Freddie Mercury walks our wide garden with a notebook and pen

The spirit in the shape of a man with no clothes on speaks English.

I watch it flail on its back like an upended crab. Maybe it’s not a bad spirit at all but the Green Man who’s coming to suck my blood while I’m still alive, as sure as the yew trees will suck me dry when I’m dead.

This time I do scream.

My door opens and Cleo, our Great Dane, leaps on to my bed, barking. Mum runs in to pull me away from the window; she’s probably frightened it’s open, that I’m sleep-jumping out of this house. I’m too scared to speak so I point, and she sees what I have seen: the spirit-man with no clothes on who speaks English dancing around the graves.

I burst into tears. Cleo howls from my bed.

Mum freaked. She banged on doors. ‘Sort your bloody charge out,’ she told the men. I crept out of my bedroom and on to the landing as she marched out of the open front door to the porch, the sergeant major of our vicarage. ‘Go and get him now.’

From outside I hear ‘catch him!’ shouts and laughter. The church gate creaks. A scuffle on the gravel is coming closer, then the mess of men are in the hall below me, out of breath.

‘Just keep him under control, for Chrissake!’ Mum is saying. I can smell him as well as see him: soil, whisky, man-sweat and something that tastes of metal. He’s laughing and he hasn’t found any clothes. He doesn’t look made of wood like the Green Man, but like the yews, he might have been drinking the blood and bones of the dead. Mum barks, ‘Be quiet, you silly sod, the farmer will be out soon.’

He skips over guitars, jumps on to amps. He dodges behind the drum kit as the men run after him. This spirit man looks happy in a birthday party way. He grins and laughs and jiggles. I don’t think he wants to go to bed.

‘Oz, Oz, Ozzy, come on, mate.’ Mum is standing on a chair at the foot of the staircase. She’s waiting. As he skips past her, she throws one of my grandmother’s Welsh rugs over his head. He’s suddenly quiet: a canary in a cage. The men grab him.

‘Put him to bed,’ Mum tells them. She sees my face staring down from the landing and tells me to take Cleo and go to her bedroom.

I can’t stop crying. Mum sighs but hugs me. ‘Dear me, what a fuss,’ she says. Her four-poster bed smells of beeswax and although it’s big enough for Cleo too, she is not allowed.

Mum is decisive, ‘Look, I’m telling them to leave in the morning. I cannot cope with this crap—’

A green van with gold writing turns up our drive. I hold on to a thick reed by the frozen pond and try to sound out the letters, but they swirl. The van parks up. The driver opens the back and carries out the biggest toy owl I’ve ever seen. Cleo bounds up to him and the delivery man freezes, the owl towering in his arms. Cleo barks. Mum and the band manager come out of our black and white porch.

I recognise the writing on the van now. It says ‘Harrods’. ‘What’s all this?’ Mum asks.

The Harrods man hands her the owl.

‘What in God’s name—?’ The Harrods man is now carrying two green hippos, one under each arm. I kick through