Quite early the next morning, just after getting dressed, not long after Grandfather’s engine had left for the day, I heard Percy Hotchkiss coming down my corridor and with it something unfamiliar called Geraldine Whitehead. Uncle Aliver knocked and entered, looking very nervous, beside him stood a man I had never seen before and yet felt I had known all my life, there was something very familiar about him. He was wearing official uniform, a gold braided bay leaf on his collar. He was a little man, his sparse hair was stuck hard to his large white skull, and there were veins on his temple clearly visible. Who was he? Why did I seem to know him?

‘May I present,’ said Uncle Aliver, but nervously, ‘your Uncle Idwid Iremonger. I do not think you have met him before; he is your Uncle Timfy’s twin brother.’

‘How is little Timfy?’ asked Idwid. ‘He is my younger brother, you know, he arrived after me, by some twenty-two minutes.’ He said all this smiling, he seemed to smile a lot. His voice, unlike his twin’s, was very gentle. I had heard of Uncle Idwid before but never met him. He was a Governor, one of the highest of all Iremongers, but he lived in the city and did not come home.

‘Here is the boy at last, is he?’ said Uncle Idwid, his face opening up to reveal his clean teeth, but he was not looking at me as he spoke, his face was pointed away. Only then did I see that the orbs in his head were wrong, they were all milky. Uncle Idwid was blind. He was smiling widely around the room and breathing deeply as if to take in all the air. ‘Sit me down please, Aliver.’

Uncle Aliver showed him to one of my chairs.

‘Make me close to him, draw me very close, and you, dear Clod, come to me. Sit with me, shall you?’

I was sat beside him, very close, both of our feet not quite reaching the ground.

‘How lovely it is to be here in Heap House once more,’ he said. ‘Now, what do I hear?’ He cupped his small manicured hands to his ears and hummed a little to himself, then smacked his lips. ‘I hear James Henry Hayward! Hallo! Hallo! Come, James Henry Hayward, come, come to me!’ He opened his hands out. ‘I know you’re here, come, I want to know you. Let it out, Clod, let me see, do let me see.’

I couldn’t help smiling, he could hear like me! Aliver nodded to me and I slowly put my plug into his hands. Idwid brought it very close to his nose and sniffed it, patted it, and stroked it all over.

‘James Henry Hayward,’ it said, quite happily I thought.

Idwid turned it upside down, he tickled it on its underside.