A last look back at the candle (flame pulling upwards, must be a hole in the roof) and they leave the man to his prayer or his thoughts, eyes closed again now, and return to the outside doors, even her soft-soled shoes sounding on the tiles.

Over the crossing – the kerbstones’ crystalline glint – and back onto their own road, more and more pumpkins out now and windows dressed, in the time it took them to buy the apples and light a flame. Pre-printed notices up, from the Neighbourhood Watch – no trick-or-treaters please. A little curmudgeonly really – everyone here knows not to knock at an unlanterned door.

Japanese anemone in one of the front gardens, gone to seed – dried and skeletal, with a pockmarked head. She reaches an arm in and snaps some off for the window. Juicy fat spiders wait in the middle of webs three feet wide, tensile and glistening, the ends caught on hedges, railings, telegraph poles. Big enough to snag a human.

The sun really setting now, a red glow at the vanishing point. Little legs getting tired, so she carries her child (getting heavier all the time) the last fifty yards, apple bags hanging from her elbows and bumping her knees as she walks, and she feels the fine mist hanging in the air like a veil.

She sets down the child and the bags in the porchway, turns the key in the stiff lock, shoves the warped wood, and they go in.

First, they warm some milk on the hob and fire up the grill – the oven door left open to heat the room – and have a cup of tepid milk and a cup of weak tea and a plate of toast in the half-light of the kitchen. She hadn’t noticed how icy her hands had got, even the held one, the bones chilled.

They wash and polish the apples and pile them into a stockpot. She snips nets of chocolate coins and tips these in as well, arranging them to gleam metallic amongst the fruit.

They carry the stockpot through to the front room (dim now, daylight fading), unpack the carrier bag and lay the contents ready on the floor below the window – the lantern, a baby’s mitten, the horse chestnut leaf, the new conker, a dry rattle of ash keys, the leaves of the maple (blood red), a beech leaf like a blood-red heart, twigs of Japanese anemone, rowanberries – and pour from a Kilner jar all the conkers they’ve found since late August – some shrivelled and rocklike, soaked in vinegar and baked in the oven, some shiny, one of them still in its spiny case. And a little wooden toy figurine she bought when she was pregnant – a jolly farmer in scarecrow dress, broad-brimmed cloth hat and patched brown jacket.