Yesterday after school, Sam and I had spent hours looking for it. We tried everything. We turned on every single appliance in the house till Mum went mad and sent us to the shop to get eggs she didn’t even need, but all we found was two hot plug sockets and a digital clock that thought the time was 99:99. You’d think the creature was hiding itself away from Sam. So annoying. I need him to believe me.

‘You don’t even know for sure if that box had anything alive in it. What if you just saw a spark, some static, a surge of electricity shooting out? There’ll be a simple scientific explanation for everything that looks weird up there.’

My heart started racing. ‘I’ve told you – it was definitely some kind of creature. No way was it just a spark!’ I said. ‘And that box is a massively important part of this whole mystery. The moths on it – trillions of them, there were – they’re something to do with it. Maybe electricity attracts them too, like light.’

‘But moths can be quite weird anyway,’ Sam said. ‘Nature is amazing all by itself – you don’t need to imagine any magical weirdness on top.’

He sounded a bit pompous now. Everything has to have a tedious scientific explanation. I was about to tell him to stop droning on – because he can – but a second later, he blew my mind.

‘Some types of moth don’t even have a mouth.’

I stopped walking. ‘What? How do they eat?’

‘They don’t. They ate everything they were ever going to eat while they were caterpillars. That type aren’t adults for long. No time to eat.’

‘That’s insane! Astonishingly, pulsatingly insane!’ I said, as we walked up the path to my house. ‘You’re wasting your brain, Sam. You could sell that info.’

In the hallway Sam stopped dead, frowning.

‘I mean it,’ I blathered on. ‘I’m sure you could get a few quid from teachers – think how much more interesting they could make their lessons. And online magazines would definitely buy your know-how—’

Sam silenced me with a pointing finger. ‘Your rotten coat!’

Slung over the banister, like an awful premonition of doom, was my terrible puffer coat. My whole head went obscenely hot.

Lily came out of the kitchen. She folded her arms and had a good nosy as I inspected the ugly thing and hung it on its peg.

‘Mr Fuming brought that back, Mum says. You know, the old shouty-crackers man from the village hall? Mum’s gone to help set up tonight’s concert,’ she said, keeping her face completely blank. ‘Where d’you leave it? How does he know where you live?’

I didn’t look at Sam, but felt waves of horror coming off him. This was the worst-case scenario. Now Mr Lombard, of all people, would know I had been to Ash House before the goats.