The whole lower end of my bed dipped, and I was bounced upwards, like on a see-saw, as a great big purple block of twenty-pound notes landed on it. It was about the size of a really big suitcase. So that’s what a million pounds looks like, I thought.

I reached out and took one of the notes. It was brand new, as flat and crisp as if someone had ironed it. And I could have as many of these as I wanted . . .

But I’d have to be careful. Because the wishes came true as soon as I thought them. And thoughts are so difficult to control. They just pop into your head. As soon as you decide not to think something, you’re already thinking it. So if I just happened to think, I don’t know, I wish there was a tiger in the room . . .

No!

Too late.

There it was.

A massive orange-and-black beast, filling the space between my bed and the door, filling the room with its hot, wild, heavy, dangerous big-cat-smell. The floorboards creaked and strained under its weight. Its great big furry yellow-eyed face stared into mine. It looked startled, obviously wondering what had happened – one second it was hunting in the jungle in India or somewhere and the next it was in this little carpeted room on the first floor of a house in England. It swished its tail. It growled.

I could feel its strength – it could knock my head off with one swipe of a paw.

‘I wish you were gone!’ I said as fast as I could.

Blip.

Gone. Only the smell lingered.

So I wished for that to go too. And it did.

But I still had a problem. Any moment now another crazy thought could come into my head – like . . . I wish—

No, I don’t—

I don’t wish—

I wish the—

No, no, no, la-la-la-la, I don’t wish that at all, no let’s think of something else—

I wish the world—

No, no, focus on something else, like if the Incredible Hulk and the Mighty Thor had a fight, who’d—

I wish the world would—

No I don’t stop stop stop no—

I wish the world would e—

No I don’t – I –

– and I suddenly shouted, ‘I wish my wishes would only come true when I say them aloud!’

I breathed out a long, shaky breath.

I’d come within a micro-second of wishing the world would end.