‘Who is it please,’ said the old woman, in a very different voice, weak and frightened, ‘there’s only me, me and my memories. What have you come in here for, who are you in my room? I can hear you breathing. Why do you not answer me? I don’t see well but I can smell you and hear you, come closer, come to me, visit me. Won’t you please? No one comes to visit me. Only the Iremonger with the food, it’s so nice to have someone new, someone young. Can I touch you, may I feel your skin? The Iremonger who comes does not have nice skin, do you?’

As she said this, very slowly she crept towards me, and I just as slowly crept away. I moved to the side of the seat, and then, that no longer being safe, crawled out until I was behind a great black armchair.

‘Was that you moving? Did I just hear you? You’re very shy, aren’t you? Don’t be shy. There’s just me here, an old, old woman. Have you seen my fireplace? It is a magnificent thing. There’s nothing so fine in all Heap House. Would you like to see it properly, why not step close to it? I was given it when I was born. We have stayed here together, my marble fireplace and I, in this room. When I was a child I should dart out of the corridor, even go down a stairway a little before running home, but that was long ago now, I haven’t seen the staircase for so many years. I used to open the door every once in a while and look at the different weather of the landing, but now, generally, I just lie here, in my bed, facing the fireplace.’

Something clattered down the flue into the firegrate, I saw it as the ash settled, an old and filthy dress, someone’s old clothes. It lay in the grate and the old woman said, ‘Such a storm, blowing filth into my room, dirtying my fireplace, perhaps tomorrow I’ll have my Iremonger open the shutters and I’ll look out and see how the storm has moved everything, where the rubbish has piled up. Oh, it wasn’t someone come to visit us after all, fireplace, it was just the storm, only a storm.’

I thought the storm had fooled the old bird then, but a moment later I heard a key in the lock. She’d locked me in with her.

‘All right you, you creature. I’ve locked the door and pulled the bell rope, there’ll be a dozen Iremongers here any instant. You filth! I shall have my carpets burnt. I shall have my seating thrown through the windows. You filthy dirty bitch! Come on, come here, come up, come out! Come out I say!’