Mum crosses her arms. ‘No, Mum. You forget that I’ve been through this with you before. Well, I’ve been through it with another version of you. I know you’ll figure out how to be ordinary.’

Inside the cottage, I point at my coat and socks. ‘Spell, dry!’ I say, and they are. Mum still looks astonished that I can do spells, let alone in English.

‘Let’s take her Book,’ I say. ‘She’s not going to need it.’

Mum hesitates. A magician’s Book of Spells is sacred. ‘Okay.’

Sylvie sits hunched on the couch. She’s stopped pleading with us, but I can’t help worrying that she will burst forth with a spell. It’s hard to believe we really have stripped her of her magic.

‘She’ll freeze without a fire,’ I say.

‘I know,’ mutters Mum. ‘Even though she seemed perfectly happy to let us die.’ She flicks a finger at the fireplace and the fire roars back to life, and where there were books on a shelf, there are now neatly stacked logs.

Mum tucks Sylvie’s Book under her coat and I follow her out the door. We don’t say goodbye.

CHAPTER 27

Mum is even worse at flying than I am.

‘I’ve only done it once before!’ she says as she stands up after crashing – yet again – into a snow drift. ‘And I’m tired.’

We’re flying lower than is probably safe, because even though it’s stopped snowing, it’s just too cold and windy higher up. We have to take long detours around farmhouses and villages.

Mum explains that we can’t use the cloak of darkness spell while flying, because we’re moving too fast. ‘It only works when you are still or moving at walking pace,’ she says.

At a train station, we discover that the next train to London doesn’t leave for hours. Twenty minutes later, we land in the slush at the back of a petrol station, and Mum sinks to the ground with an exhausted groan. We manage to hitch a ride with a driver who’s stopped to fill up his truck, but he can’t take us all the way to Waterloo. ‘Sorry. I’m due at the depot,’ he says.

I help Mum up into the cab of his truck, which is blessedly warm and dry, and smells of the mint lollies he keeps on his dashboard. Mum leans her head against the window and closes her eyes.

‘We’ll be there in about four hours,’ says the driver, ‘then it might take you another forty-five minutes or an hour into the city.’

I look out at the grey, miserable sky, and try not to panic. We have exactly five hours until the portal back to Dad is closed forever.