Jimmy took out a bag of teacakes and offered her one, placing it on the ground rather than risk being nicked by her sharp teeth. She munched it down in a single gulp.

‘Got any more?’

He gave her his last one.

‘Delicious,’ she murmured, twisting her snout to one side to pick up the crumbs.

‘Tastier than human beings?’ Jimmy asked.

She snorted. ‘I don’t eat them any more, gone off them completely – don’t think I could even stomach a virgin these days. Some human beings are so wicked it makes them taste terribly bitter, which is why I won’t eat them any more. But don’t tell anyone. I have my reputation to keep up. If people are afraid of me, they leave me alone.’

13

I was sitting on the wide windowsill halfway up the stairs rereading The Man in the Dark Coat – ‘he was like a bright star that seemed to tug at all her senses’ – when I spied Kit speeding towards the vicarage on his bicycle, long hair flying out behind him like a dark charger. For a glorious moment I imagined he was coming to visit me, but he rode past with scarcely a second glance.

My head was still filled with contradictory emotions: I longed to see him, but didn’t want to seem too desperate; and he hadn’t replied to my letter, so should I assume he wasn’t interested in me? But then hadn’t he told Rob I was pretty? The thoughts went round and round in my head, until I could stand it no longer.

He must have returned later when I wasn’t looking, because that afternoon we found on the mat an envelope addressed to me and Jimmy and, inside, an invitation in neat, elegant script on a small card:

Kit Waddington, Esq.

Requests the pleasure of your company

To celebrate his 17th birthday

At: Wormley Hall

On: Tuesday 15th August, 3 p.m.

Bring swimmers

RSVP

Tuesday: just a few days away! Questions crowded my mind: who else would be going? Despite being handwritten, the wording of the invitation – ‘requests the pleasure’ – sounded terribly formal. Yet we were told to bring ‘swimmers’, which I took to be boarding-school slang for bathing suits.

Pa found me a blank postcard and showed me how to write an RSVP. My handwriting was nothing like as neat as Mrs Waddington’s (for I assumed she had written the invitations – it was surely not a boy’s hand), but it looked reasonable enough to me.

Molly and Jimmy Goddard

Thank Kit Waddington, Esq.

For his kind invitation for Tuesday 15th August

And have pleasure in accepting.

Later that morning, Blackman called for Pa in his bright-red sports car and they drove to Sudbury for the meeting with the bank manager. When he got home, Pa rushed through his lunch, barely eating a thing or speaking a word, then closeted himself in his study till mid-afternoon.