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question Aidan further, but he had to leave that until the evening when Mr and Mrs Stock had left. Aidan fell into an exhausted sleep anyway, as soon as Mrs Stock had shown him to the spare room.
    Downstairs, things were very unrestful. Mr Stock was enraged at the way Mrs Stock had thrust Shaun into the household. Mrs Stock could not forgive Mr Stock for producing Stashe. She was fairly annoyed with Andrew too. “I do think,” she told her sister, “that with all I have to do, he didn’t ought to have taken in that boy. I’ve no notion how long he’ll be staying either. World of his own, that man!”
    As always when she was annoyed, she made cauliflower cheese.
    “I’ll eat it,” Aidan said, when Andrew was about to throw it away.
    Andrew paused, with the dish above the waste-pail. “Not pizza?” he asked, in some surprise.
    “I can eat that too,” Aidan said.
    Andrew, as he put the offending cauliflower back in the oven, had a sudden almost overwhelming memory of how much he had needed to eat when he was Aidan’s age. This brought with it a flood of much vaguer memories, of things old Jocelyn had said and done, and of how much he had learned from the old man. But he was unable to pin them down. Pity, he thought. He was fairly sure a lot of these things were important, both for himself and for Aidan.
    After supper, he took Aidan into the living room and began to ask him questions. He started, tactfully, with harmless enquiries about school and friends. Aidan, after he had looked round the room and realised, with regret, that Andrew did not have a television, was quite ready to answer. He had plenty of friends, he told Andrew, and quite enjoyed school, but he had had to give all that up when the social workers had whisked him off to the Arkwrights, who lived somewhere out in the suburbs of London.
    “But it was nearly the end of term anyway,” Aidan saidconsolingly. He thought Andrew was probably worried about his education, being a professor.
    Andrew secretly made a note of the Arkwrights’ address. They were surely worrying. Then he went on to questions about Aidan’s grandmother. Aidan was even readier to answer these. He talked happily about her. It did not take Andrew long to build up a picture of a splendidly quirky, loving, elderly lady, who had brought Aidan up very well indeed. It was also clear that Aidan had loved her very much. Andrew began to think that Adela Cain had been as wonderful as he had thought she was himself, in the days when he collected all her records.
    Now came the difficult part. Andrew looked around the long, peaceful room, where the French windows were open on the evening sunlight. A fine, sweet scent flowed in with the sunset, probably from the few flowers Mr Stock had spared time to plant. Or was it? Aidan had taken his glasses off and looked warily at the open windows, as if there might be a threat out there, and then looked relieved, as if the scent was a safe one. Now Andrew remembered that there was
always
that same sweet smell in here, whenever the windows were open.
    He was annoyed. His memory seemed to be so bad that he needed Aidan to remind him of things he ought to have known. He decided to treat himself to a small drink. It wasso very small, and in such a small glass, that Aidan stared. Surely there was no way such a little sip of a drink could have any effect at all? But then, he thought, you did take medicine by the spoonful, and some of that was quite strong.
    “Now,” Andrew said, settling himself in the comfortable chair again, “I think I must ask you about those shadowy pursuers you mentioned.”
    “Didn’t you believe me?” Aidan asked sadly. Just like the social workers and the police, he thought. They hadn’t believed a word.
    “Of course I believe you,” Andrew assured him. He knew he would get nothing out of Aidan unless he said this. “Don’t forget that my grandfather was a powerful magician. He and I saw many strange things together.” They