I take out my phone and look at the time: forty-five minutes have passed since Dad left in the car to go back to the hospital. There are no new messages, but that doesn’t surprise me. Mam and Dad are pretty preoccupied.

There’s a mossy stone bench in the garden that Susan and I sit on. I think Susan’s a bit embarrassed by her grandmother. She says, ‘I’m sorry about Mola.’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘She might be right. But, even if she is, it makes no difference. I can’t get back to the dream. The Dreaminators have gone.’

‘What?’

I explain about Dad taking them to the hospital for examination. ‘And he definitely won’t bring them back home. Especially if I ask him to. He thinks it’s dangerous nonsense. He’d get on well with Mola.’

Susan reaches out her hand and squeezes mine. I’ve never seen another kid do this. It’s strange but … not embarrassing. I turn to look at her and she seems almost as sad as I am.

She says, ‘If only there was another one. A Dreaminator, I mean.’

I stare at the rattling prayer flags. They flap and flutter in the wind.

And something snaps into focus in my mind – an image.

‘There is another one.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A Dreaminator. I know where to get one.’ I stand up, quickly. ‘Come on. We haven’t got long.’

Chapter 58

We have about an hour left. That is not long to:

1. Confess to Mr McKinley that I stole the Dreaminators from his shed and that I’ll return them as soon as I get them back from the hospital. This part is going to be tough, but, as Susan pointed out on the way here, it was part of the original plan, anyway.

2. Explain to this very old, sick and confused man that – thanks to his invention – Seb is now in a coma, trapped in the Stone Age, in Cramlington Hospital.

3. Persuade him, in the meantime, to lend me the only remaining Dreaminator, currently hanging over his bed, so that I can use it to go and rescue Seb.

Put as bluntly as that, it sounds ridiculous. But it is also true, and the only way I can see of getting out of this mess.

‘So – in and out, yeah?’ I say. ‘We have to keep this quick.’

‘You said that the first time we came.’

It was only yesterday that Susan and I had last stood at the top of the yellow-grey sandstone steps that lead up to Kenneth McKinley’s front door. Everything looks the same: the hardy shrubs in the little rockery, the big bay window with its permanent thin coating of salt from the sea breezes, and the weathered black paint on the front door – but everything feels different.