The gate had been opening and closing all week, though no one had gone in or out. It sounded like a door to a room you used to visit when you were very young.

For three days the gate at the end of the garden squeaked at the same time every evening, even when there was no wind. It was not a forbidding squeak; it was the sort that made you think of attic windows and slightly sunburned paper, like something invented by a careful, old-fashioned watchmaker.

On the first day I thought it was the neighbour's cat, or perhaps the pigeons. On the second day I went outside to see whether the hinges needed oiling, and the gate stood still and closed, just as the purple dusk began to settle. On the third day I waited with a cup of tea, and at exactly quarter past six the gate sighed itself open by the width of a hand. There was nothing there but a strip of wet grass and the fence beyond; it had not been anyone walking through, only the slow, exact motion of something that had learned to open because it had been asked.

When I went to close it, the gate made that same faint, patient sound, as if it were saying thank you. It is a strange comfort, the kind that comes from the idea that even small things can be polite.