The ocean at the end of the lane

“Rowanberry and red thread, stop a witch in her speed,” I recited. It was something I had read in a book.

“That’d work, and work well,” said Lettie, “if there was any witches involved in all this. But there’s not.”

Old Mrs. Hempstock was examining my dressing gown. It was brown and faded, with a sort of a sepia tartan across it. It had been a present from my father’s parents, my grandparents, several birthdays ago, when it had been comically big on me. “Probably . . . ,” she said, as if she was talking to herself, “it would be best if your father was happy for you to stay the night here. But for that to happen they couldn’t be angry with you, or even worried . . .”

The black scissors were in her hand and already snip-snip-snipping then, when I heard a knock on the front door, and Gi

“Don’t let them take me,” I said to Lettie.

“Hush,” she said. “I’m working here, while Grandmother’s snipping. You just be sleepy, and at peace. Happy.”

I was far from happy, and not in the slightest bit sleepy. Lettie leaned across the table, and she took my hand. “Don’t worry,” she said.

And with that the door opened, and my father and my mother were in the kitchen. I wanted to hide, but the kitten shifted reassuringly, on my lap, and Lettie smiled at me, a reassuring smile.

“We are looking for our son,” my father was telling Mrs. Hempstock, “and we have reason to believe . . .” And even as he was saying that my mother was striding toward me. “There he is! Darling, we were worried silly!”

“You’re in a lot of trouble, young man,” said my father.

Snip! Snip! Snip! went the black scissors, and the irregular section of fabric that Old Mrs. Hempstock had been cutting fell to the table.

My parents froze. They stopped talking, stopped moving. My father’s mouth was still open, my mother stood on one leg, as unmoving as if she were a shop-window dummy.

“What . . . what did you do to them?” I was unsure whether or not I ought to be upset.

Gi

I had not told them about the bathtub. I did not wonder how she knew.

Now the old woman was threading the needle with the red thread. She sighed, theatrically. “Old eyes,” she said. “Old eyes.” But she licked the tip of the thread and pushed it through the eye of the needle without any apparent difficulty.

“Lettie. You’ll need to know what his toothbrush looks like,” said the old woman. She began to sew the edges of the dressing gown together with tiny, careful stitches.

“What’s your toothbrush look like?” asked Lettie. “Quickly.”

“It’s green,” I said. “Bright green. A sort of appley green. It’s not very big. Just a green toothbrush, my size.” I wasn’t describing it very well, I knew. I pictured it in my head, tried to find something more about it that I could describe, to set it apart from all other toothbrushes. No good. I imagined it, saw it in my mind’s eye, with the other toothbrushes in its red-and-white-spotted beaker above the bathroom sink.

“Got it!” said Lettie. “Nice job.”

“Very nearly done here,” said Old Mrs. Hempstock.

Gi

My mother’s foot came down. She took a step and then she stopped.

My father said, “Um.”

Gi

The old woman said, “We’ve got an inside lavvy nowadays. I don’t know how much more modern anybody could be. Outside lavvies and chamber pots were good enough for me.”

“He ate a fine meal,” said Gi

“There was pie,” I told my parents. “For dessert.”

My father’s brow was creased. He looked confused. Then he put his hand into the pocket of his car coat, and pulled out something long and green, with toilet paper wrapped around the top. “You forgot your toothbrush,” he said. “Thought you’d want it.”

“Now, if he wants to come home, he can come home,” my mother was saying to Gi

Christopher Kovacs was two years older and a head taller than me, and he lived with his mother in a large cottage opposite the entrance to our lane, by the old green water tower. His mother was divorced. I liked her. She was fu

There was a bunk bed in Christopher’s bedroom, although he was an only child. I was given the bottom bunk, the night I stayed there. Once I was in bed, and Christopher Kovacs’s mother had said good night to us and she had turned out the bedroom light and closed the door, he leaned down and began squirting me with a water pistol he had hidden beneath his pillow. I had not known what to do.

“This isn’t like when I went to Christopher Kovacs’s house,” I told my mother, embarrassed. “I like it here.”

“What are you wearing?” She stared at my Wee Willie Winkie nightgown in puzzlement.

Gi

“Oh. I see,” said my mother. “Well, good night, dear. Have a nice time with your new friend.” She peered down at Lettie. “What’s your name again, dear?”

“Lettie,” said Lettie Hempstock.

“Is it short for Letitia?” asked my mother. “I knew a Letitia when I was at university. Of course, everybody called her Lettuce.”

Lettie just smiled, and did not say anything at all.

My father put my toothbrush down on the table in front of me. I unwrapped the toilet paper around the head. It was, unmistakably, my green toothbrush. Under his car coat my father was wearing a clean white shirt, and no tie.

I said, “Thank you.”

“So,” said my mother. “What time should we be by to pick him up in the morning?”

Gi

And she put some scones into a paper bag, which my mother took politely, and Gi

“What did you do to them?” I asked. And then, “Is this really my toothbrush?”

“That,” said Old Mrs. Hempstock, with satisfaction in her voice, “was a very respectable job of snipping and stitching, if you ask me.” She held up my dressing gown: I could not see where she had removed a piece, nor where she had stitched it up. It was seamless, the mend invisible. She passed me the scrap of fabric on the table that she had cut. “Here’s your evening,” she said. “You can keep it, if you wish. But if I were you, I’d burn it.”

The rain pattered against the window, and the wind rattled the window frames.

I picked up the jagged-edged sliver of cloth. It was damp. I got up, waking the kitten, who sprang off my lap and vanished into the shadows. I walked over to the fireplace.

“If I burn this,” I asked them, “will it have really happened? Will my daddy have pushed me down into the bath? Will I forget it ever happened?”