He could hear his mother calling him from far away but he didn’t answer, intrigued by what he felt the old book would disclose of the grandmother he had never met.

The covers grew warm between his hands and the metal fastening began to soften, its strands unweaving. His palms started to hurt as the leather seared his skin. Dark acrid smoke swarmed from the book. Tears ran down his cheeks and, as he opened his mouth to scream, flames began to lick the corners of the book.

When Thomas’s mother rushed in with a bucket of water to douse the flames, only a pair of blackened hands remained, clutching the old leather diary.