‘I can’t say I have, but I’m not as perceptive as I once was,’ said Hugh. ‘Or rather, I should say, I am not as reliably perceptive as I was in my prime.’ He looked at his granddaughter. ‘How about you, my dear?’

‘It’s been unusually hot,’ she said. ‘But that could just be global warming.’

Hugh smiled weakly.

‘There you have it, I’m afraid,’ he said, and asked Mellissa if he might be permitted to have a second crumpet.

‘Of course,’ she said and placed one in front of him. Hugh reached out with a trembling hand and, after a few false starts, seized the crumpet with a triumphant wheeze. Mellissa watched with concern as he lifted it to his mouth, took a large bite and chewed with obvious satisfaction.

I realised I was staring, so I drank my tea – concentrating on the cup.

‘Ha,’ said Hugh once he’d finished chewing. ‘That wasn’t so difficult.’

And then he fell asleep – his eyes closing and his chin dropping onto his chest. It was so fast I started out of my chair, but Mellissa waved me back down.

‘Now you’ve worn him out,’ she said and despite the heat she retrieved a tartan blanket from the back of her granddad’s chair and covered him up to his chin.

‘I think it must be obvious even to you that he didn’t have anything to do with those kids going missing,’ she said.

I stood up.

‘Do you have something to do with it?’ I asked.

She gave me a poisonous look and I got a flash of it then, sharp and incontrovertible, the click-click of legs and mandibles, the flicker of wings and the hot communal breath of the hive.

‘What would I want with children?’ she asked.

‘How should I know?’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re planning to sacrifice them at the next full moon.’

Mellissa cocked her head to one side.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ she asked.

Anyone can do magic, I thought, but not everyone is magical. There are people who have been touched by, let’s call it for the sake of argument, magic to the point where they’re no longer entirely people even under human rights legislation. Nightingale calls them the fae but that’s a catch-all term like the way the Greeks used the word ‘barbarian’ or the Daily Mail uses ‘Europe’. I’d found at least three different classification systems in the Folly’s library, all with elaborate Latin tags and, I figured, all the scientific rigour of phrenology. You’ve got to be careful when applying concepts like speciation to human beings, or before you know what’s happening you end up with forced sterilisations, Belsen and the Middle Passage.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’ve given up funny.’

‘Why don’t you search our house, just to be on the safe side?’ she said.