For weeks we’d been watching the hedgehog—

in the garden, along the fence, sometimes

behind the corded spruce ricked up

against the shed. Most nights we’d hear her

rummaging among summer’s weeds; we’d pry

at cracks in the dark for glimpses of her

ghost-white mask, her forest of blonde-brown

spines. We fed her, poured milk in a saucer,

even built a hide. She must have been living

next door and coming in through a gap

in the fence. We didn’t realise

until September had slipped out of its clothes

and the neighbour, red-faced in bonfire light,

burned a heap of branches, leaves

and twigs. October’s early dark was thick

with absence after that.