Grandad’s shed was at the bottom of Grandad’s garden, and Jack was allowed in it, but only with Grandad, and only if he did not touch the saw.

He never touched the saw. He did not want to. The saw hung on two nails on the back wall and had a look about it, and Jack was happy to leave it there. There was plenty else.

The shed was made of wood that had gone silver on the outside and stayed brown on the inside, and it smelled of wood, and oil, and earth, and something else that Jack thought might be the smell of things being kept for a long time. It had one window, with a cobweb in the corner that Grandad said was the spider’s and not to be moved. It had a bench along one side, and shelves above the bench, and on the shelves were jars.

Jars and jars. Jam jars, coffee jars, jars that had once held pickled onions. Each one had something in it. Screws in one, nails in another, hooks in a third. Washers, which were like tiny metal doughnuts. Bits of string, wound up. Rubber bands. Drawing pins. Buttons, for some reason. A jar of just keys, none of which opened anything any more.

“What’s this one for?” Jack would say, holding one up.

“Never know when you’ll need it,” Grandad would say. It was what he said about all of them.

It was a Saturday, and it was raining, which was the best weather for the shed, because the rain made a sound on the roof like somebody drumming their fingers, and the inside felt even more inside than usual. Grandad had the little heater on. It glowed orange behind its bars and made the air smell faintly of dust.

“Right,” said Grandad. “Job for you.”

Jack sat up.

Grandad reached under the bench and brought out a box. It was a wooden box with a lid, small enough to hold in two hands, and it was rough, and pale, and unfinished. It had no hinges yet. The lid just sat on top.

“Made this last week,” said Grandad. “Needs sanding. Thought you might do it.”

He gave Jack a square of sandpaper. It was rough on one side, like a cat’s tongue, and smooth on the other. He showed him how to hold it, flat, with the fingers spread, and how to go with the grain of the wood and not across it.

“With the lines,” said Grandad. “Never against. Wood’s got its own ideas. You go along with them.”

Jack sanded.

It was slow. That was the first thing he learned. You could not hurry it. You went along, and along, and along, and the wood made a soft sound, shh, shh, shh, and a fine pale dust came off it and settled on the bench and on his knees, and for a long time nothing seemed to happen at all. He ran his thumb over it. Still rough.

“Keep going,” said Grandad, who was doing something to a chair leg with a chisel and not looking. “It’s happening. You just can’t see it yet.”

Jack kept going.

The rain went on. The heater ticked. Grandad’s chisel made small curls of wood that dropped on the floor, and every so often Grandad stopped and looked at the chair leg from a distance and made a noise, hm, and went back to it.

After a while Jack ran his thumb over the box again.

It was different. Not smooth, not yet. But it was going that way. There was a place near the corner where it had gone silky, and he found himself going back to that place, over and over, because it felt so good, until Grandad said, “Leave that bit. That bit’s done. Do the bit that isn’t.”

So he did the bit that wasn’t.

He did the sides. He did the ends. He did the lid, which was harder because it was small and kept moving, until Grandad showed him how to hold it against the bench with the heel of his hand. He did the inside, which nobody would see, and Grandad said that was the mark of a proper job, doing the inside.

“What’s it for?” said Jack. “The box.”

Grandad thought about it.

“Keeping things,” he said.

“What things?”

“Whatever needs keeping.”

Jack looked at the shelves of jars. He understood.

When the whole box was smooth, every side, every edge, so that his hand went over it like water, Grandad put down the chisel and came and looked. He picked the box up and turned it in the window light and ran his own thumb along it, the way Jack had, and looked at it for a long time.

“That’ll do,” he said.

Jack knew that was the best thing Grandad said about anything.

Then Grandad got a tin down off the shelf. It was a small flat tin, and inside was something that looked like butter and smelled of honey and wood. He put a little on a rag, and gave the rag to Jack, and Jack rubbed it into the box, and the box, which had been pale, went gold. The grain came up in it. Lines and swirls that had been there all along, but that you could not see until now.

“There,” said Grandad. “That’s the wood saying thank you.”

They sat for a bit. The rain had eased. It was only ticking on the roof now, here and there, and the window had gone from grey to a soft yellow, which meant the sun was thinking about coming out before it went down.

Jack held the box. It was warm from his hands and from the rubbing. He opened the lid and looked inside, at the smooth empty inside that nobody would see, and closed it again.

“Can I keep it?”

“It’s yours,” said Grandad. “Made it for you. Didn’t say so, because you’d have rushed.”

Jack did not say anything. He held the box.

Grandad turned the heater off. The orange behind the bars went dull, then dark. He put the chisel back on its hook and the sandpaper back in its drawer, and swept the dust and the curls into a pile with the little brush, and put the pile in the bin, and hung the brush back up. Everything back where it went. That was how the shed stayed the shed.

Outside, the garden dripped. The path was dark and shining. Up at the house the kitchen light was on, and somebody was moving about in it, and there would be tea.

Jack went up the path with the box under his coat to keep it dry. Grandad came after, locking the shed, trying the door, checking the lock once more the way he always did.

Later, at home, in bed, the box sat on the shelf where Jack could see it from his pillow. It was empty. It did not need to be anything else yet. Tomorrow he would find something that needed keeping, or the day after, or the day after that.

For now it was enough that it was smooth, and gold, and his, and that he had made it, along with the grain, and never against.

He put his hand out in the dark and touched it, once.

Then he slept.