‘Perhaps you’d like to see the capybara? They’re just out the back here.’ Mr Clemm took Mum and Lily out the back way with their tea, leaving the door open, and leaving me in the sticky heat of the kitchen. Lysander followed. I saw what looked like super-heavyweight guinea pigs in a pen, and soon Mum and Lily were totally occupied.

And then Mr Clemm returned to me and my heart speeded up and I felt myself getting even hotter.

‘So,’ he said. ‘About our project.’

I stood there in a daze. How was I doing this? I didn’t know what to say. The tea smelt like perfume. I told myself to be brave, but my thoughts went all watery and useless. The kitchen smelt of coffee, old fruit and warm, summer-baked furniture. Julia stared at me as if she knew everything. She kept so still. Her tail twitched every few seconds, but that was it.

‘She likes you,’ Mr Clemm said. ‘Don’t you, Julia?’ (Mum’s right about the way he speaks: he runs his words right to the ends of his breath, Don’tttt youuu, Juliaaa?)

Gently, I smoothed the back of Julia’s head until she purred loudly, deep in her throat. My hand vibrated. She felt warm, like a hot-water bottle. On the wall above Julia’s head there was a framed photo of a monkey. Mr Clemm saw me staring at it.

‘Yes, that’s Ashna. She died two years ago, but she had a good life here first,’ he said. Then, as if he’d read my mind, he added, ‘Somebody rescued her from a circus in India, and I rescued her from his cage. She couldn’t have survived in the wild by that stage.’

He rummaged in a cupboard, then offered me a biscuit. He was still spider-like when he moved, but more daddy-long-legs than crouching spider. The Cloaked Strider was giving me a biscuit. So unreal.

I took a ginger nut and saw my own hand shaking. And then he said in a soft voice, ‘You know, I’m not trying to imprison her.’

He sat down. So did I. He smelt of tobacco and clean feathers, like he’d come straight from stroking a hundred birds. Better now he wasn’t towering over me quite so much.

‘We seem to be caught in the same conundrum, you and me,’ he said. ‘Our speedy friend is causing havoc.’

I said, ‘I’ve been calling her Whizzy,’ but the word came out as a croaky whisper.

‘Whizzy!’ He leaned back in his chair and laughed. ‘A fine name. Yes! Very apt indeed.’

‘How does she make it rain?’ I blurted. I’d decided to hurl my words out before they could go wrong, but it only seemed to make my heart race faster. ‘And thunder and … everything?’