Mine seemed the wrong answer, but I heaved aside a rotting tyre that leaned against the wall, trammelled by grass. There, pressed into the ground like a fossil, almost the same colour as the dirt, was the key. “I don’t know,” I said, although the ground beating up through my thin soles said home, home, as surely as the garden in Upper Spicer Street ever did.

“But you’ve been here before, right?” Trish asked. It was odd to know—or suspect—more about my life than she did.

“I’m guessing it’s where the Scotts lived before they moved to Runagate,” said Gary.

Trish pulled a face and put her ear to the door. She’d put the shotgun back in its trunk, but since we were going inside, Gary didn’t protest. All we heard was the thump of the generator.

“What’s in there?” she demanded.

Wonders. “I don’t know,” I said.

“H-Hello!” shouted Gary, and knocked, his first blow uncertain. I tried to be anxious, but the earth and the grass and the evening breeze surrounded me, as if I had been set into a socket of the world for which I’d been designed.

Still no answer.

Inside, the shed smelled of mice and dry decay. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling, casting stark shadows on benches and tools, entangled cords and the gutted corpses of machinery. There were open, swollen boxes of paper, mouse-eaten, and on the floor downy feathers turned and shuffled in a draught. Metal frameworks, complicated by the shadows, were propped against the wall. Bones. Structures of wings nailed to boards.

“Don’t tidy up,” said Gary. I wrapped my arms around myself and kept my hands under my elbows.

An underlying intent showed through the mess. Years of failings piled on each other. Trish rifled through documents on the nearest bench, pushed back the lid of a box. The paper inside was almost chewed through; flat, swivelling insects scurried from between the sheets. I stepped away quickly.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “It looks like calculations, but…” She held up the paper. “I don’t recognise half of these words. And the handwriting’s terrible. This isn’t even English.”

Mould-mottled envelopes, their stamps dull. Magyarország, Ísland, Åland. But these had been addressed to Darryl Scott, not Nerida, and the handwriting was vigorous, angular and crabbed. They did not smell of flowers.

“Don’t— Just, be careful,” said Gary, stalking catlike between the benches. He’d picked up one piece of paper, then put it down, rubbing his hands on the sides of his jeans.

Trish looked askance at both of us, and moved on. “Weird,” she said. “There’s bagpipes here.”

Gwenda’s story. Dad in Woodwild, but not here.

“Probably full of moths,” said Trish.