“Mr Paterson was like no other adult she’d ever met. She’d only known him for three Wednesdays but already they were the best of friends.”

Laura Hird has only published four books and each one of them is outstanding. Nail and Other Stories, in which this story first appears, is a fantastic collection which shrugs off the hit-and-miss reputation of short story collections by not having a single bad one in it. Hird has a particular talent for downbeat stories in which the protagonist is barely aware of the horrors happening around them. ‘Imaginary Friends’is just such a story.

The Mr Paterson of the above quotation is the young, unnamed protagonist’s piano teacher. To the protagonist he is the best kind of adult. He is ostensibly an amateur magician, has a big fluffy dog with the improbable name of Caliban (matching Mr Paterson’s magician persona), and is much happier messing around and playing touchy-feely games with the protagonist than he is with teaching her the piano.

For the reader, the hairs on the back of the neck are already raised and it’s no surprise at all when one of Mr Paterson’s magic tricks, in the form of a strange whiteish paste he produces in the bathroom, is in fact the beginnings of abuse.

Like all imaginary friends, Mr Paterson eventually disappears from the scene (evidently forced out by concerned locals or the police) but, in an innocent and terrible reflection of the enduring nature of child abuse, his presence and secrets remain with the protagonist forever. A chilling story brilliantly executed.

First published in Chapman, 1996. Collected in Nail and Other Stories, Rebel Inc, 1997