Lily came into my room and said, ‘It’s raining, but only on our house.’ She stood there staring, like she was waiting for me to do something about it.

Outside, the rain’s coming down in thin, slanting needles. It starts at the edge of our front garden and stops at the edge of our back garden. Sideways, it stops around the part where our roof joins on to next door, and just now I could hear them opening and closing doors, shouting to each other to come and look.

There’s no other sign of Whizzy. The air smells of flowers and leaves, not burning rubber. I think she’s apologising.

The raincloud is quite close to our roof, and there’s no other cloud in the sky. At any other time, it would have been fabulous, but Usher’s Place is filling up with people. Our house is getting famous, and not in a good way. Feels like this whole thing could flip over into a total runaway mess.

I suddenly realised Lily was still looking at me. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done this,’ she said, ‘but I know it was something to do with you. Get it sorted.’

2.30 p.m.

I’m back, but everything’s changed. It went like this:

Telling Mum I needed to go to Ash House was cringe city. I knew she’d ask why, and I’d practised the answer till I was perfectly slick, but she didn’t swallow it:

‘Because he’s got this strange creature. It’s very fast, but comes and goes and needs careful handling. He needs help to get it properly back and under control, and I’m good at dealing with it.’

‘Something about that sounds very unlikely, Alfie. What are you really doing up there? And does he even know you’re coming? And in any case, I’m not about to let you loose on the property of that peculiar man. He was quite nice with it, but … no.’ She shuddered.

‘It’s all fine – I’ll be safe. I—’

‘What’s the animal? Is it dangerous? And why you?’

Then Lily stepped in. ‘Oh, I think you should let him go, Mum. It’ll do him good to have a job.’

I blinked at Lily in a total daze. What was she doing?

Mum still looked suspicious. ‘We don’t know enough about this man. I’ve only met him once.’

‘Well why don’t we all go, then?’ Lily said. ‘Problem solved! And I get to see Julia the cat again! I told you about her hair falling out, didn’t I, Mum?’

I looked for an evil glint in her eye, but there wasn’t one. She genuinely wanted to help … but it was a horrific idea. How would Mr Clemm be able to say anything with Mum and Lily listening?