I looked at him, and he read my question.

"No, my body was still here. That can't run any more. But I can leave it, relive everything you and your father do now. I've lived both of your lives before, you see. From this chair I can play out all your dreams."

I recognized the language. I knew it just as I knew his voice. But I still did not see. We shared the next silence without need for nods.

"Run along now." A mitten patted my back. I looked up at him a while more, tried to soak in a little of what he said, then jumped down and ran away, clicking his door shut behind me. This time I went out of the front door instead, so he would not be able to follow me. I needed to be alone. I had a lot of thinking to do.

I mooned around in such an obvious dream over the next few days it took all of father's practicality to postpone my mother's calling a doctor. As he predicted, I soon burst into life again. My introspection had blossomed in the wrong season, and found no way to combat the vitalities of summer. Even the butterflies ceased to perplex me, and I stalked them happily with my net, swooping them off the lilac branches and into a brief, jam-jarred captivity.

Grandfather died with the summer. The fire spent itself out, curtains were flung back, windows heaved open, and a chill was forced to stream through the room. The chair was spirited away at the same time as grandfather, but probably reached no nearer heaven than the loft.

Grandfather himself now lay in a box. The bristles had disappeared from his face, and his eyelids were uncovered from beneath the sunglasses. The body seemed sleeker within its shroud but offered no real secrets. His cheeks rouged a blatant pink, his hair bore a darker tint, the smile had been wiped down into a serene blank, whilst his eyebrows had been pencilled to arch black amazement at the whole process. I wondered where he had gone this time.

I heard the lid forced down on the coffin, watched from the window as the body was carried through the front door, and stood by the open grave as the vicar preached about the man he had never met. My father looked sad, but there were no tears. An arm stretched out to hug my mother closer to himself, maybe even bind in that embarrassed relief I had sensed in the house, a relief only suppressed by decency. Just the day before father had reverted to his jokes, feeling his way back into the living room. As the coffin was lowered, father looked away, out of the churchyard and beyond the fields. I felt grandfather sinking from sight, father fleeing the scene, and stood hopelessly small between them. Two directions showed themselves. There was no way grandfather was living all three of our lives. The first spadeful of mud dropped down to splat against the wood. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" came the chant. Grandfather was being left to crumble He could never escape the box to feel the same wind as I did.

My father picked me up as I wept, carried me from the churchyard and into the fields as I sobbed out all control over my body. It had surprised them both, I later heard my parents say, but then you never could tell how these things would affect the children.