Rather than being offended by my response, Granny Seren took me by the hand and whispered, ‘Come with me. I’ve something to show you.’ She led me into her bedroom, a dark place with black mould on the ceiling, and made me sit on the bed while she went to her tall cupboard, lifting down a shoe-box from its shallow top shelf. Inside the box, carefully nestled in thick tissue, was a small glass bottle with a silver top. The colour of the glass was remarkable: it resembled a fluorescent yellow-green highlighter pen, though I could not have made that comparison in the 1960s. Through the glass I could see a small amount of liquid, which shifted slowly like thick syrup from one side to the other when the bottle moved.

‘You may hold it but be careful,’ said Granny, in a theatrical tone of voice that gave me shivers. ‘This perfume bottle was given to me by the witch and it has magical powers.’

I believed it. It looked magical.

‘The bottle you are holding is made from uranium glass,’ she continued. ‘It glows in the dark.’

‘How does it glow in the dark?’ I asked.

What happened next was even harder for me to believe than the horse story, the witch or the magical bottle. Seren simply shrugged and said, in her ordinary voice, ‘I don’t know.’

‘But how can you not know?’

‘Well, I never asked,’ she said.

And that was that. Granny placed the bottle on top of her dressing table, gathered up the box with its tissue and left the room.

I must have sat on the bed for an hour, waiting for the glow. Nothing happened. From that day on, I’d ask Granny if she had seen the glass glow and she’d reply, ‘No. The time has not yet come …’ or words to that effect. I spent hours sitting in the dark, watching, but never once did anything happen.