He wriggled free and dodged out of the room, snatching the door shut. If Trudy switched the light on she would come face to face with the thing she’d made of his grandmother, and otherwise she would be alone with it in the dark. It was suddenly apparent to him that his grandmother didn’t want anyone to see her as she was now, and he wondered what she might do to gain control of the light-switch. He was hanging onto the doorknob with both hands when the front door slammed. “I’m back again,” his mother called. “Where’s everyone?”

“Could you come up?” Trudy responded rather less than steadily. “I’m shut in and I can’t seem to find…”

“Where are you? Hold on.” Jonathan’s mother ran upstairs and halted at the top. “Where’s Trudy?” she asked him. “What are you-”

“I’m in here, Esther.”

“What on earth do you think you’re doing, Jonathan? Let go at once.”

He was afraid that if she opened the door she would see his grandmother. She had to prise his fingers off the knob in order to let Trudy out. As Trudy fled onto the landing, he saw that the room was still unlit. “Trudy, I’m sorry,” his mother cried. “Tell me what happened.”

“Just an attempt to scare me off,” Trudy said more or less evenly. “I’m afraid someone doesn’t want me here.”

“My grandma doesn’t. She doesn’t like you making mum say bad things about her.”

“I think you’d better get ready for bed and stay in it,” his mother told him.

The women followed him into the hall and watched him trudge, weighed down by injustice and luggage, to his room. Was Trudy staying? His grandmother wouldn’t have to go far to find her, then. The thought failed to lessen his dismay at his grandmother’s state. He raced through preparing for bed and took as much refuge in it as he could. Trudy and his mother were murmuring downstairs, largely incomprehensibly. “He’ll have to get used to it,” he heard his mother say.