He grabs the pouch he carries everywhere with him, and a minute later we’re out the door and heading across town towards the university.

‘You are messing with me,’ Karim says, when I fill him in on what happened with my mum. ‘That is some crazy shiz. You must be losing your mind.’

And it’s funny, cos a part of me is freaking out, but the bigger part of me feels calm, like I’ve been waiting for this for the past six months. ‘Actually, mate, I feel ready.’ 55

‘Of course you do. You’re Lance Sparshott – you were born ready.’

‘Aw!’ Katja says. ‘Do you two have a special thing that you say to each other? Is this your thing? It is so cute!’

‘We do not have a thing,’ I say, and I nudge her with my elbow.

‘Woah, Lance – you’re breaking my heart!’ Karim says. ‘We totally have a thing.’

We’re all laughing hard, and I notice a postman watching at us as he empties a postbox. I stare him down, but he doesn’t look away.

‘He’s not the only one,’ Karim says, nodding at the postman. ‘About ninety per cent of the people of Straybridge have been gazing adoringly at us since we left my house.’

‘Seriously?’ Kat says. ‘I didn’t notice anything.’

‘Me neither.’ I glance to my right to see a face at a house window following us with its eyes.

‘Oh, you two didn’t notice? I wonder why…’ Karim says. ‘At first I thought it was because of my good looks, but after the twentieth person, I started thinking that maybe there’s something else going on.’

I look across the other side of the street where a 56 woman is putting a black bag in her wheelie bin. In an upstairs window, two blonde-haired toddlers sit with their toy dolls. A flower delivery van crawls past, windows down, a woman in dungarees with bright red hair not concentrating on the road. They’re all staring at us.

‘Well, this is creepy,’ Kat says.

‘Totally.’ My mind flicks through the possibilities, but we just don’t know enough to be sure of anything. I decide our best play is to act as though nothing has changed. ‘Let’s just pretend like everything’s normal. Our only advantage is that they think we don’t know what’s going on.’

‘Hate to be a buzzkill, but we really don’t know what’s going on,’ Karim says.

‘But we know that something is going on,’ says Kat.

‘And that’s not nothing.’ I smile and nod at the wheelie bin lady. ‘Let’s hope we can get some answers from your mum.’