably long drive showed him the key in his hand. The jerky shadow of a branch of the tree that hid the house from passers-by clawed at his wrist as he unlocked the front door.

Like his grandmother, it was half as tall again as Jonathan. The dimmest stretch of the glow from the streetlamp twitched underfoot as he sprinted to turn on the jangling chandelier. Its grudging illumination lent him the courage to shut himself in before dashing to switch on the kitchen light. He dropped his schoolbag on the table with a thump that seemed both too loud and dwarfed by the room, and hauled open the refrigerator to pour himself a drink. At once he knew what he could write.

He spread his books across the table and sat on the least creaky chair. “I’m going to say some nice things about you, grandma,” he murmured. “I’ll read you them when I’ve finished.”

He wished he hadn’t thought of that — it made him nervous of the silence around him and behind him. Having ceased its mousy scurrying across the page, the nib emitted a blot like an emphatic full stop. He crossed out the sentence that seemed eager to complete itself. Mr Foster said you had to show your first draft as well as your finished work, though Jonathan’s grandmother had kept saying it looked untidy. The idea of her prowling soundlessly behind him to crane over his shoulder made him feel steeped in the lurking chill of the house. “I’ll read you what I’ve written,” he said as loudly as he dared.

He wanted to believe she was at least as distant as her room. He raised his voice so that it would be audible up there, and didn’t realise it was deafening him to any sounds until he was asked “Have you brought someone home, Jonathan?”