I thought about Sam and what he’d done to me. I could say his name now, and tell them he’d been with me when the fire started. They’d go round to his house and question him too. I twisted my back and shoulders in my hot T-shirt and imagined Sam’s face … and then said nothing.

‘And some trespassing in a local smallholding?’ PC Banik tapped the side of her head. ‘Don’t give us any reason to be knocking on your door again.’

7.45 p.m.

I’ve been sitting in the garden for ages. The laptop isn’t too glary now the sun’s gone in, and it’s cooler out here under the tree. My fingers are still shaking on the keyboard, but the rest of my body’s stopped.

They’re not going to take it any further because the fire service wasn’t needed, but I have to sign something called a ‘police caution’. And they looked at me strangely when they examined my phone.

‘Nothing to suggest any unusually reflective surfaces,’ PC Banik had said, and Mum had shaken her head as if she couldn’t believe she wasn’t dreaming. ‘It needs to be returned to the manufacturer if it’s getting hot enough to start fires.’

I told them it wasn’t the actual phone, but they went on about magnifying-glass fires, and how it’s best to be honest.

They’ve told Mum to keep a closer eye on me. That was one of the worst parts. She went red and I wanted to slither down a hole.

I remembered the park near my old house in the city, the patches of bare mud that had always made me feel fed up. The older boys there sometimes started little fires, tiny ones, in cans, or medium-sized ones for barbecues. My friend Chapal has a brother who could light them out of anything, out of nowhere.

I feel numb, like somebody’s dipped me in a tank of ice. How could Sam do this to me?

Whizzy’s totally gone and my phone’s dead. Nothing happens when I charge it. Tried to phone Mr Clemm on the landline to tell him she was in my phone but now she’s escaped, but there was no answer.

Can’t stop thinking about how terrifying Whizzy had looked when she went humongous in the sky. And the power of her now. It’s frightening. I felt it surging through my legs when she left the phone, and even now I still feel a bit zingy below the knees.

She really can’t stay here, not like this.

And someone’s written the word BLOOD on the back window of our car in the dust.

8.30 p.m.