In truth, the whole structure looked old. A crooked roof, four windows smudged with dirt, a door that didn’t fit and a rope that hung down like a snake.

But Evan didn’t care. It was the best tree house he had ever seen.

The desire to explore edged out the instinct to obey his mother.

He crept down the stairs, wincing at the yelp from a floorboard he hadn’t figured out how to avoid yet. He held himself still, half expecting his mother to appear in the door of the study, his opportunity lost. But the house stayed hushed. He unlocked the back door and stepped into paradise.

The morning sun warmed his face, the fresh-grass smell of summer as powerful as his mother’s perfume. A bee drunk on pollen bumped into his arm and righted itself, droning drowsily. A bird, startled by Evan’s appearance on the patio, darted across the lawn. The sky was holiday blue.

The kind of day when nothing goes wrong.

Evan pelted down the garden, a smile splitting open his face, the untasted joy of defiance on his lips.

* * *

Up close, the tree house was much bigger than it seemed from his bedroom window, the copse rising behind it like a sinister presence.

A gate was set into the fence at the bottom of the garden, allowing access to the thicket and the playground of trees beyond. It was much smaller than Blatches Woods, but this tangle of woodland was still big enough to get lost in.

A few meters beyond that was a narrow but deep ditch, filled with dead leaves, sticks and the memory of water. It was overgrown with weeds and long grasses, and its high bank and the fence hid it from the house, but Evan barely gave it a second glance. His interest lay elsewhere.

The trunk of the plum tree was like a ship’s mast, pushing up through the center of the tree house walls, which were haphazard but sturdy. The floor was made from imperfect wooden boards with a hole cut in the middle to allow for the trunk. Nailed into its bark was a rope that dangled below, an invitation. Evan tugged on it and several strands of nylon fiber came off in his hands. He turned to the ladder, which rested against the bottom of the tree, and pressed one foot on the first rung. It wobbled, but held.

The boy, who was light and fleet, scrambled up. He was an adventurer. An explorer. Climbing into a new world. Leaves tickled his face. The sweet scent of ripening fruit filled his nose and mouth. Excitement filled him up. He did not notice the wasps crawling over the skin of the plums, or the indignant croak of a crow as it flapped its wings on a branch and lifted skyward.

The door, it turned out, wasn’t functional, but nailed into place. Entry was by pulling himself up onto the floorboards through a narrow gap by the trunk. Not safe. But fun.