Across the road, beside the old army camp, there was a small pond that everyone called Dead Man’s Lake. My mother said I was never to go there, because if I did I would surely drown.

The two rooms over the lollipop shop in the middle of Stamp Street are small, dark and inconvenient, but they have what Miss Arabella Bassett prizes highly: a wonderful view!

When I was ten, and my twin brothers, Jerry and John, were eight years old, we all lived on Lord Rathmore’s estate, deep in the heart of the Kent countryside. Up at the Hall there were lots of servants who lived-in, but the gamekeeper, the cowman, and the gardener each had a cottage of their own.

Although she'd put another coin in the meter not that long ago, the old gas fire, which did little to dispel the chill that had crept into every corner of Bessie's living-room, hissed and popped as if it might be going out.

The clock on the wall of the Mission Hall said half-past-three, and I yawned discreetly into my screwed-up handkerchief, wondering just how much longer it would be before the Sunday school reading was over.