‘I think I might just be,’ said the redhead. ‘I am an Iremonger. Cusper said so. Oh, and he’s for it. Not my problem. Brought it upon himself if you ask me. But I’m here at last. I do feel an Iremonger. I really do. I wonder if they’ve caught that little red rat yet. I wonder what they’ll do to her.’

‘She’s for it all right.’

‘I think they’ll do for her, won’t they?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Who could blame them. Asking for it.’

‘Trespassing like that.’

‘Disgusting I call it.’

‘To think I talked to her.’

‘To think she talked to me.’

‘As if she were one of us like everyone else.’

‘Made me want to take a good wash. I scrubbed myself when I heard, I don’t mind telling you. I even ate a bit of soap.’

‘Quite right.’

‘Makes my skin itch just to think of her.’

‘Still, we have you now, and that’s a comfort.’

‘Will you tell us about yourself?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything.’

‘Oh, everything, everything.’

‘All about you.’

So it went on like that, making me ill, until Briggs rang his bell, early I think. The spoons all eaten, and licked clean I supposed, the tables were cleared and at last the final footsteps died away and all was quiet again.

I stayed put a while. The door was left open and once or twice some Iremonger came in for a moment, and put down plates, before wandering off again. But I couldn’t stay there for ever. I knew that. I had to get myself up the house. Those downstairs rooms were too dangerous for me. Better further up, further up there’d be a chance out. And Clod was upstairs. I’d find him in the Sitting Room just as we said we would, just as planned, before everything got ruined.

I opened my cupboard door, slowly crept out.

The other one was there before me.

It had got itself together again. It had reassembled its bits. It had come together so quietly. It was much shorter now, like a child. A child of bits. And it grunted and scraped a little. It heard me, I don’t know how, but it turned to me and its face, which seemed to be made of a dented tea tray and with all sorts of nails and pins and bolts and screws and nuts and chips of glass and pottery, moved around in a great swirl, never keeping still, and for a moment I thought I could almost see a face fully there, eyes and nose and such, but it was only things, just things.

‘Don’t you hurt me,’ I said.

It tilted its head.

‘They’re after me and all. They want me in pieces too.’