This new old man was red in the face and bulgy in the neck, with bristly white side-hair sticking up round the edges of his bald head like a brush. Lily was right – they were having a fantastic blow-up, shouting over each other like we’re not supposed to at school. All I understood was, Don’t ever invite him to a parish event again! (The old man spat that.) And, Don’t you dare tell me who I can and can’t invite! (The old lady yelled this.) And then they stopped and glared at each other.

‘You missed the best bits,’ Lily said. ‘She kept telling him to get knotted.’ She put her earbuds back in and skipped away.

I got into perfect secret-listening position, like a detective: body hidden in a corner, head angled round. See without being seen.

The old man started up again. ‘This village hasn’t been the same since that miscreant came back.’

The lady rapped her fingers along the counter and gave him an impressively fatal scowly look.

‘As head of the parish council, I have a duty to police his mess and botching.’ His voice was croaky, and deep, like a walrus. ‘We’ve had enough of his marauding animals – they’re always escaping. That monstrous bird on the allotments last summer – the damage it did! Spiteful-looking creature. Vermin! Folding Ford is no place for zoo rejects.’

Then he aced it. ‘All the children are afraid of him and it’s not the sort of thing we want in this village. Experimental animal breeding, warped hybrids – it’s not right. Hellish goings-on at that house.’

The lady made a superb lip-puckered face at him and said, ‘Ash House is an animal sanctuary, not a—’

‘Don’t play the innocent,’ he snapped. ‘We’ve both seen what’s escaped from there. A stampede of giant mutant guinea pigs last spring! Ash House is a charnel house!’

The lady looked at the ceiling and groaned. Whatever a charnel house is, she doesn’t like them.

Ash House. The last house in the village. I knew it straight away – we drove past when we were still exploring new places to live, just before we moved here. It’s big, white, and stands on its own with huge fir trees in the garden. Those trees are the best ever. They sway in the wind, leaning together like they’re whispering.

More shouting. More muddle. I couldn’t see what was so bad about bringing things into the country from abroad and making wind traps and messing about with stuff and inventing junk – sounded cool to me – but the old man thought it was bad, bad, baaad.