His suitcase dragged his arm down as he followed Trudy to the house. The shadow of a branch clutched at her wrist when she inserted his grandmother’s key in the lock. He wished he were seeing his grandmother catch hold of her as the door swung inwards, revealing the dark.

Why was the house unlit if his mother was home? It didn’t feel deserted, and her car was in the drive. He hung back until Trudy switched on the chandelier, illuminating a note in his mother’s handwriting on the third stair. Just run down the road for ingredients, it said.

So it wasn’t his mother he sensed waiting in the house. At once he was sure what to do. His grandmother’s condition was Trudy’s fault — she’d encouraged his mother to say all she could. Had his mother even finished? Perhaps she might have more and worse to say if Trudy stayed. He used his luggage to push the front door shut and dumped his suitcase in the hall. “Come and see something,” he said.

“Is it a surprise?” Trudy said, widening her eyes and raising half her mouth.

“You’ll have to say,” he told her and turned hastily to the stairs.

The house felt as breathless with anticipation as he was. The creak of stairs counted the seconds and confirmed Trudy was following. The chandelier seemed to lower itself like a huge murkily luminous spider while the door of his grandmother’s room held itself still as a trap. On the landing he halted, uncertain whether he’d heard the faintest sound beyond her door — a shuffling that grew thinner, increasingly less suggestive of feet, as it approached. “What is it, Jonathan?” Trudy said.

“Your surprise. Come and look.”

On the whole she seemed pleased he’d grabbed her hand. She accompanied him willingly enough, even when he seized the icy knob and flung open his grandmother’s door. “You put the light on,” he said.