I tried not to gasp. In London we’d once watched, powerless to help, as the bailiffs arrived at the door of a neighbour and taken almost everything, leaving the poor woman and her two children virtually destitute. Blackman had never mentioned bailiffs. What else was he not telling the rest of the committee?

‘He can’t do that, can he, Pa?’

‘I tell you here and now, Vicar, I ain’t going nowhere – and certainly not to no council house. I’ll chain meself to this hut before anyone takes it off of me. That, or them’ll have to carry me out of here in me coffin. And that’s the end of that.’

He plonked down the file and brushed the legs of his old trousers, as though ridding himself of any taint of Blackman troubles. ‘More tea, anyone?’

On the way home I remonstrated with Pa once more.

‘Did you know about this bailiff thing? All those letters?’

He shook his head. ‘Must have been before we got here.’

‘But don’t you see, now? We have to do something.’

He walked on, saying nothing.

‘Well?’ I pressed.

‘My darling, I’m not sure what I can do.’

That evening I found him slumped in his office chair, bottle of beer in hand and another empty bottle beside it. He looked exhausted and old. Coming to the village was supposed to have been a new start, a chance to recover from his war experiences and his grief, to get back to normality. But he was already being beaten down by apparently insuperable problems.

I recalled Eli’s phrase about Blackman: spreading poison through our village. It made me shiver.

THE UGLY DRAGON

by Molly Goddard

Chapter 4: The dragon hates the taste of human beings

The next time Jimmy and his sister went to call for the dragon, she appeared immediately.

‘Hello again,’ she said, hauling herself onto the bank. ‘Now I’ve been wondering,’ she went on, ‘why you don’t seem to be afraid of me? Most people are terrified.’

Jimmy didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t entirely sure himself.

‘Didn’t they warn you about how I used to eat people?’ she asked.

Jimmy told her that he’d heard all kinds of stories, but he didn’t believe what everyone said. For example, they said the dragon was killed by a knight called George, which was plainly wrong, because she was still here. The dragon laughed. Deep rumbles from her enormous belly seemed to make the ground tremble, and fountains of water spurted from her nostrils.

‘Ha-ha-ha. They sent plenty of brave men with spears and swords, but I hate fighting. I just disappeared underwater for a while, so they could claim they had killed me, and everyone praised them as heroes.’