She had just settled down for the evening, the dishes washed and put away and the kitchen table cleared of the newspaper she had been reading as she ate her dinner. Coronation Street would be on soon, and though eight o’clock seemed far too early to go to bed, what she fancied more than anything was to head upstairs afterwards and curl up beneath the quilt with the book she’d started at the weekend. She would boil the kettle and do herself a hot-water bottle to take up with her.

The local newspaper that she had folded and put to one side made for depressing reading. That poor man killed up at the hospital, then the young boy attacked near the park on Saturday night. What was the world coming to? She remembered a time when this little corner of the planet had been a safe place, when front doors had been left unlocked and children had gone in and out of neighbours’ houses without their parents having to worry about where they were or whether they were safe. Everyone had looked out for each other back then. But not any more. The world was different now. Hostile.

But there were still the traditions, she thought, and they offered at least something to hold onto. The box of sweets she had bought from the shop up on the main road was sitting on the table in the hallway, waiting for the arrival of the children who came every year, their plastic pumpkin-shaped buckets already half filled with chocolates and lollipops. She loved to see their little outfits: the tiny witches and the miniature devils who would gather on the pavement outside the front door.

She glanced at the clock. Nearly half past seven. They were late this year. No one was coming. Perhaps, like so many others, this tradition was also dying out.

Turning up the sound on the television, she settled back on the sofa. The ringing of the doorbell interrupted the voices in her living room, and she got up to answer it, arming herself with the box of sweets on the way.

‘Trick or treat!’

The skeleton at the front door held out his bare hands, thanking her as she scooped handfuls of sweets from the box. He was on his own – unusual for a trick-or-treater, she thought – and he seemed tall for a child, although the black costume might have made him look bigger than he was.

‘Happy Hallowe’en!’ the voice behind the mask said.

She glanced down at the hands, at the long, thin fingers that held the sweets she had given him.

‘Happy Hallowe’en,’ she returned.

Closing the front door, she put the box of sweets back on the side table before checking that she was double-bolted in for the night. The Coronation Street theme music had begun playing out from the living room, inviting her back to the comfort of the sofa.

As she turned back from the doorway, ready to settle down again, a sound startled her; a movement further along the hallway, something out of sight. Then she saw it, there at the end of the passage, blocking the entrance to the kitchen. Framed by the doorway stood the skeleton, come back.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Fear gripped her insides, rendering her silent.

‘Trick or treat?’ a voice said.