Mr Clemm had something over his shoulder: a stiff, bulky bag, almost like a picnic cool box. He swayed it from side to side, and I realised what it was: a contraption in disguise. He was trying to attract Whizzy with it. Why else would anyone hold an empty picnic box open in that way? He was trying to recapture Whizzy!

For a few eye-popping seconds, I was gripped. But Whizzy wasn’t going inside that box. Whizzy was whizzing. Whizzy was turning Mr Clemm’s head into Saturn, with Whizzy as the rings.

I phoned Sam again.

‘OK, you’re going to have to escape,’ he said, ‘and hope Whizzy follows. Try to lead Whizzy to safety.’

‘But Mr Clemm’ll see me. We need to distract him.’

‘We?’

‘Yes! Can you do it?’

Sam went silent for ages.

‘Sam? Please?’

‘I’m not getting mixed up in this stuff again—’

‘Please Sam! Yours is the only brain that can get me and Whizzy out of this.’

He said nothing.

‘A distraction. An expert distraction – the cleverest,’ I said. ‘Sam?’

‘Yisss,’ he said, sounding breathy. ‘Still thinking.’

And rushing. He was definitely rushing. That gave me hope.

‘Electricity’s weird again.’ It was Lily, thundering up the stairs. ‘Lights keep coming on when they’re meant to be off. And there are moths everywhere.’

‘Yep.’ Whizzy was getting stronger. Definitely. Which was probably not good.

Lily barged in and looked out the window with me.

‘You’re hiding from him, aren’t you?’ she said, giggling softly. ‘You’re hiding from your giant.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Why don’t you go and meet him if you’re so obsessed? Instead of just spying?’ Waves of Mum’s perfume wafted off her.

‘I’m not and I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way to Sam’s.’

‘From here? Great route. Leaving by window? Bored with doors?’

‘Funny.’

Lily’s hair rose at the edges with static electricity, but she hadn’t noticed. ‘What’s he doing here?’

I swallowed. ‘Who knows?

She gave me a long suspicious look. And then the doorbell rang.

I froze.

Lily practically threw herself down the stairs but Mum had already opened the door, and all I could do was listen on stair number eleven, out of sight, and wait for the Cloaked Strider to ask Mum if she could please get her son …

‘So sorry to bother you –’ Mr Clemm’s voice was all gentlemanly – ‘but I wondered, with all this electrical chaos going on, if you might be able to make use of a generator.’

I was trapped.

Sprinted back up the stairs to my room and called Sam again.

‘At bottom of Beggar’s Hill,’ he panted.

So all I could do was wait. I spied while I waited, but it was like spying on a car crash.