Even though the sky is summer blue, this place has an eternal winter feel to it. If I were to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say: dark Disneyland.

The huge house on the horizon was, for sure, built by someone who wants the world to know they are very grand and important.

I shout through the railings: ‘Hellooooo.’ But the green, shadowy woods swallow up sound.

Skywalker chews at my denim cut-offs.

‘What are you thinking?’ I look up at the tall, tall gates. ‘Climb?’ But this idea is daunting. If I thought our gates at home were high, Michael Reyji Ray’s sprawling country mansion has prison-standard security. Ten-foot tall with spikes at the top.

Mum and Michael have something in common: they both want to keep people out.

Skywalker barks and I grab his collar. ‘What? What is it?’

Then I see.

Something’s moving in those woods. Or rather, someone – a person dressed in black, moving between the shadowy trees. It looks like they’re wearing a band T-shirt and black jeans.

My hand tightens on Skywalker’s collar.

‘What are they dragging?’ I whisper. ‘Scaffold poles or something?’

Skywalker lifts his brown and black nose to look at me, like, ‘Don’t ask me.’

‘Mum will be going insane right now.’ I feel a horrible pang in my heart. ‘But there’s no turning back. We have to do this, Sky. Or there’ll be no freedom for any of us.’

I rattle the gates again. ‘HELLOOO!’

The person dressed in black doesn’t notice us. He or she is engrossed in some activity with silver poles, movements organized and focused.

Suddenly I have a vision: my mother, tearing my bedroom apart, sobbing hysterically, her worst nightmare coming true.

Don’t think about her. Don’t think about her or you’ll chicken out. You have to do this. You have to meet him.

I really have no choice. Things can’t go on the way they are. Mum is ruining all our lives.

‘Okay, dogface.’ I stroke Skywalker’s head. ‘It looks like climbing is the only option here.’

I put an experimental foot on the railing, seeing if I can get any lift. I like climbing – maybe because a fifty-foot wall is the closest I’ve ever come to real freedom. But on purpose-built climbing walls, there are ropes and harnesses and no sharp spikes at the top.

As I wedge my DM boot between two railings, I see someone coming out of the main house – a short dot of a man, wearing what looks like a flowing black silk dressing gown. His legs are bare and his hair white-blond above an orangey-brown face.

Could it be?

I hop down, watching as the figure trots into the trees, becomes invisible, then visible again, then appears in the clearing with the band T-shirt person.