I kneel on my bed and look out of the window. Even though it’s almost bedtime the sky is still pale blue; the moon, round as a coin, glows silver in the half-light. Downstairs I can hear the TV mumbling away and the rise and fall of Mum and Dad’s voices.

Next to me on my bed is the battered black tin chest where I keep my collection. On the lid is a grubby old bit of masking tape; written on it is Mandel Museum, in my clumsy writing from before I could even do joined-up. I pull off the tape and squish it up into a little ball. I open the lid. It used to be Dad’s fishing box and the inside is divided up into loads of different sections, and each little section contains something I’ve found in the forest. There’s so much stuff that sometimes even I’m surprised at what I’ve got in here. I peer at the owl pellet full of tiny bones; the green glass fragment washed smooth by the river; the four-leaf clover, folded in Sellotape for protection; the sharpened flint microlith; the curled-up scrolls of papery birch bark.

I reach into my pocket and set the tooth carefully on my window sill; it gleams dully in the fading light. Then I pick up the book that’s always next to my bed; it’s called The Wild and it’s my favourite book. I won it in a raffle at school, before I could even read. Back then I just liked the pictures: the amber-eyed lynx on the prowl, who looked like a bigger, more dangerous, more exciting version of our cat, Howard Carter; the dragonfly nymphs, like giant earwigs with their horrible pincers; the bats … when I was little I always used to turn the book the wrong way up when I got to the bats page so that I could look properly at the roosting pipistrelles.

Downstairs the TV audience does a big laugh and I hear Mum and Dad’s laughter like icing on top of it. I flick to the index and run my finger down the columns of words, pausing at any possibles, hoping I’ll find the once-upon-a-time owner of that tooth.

Badger …

Bear …

Bison …

Deer … I read and I flick through to page 245. And there’s the photo of the fisherman who’s gripping the antlers of a massive ancient deer skull that he’s just pulled out of a lake. I pick up the real-life tooth and hold it close to the picture, trying to compare it. A breeze drifts in through the open window, ruffling the pages. ‘Deer tooth?’ I whisper, pressing down on the tooth’s tip.

Then, from somewhere else, somewhere outside, I hear that low gravelly voice again. Cholliemurrum, almost like it’s saying my name.

I freeze, staring out of the window into the stillness of the garden and the dim of Mandel Forest beyond.

‘Who’s there?’ I squeak.

But nobody answers.

Of course not.