I picked my way across the room, shoved a pile of books to the back of an armchair and perched on the front. Mr Wetheral took some mugs from the coffee table, squeezed them on to the edge of the mantelpiece and sat in their place.

“So,” he said, “my guess is you’ve come to talk to me about the wanderers. You’ve been helping them, this last week. Taking them food. You’ve even been out there, haven’t you? Beyond the hawthorn?”

If I was Trig, my mouth would’ve done an “O”.

He scratched his gloved hand.

“Would you mind if I removed my glove? It gets so itchy underneath.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

He pulled the glove off and blew on the back of his hand. The skin was tight, creased, fragile.

“How did you know?” I said.

He scrunched his fingers into a fist, then splayed them out wide. “Mother saw you first, up at the boundary, oh, a week ago now. And then I saw you too – Thursday evening, remember? And you didn’t think those scones Mother baked were really for you, did you? She knew you’d give them to the wanderers.”

“Tea, Cruise girl.” Elsie shuffled in with a sloshing cup of camomile tea.

Elsie Weather, who I’d have sworn didn’t know what was happening from one moment to the next until now.

“Pot was already going,” she said.

“Ah, wonderful.” Mr Wetheral smiled. “And right on cue. Thank you, Mother.”

I held the mug round the top and Elsie unhooked her knobbly fingers from the handle. She went back out to the kitchen.

“Mother sees more than you’d think. She’s another that has a good eye.”

“But why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell the mayor? You must hate the wanderers. They killed your family.”

Elsie came back in with a second cup of tea. She handed it to Mr Wetheral, then leaned on her stick and looked at me.

“Ah. Yes.” Mr Wetheral sighed. “I ought to explain about that. It wasn’t wanderers that set fire to my house, Maggie.”

“It wasn’t? But—”

“That was a rumour that someone started. And it suited everyone to believe it.” Mr Wetheral sipped at his tea.

I balanced my mug on the arm of the chair. “What happened?”

He gave his mother a sad smile. “It was an accident, of sorts. I’ll explain. I had two daughters, you see. Bella, our eldest, she wasn’t like your Jed. She wasn’t like you, or Lindi Chowdhry, or Beth Goodman. She didn’t get enough oxygen when she was born. She ran around; she went to school. She was a gentle, loving soul, but she didn’t understand things, not like other fourteen-year-olds. She needed, um, looking after.”

Elsie shifted her stick from one hand to the other.

Mr Wetheral took another sip of tea.