I could not make her out. There were so many sheets and blankets piled up and crinkled here and there, many pillows too but I could not discover Rosamud in all that. I could not see Aunt Rosamud. I could just about picture her in my head, as I remembered her, angry and wielding her door handle, and as I began to remember her so I began to make sense of the mound on the bed. I could tell a sheet from a pillow case, a blanket from a quilt, then out of that mound very slowly I began to comprehend a figure. There at last was Aunt Rosamud, she had been lying upon the bed all along but her body, it seemed to me, it seemed without question, was made from sheets and quilts and pillows. She was made of the stuff from a bed, stuff which had been haphazardly arranged, thrown rather upon the bed, in the rough shape of poor Rosamud, but looking now I felt quite certain very like Rosamud, that poor Rosamud herself had become a mound of material.

‘Aunt Rosamud!’ I called. ‘Aunt Rosamud, you’re nothing but bedding!’

I think I may have begun calling out then, I think I must, because it seemed to me that it was certain the bedding was Rosamud and that the bedding had indeed just moved of its own volition and a single unhappy duck feather had been briefly launched by the moment. My Aunt Eiderdown, my Aunt Comforter, dear Aunt Pillowcase, poor dear Aunt Blanket, oh help, oh help.

I pulled at all the bedding trying to find my aunt within, I scrambled through it, getting myself caught and knotted in it, but at last I had it all pulled from the bed and there was no aunt there at all, not a single aunt. She must be away, I thought, she must have gone away; the only thing that was in the bed was a metal bucket, a cold bucket, like the buckets used to keep ice chippings in, with a lid – a sad-looking bucket that had something so familiar about it. As if I had seen the bucket before, as if I knew the bucket very well and was a little frightened of it. Then it seemed to me I heard a noise, a small noise, but gaining in confidence, the noise was, ‘Rosamud Iremonger.’

‘Aunt,’ I called, ‘Aunt! Where are you? I hear you well enough. Aunt! Aunt!’

‘Rosamud Iremonger.’

‘I hear you but I do not see you. Where are you hiding yourself? Come out. It’s me – it’s Clod. Oh, where are you, Aunt?’

‘Rosamud Iremonger,’ came the sad voice again.

And then there was no hiding it any more. The voice came from the bucket in the bed. It was the bucket that was talking. My Aunt Rosamud was a bucket. And then came another voice.

‘Hello.’