“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’s house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side. The way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog wasn’t running or asleep. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog…”

“People say that Orion is called Orion because Orion was a hunter and the constellation looks like a hunter with a club and a bow and arrow… But this is really silly because it’s just stars and you could join up the dots in any way you wanted…”

“…because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end.”

“It was like somebody had switched me off and then switched me on again. And when...