My stomach clenched. I swallowed, trying to keep my eyes away from Whizzy, who was very small – practically invisible – just a blood-red glint on a branch. Hadn’t seen her turn that colour before. Couldn’t help looking again, and she was growing. Her blood-red insides shimmered and pulsed, like something was overheating and going out of control. There was a rhythm to it, like an engine inside her was going Womp WOMP WOMP! Was she reacting to Tombard’s awful vibe?

We should have turned and cleared out of there right then. I should have grabbed Sam and just run. Why didn’t I?

The gang moved forward. So did I. So did Sam. Matthew swaggered in and out of the vegetable patches doing rap moves.

Blackbirds tweeted warning calls. Mown grass and nettle smells filled the air and we kept going, past greenhouses and cold frames and things that none of us recognised except Sam. The cool breeze we’d had on the hill was gone, and even my breath felt hot.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, because now, Noel and Matthew were wrestling each other to the ground.

‘Ah … you’re strangling me, man!’ one of them squawked, and they rolled into a vegetable patch.

Tombard yanked some curly green vegetables out of the ground and scattered them, breaking the neat rows. Everyone laughed. Everyone except me and Sam.

Tombard pulled some onions out next and kicked them across the allotment like mini footballs.

‘Wu-hoo, you’re on fire!’ Kiran said, and shot a load of spit at a bush, like some kind of lizard. They were still giddy. Sam and I were definitely not. Tombard scooted to the back of one of the sheds and came out carrying a long-handled tool.

When he started to bash through the vegetables with the wiry metal end, churning up clods of earth and chopped-up leaves and stalks, Sam hissed to me, ‘What’s he doing? Has Whizzy’s stuff got into him?’

I tried to explain that it wasn’t really stuff. ‘It’s just her weather side effects, like in the hall the other night. It makes people more … full-on. Magnified.’

Sam looked completely horrified. ‘Tombard? More extreme? Can’t you stop it?’

‘Um, yeah, I—’

‘Can’t you get her to burst a cloud over them? Make a storm when we need one, for once?’ His hands were in fists.

The others were looking at Tombard like he’d gone mad, but then they joined in.