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there, by the old gate. Look.”
    She turned her head back. “Oh,” she said, “he’s gone.”
    “Hell,” I said. “Was he big and ugly, with buckteeth?”
    “He was . . . I don’t know. . . . Where could he have got to?”
    We were all looking now. The tall nettles nodded, and the frayed ends of the old ropes on the gates lifted in the breeze, but there was nobody there.
    “It was your himagination,” said Pete.
    “No, honestly, I swear,” said Cora, frowning. “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. It was this man, with long black clothes on. He was looking at us. I — I’ve seen his face somewhere before, but I can’t remember where. . . . He looked like he’d been in an accident or something. His skin was all twisted and horrible. . . .”
    “Don’t be daft,” I said. “If there was a man there, we’d have seen him.”
    “I tell you, I ain’t fibbin’!”
    “It were Peter,” said Mimi, rubbing the worn patch on Sid’s head.
    “What? Rubbish!” said Pete. “I’m right here, aren’t I?”
    “No,” she said, staring back at the old gate, “the other Peter — over at Auntie Ida’s — Old Peter. . . .”

    We don’t play the game anymore. Roger puts the last wreath over a headless angel standing on a grave beside the path. Without saying a word, we go back through the iron gate and into the lane.
    I search for footprints or flattened grass around the gate with the roof, but everything is just the same as before. The only footprints in the wet earth are ours. Roger kicks the dirt about, and Pete won’t look at me. They obviously think we were lying. Mimi stands quietly, rubbing Sid’s patch with the side of her finger.
    I’m cross. I pick up a stone and throw it high at the gate. It bounces off and nearly hits me in the face. As I dodge, I think I glimpse something written on the crosspiece of the wooden arch that holds up the roof. I stretch up, but my fingers won’t quite reach. Moving backwards a little, I shade my eyes with my hand, but the arch is in shadow.
    “Hey, you lot, I think there’s words up here,” I call. Roger and Pete come over and screw up their eyes.
    “Can’t see it. . . .” Pete squints.
    “We need to climb up on something,” says Roger, “though it probably just says
DM loves SS
— that’s Derek Meacock, who lives next to Mrs. Aylott’s, and Sylvia Sparks. He writes it up all over the place. It’s on the lamppost outside Mrs. Wickerby’s, and on the bus shelter on the main road, but Sylvia never goes out with him. I asked Mum why once, but Dad butted in and said he couldn’t understand it because Sylvia’s a tart and would go with anybody for a free ticket to the pictures. Then Mum told him off and said he wasn’t to say things like
tart
in front of us, but I didn’t know what he meant, anyway. I thought a tart was just something you ate with custard.”
    “No,” I tell him. “A tart’s a lady what puts on bright red lipstick and dyes her hair yellow and puts it up in a bouffong with loads of lacquer to keep it stiff. We’ve got one in our street called Viv.”
    We look around for something to stand on. There’s a big stone by the side of the road, but it’s too heavy to move. Roger tries jumping but goes up so high the second time that when he comes down again, he falls over in the mud.
    “Let’s see if there’s a chair in the church to stand on,” says Pete. “It’s always open.
Nyaaaah!
” He goes whizzing off up the path with his arms out like an aeroplane.
    “Good idea,” Roger calls after him as he brushes down his knees.
    The musty smell in the church porch is like the smell of Guerdon Hall. There are dingy old notices nailed to the wall. Roger lifts the iron latch and pushes open the big wooden door.
    “Don’t like it,” says Mimi. “It ain’t nice — ain’t goin’ in.”
    “You blinkin’ well are,” I say, pulling her sleeve.
    I’ve never been inside a church ever before. The quiet is