A little girl has concerns about an old woman in a creepy house on the walk to school.

It’s the tiny details in this story that make it feel so real. The pet names, Ginny calling her mother by her first name for a spell (and the echoes of it later in the story), the constant presence of Underbite the lion.

…I’d got round the Scary Walk to School by holding Mum’s hand until the very last possible moment, then letting go of it just long enough to skip as fast as I could, past the rusty gate of the bungalow next door to the school. That way I wouldn’t ever again have time to see the aproned figure in the peeling turquoise porch, or notice the red clotted velvet curtains parting around that slow smile of sweetcorn dentures; the chicken fingers rippling a slow wave; the American Tan knees wide apart like open sesame.