Our mums said we weren’t to go in Mrs Lovett’s chocolate shop. Even from the street it had this weird, musty aroma and she had those long rubber strips festooned over the door, so it was really hard to see inside.

She sold all kinds of other things, beside chocolate, that seem strange when you’re seven; reels of string, bottles of ‘medicine’, jars labelled only ‘potted meat’ and tubs with ‘Toxic!’ written on in red. And that’s just what you could see peering in from the doorway.

“She’s got naughty magazines behind the till,” David told us smugly, scratching Misty behind the ears. We were in my garden, and Alys threw one of the windfall apples at him.

“It’s true!” he said, rubbing his arm. “I was going past once, and Mr Lewis was coming out, and he was hiding one under his coat.”

Me and Alys drowned him in a chorus of ‘ewww’’, but our curiosity was raised to boiling point.

That afternoon we told mum we were off to the park, but we found ourselves outside Mrs Lovett’s shop.

Between us we had 73p. Alys thought chocolate was maybe 60p so we could get inside, buy something and have a good look around.

After a brief squabble about who would go first, we clustered together and edged under the rubber strips.

It was dark inside, and hot. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust but the potted meat was there, neat rows of hand-labelled jars. Ancient bars of chocolate, bottles of cough syrup and booze, and, as David had promised, naughty magazines towering high above the little old woman at the till, cigarette smoke wreathing her lank grey hair.

We gaped. She eyed us beadily.

David opened his mouth but suddenly there was mum, bustling and flustered and furious.

“What have I told you? You are not to come in here. It’s not a fit place for children – or for anyone for that matter.”

Mrs Lovett stared, a wicked gleam in her wizened eye, taking in every word mum said. Storing it up.

Mum had the grace to flush, but she didn’t stop; she hurried us back out into the daylight, vowing she’d tell David and Alys’ parents, deaf to our pleas.

I was kept inside for a week. It wasn’t so bad because David and Alys were stuck in too. What made it hard was that Misty had wandered off that evening, which wasn’t like her.

The week dragged by lonely and interminable.

Misty still hadn’t come back by the time my punishment had ended. Mum made me go round the streets with her, putting up posters on lampposts. I was worried - she’d never stayed away this long before.

At home, we ran into Mr Baker from next door, who was just getting home himself.

“Oh, hello love,” he warbled. “Still no sign of Misty then? That’s a shame.”

Then he leaned conspiratorially over the fence. “I tell you what, Barbara Lovett’s got a delicious new potted meat in. Made it herself, she did. She said she got her hands on an unexpected special ingredient last week and there’s not much, but she said she'd saved you one jar, special. There's a treat!"