Trouble is, Dad’s not around these days and maybe he thinks I’ve turned into a thug. There’s a look on Mam’s face that tells me she’s not totally convinced that I didn’t hit him. Not one hundred per cent like you need your mum to be about something like this. As for Uncle Pete and Mormor, they’ve come back with coffees and all Mormor wants to do is hug me, which is nice to begin with, but it’s getting a bit tiresome.

Whatever Dad is going to say next is interrupted when the young doctor from before returns and holds up a plastic bag.

‘We have had these back, at least,’ he says.

‘What?’ says Dad.

‘Malcolm’s dream … things?’

‘The Dreaminators?’ I say.

This is amazing – I can’t believe it! I’m not going to have to get one off a dead man, after all!

Uncle Pete and Mormor exchange glances: they have no idea about any of this. The doctor sits down next to me. In fact, I soon realise that this is pretty much all for my benefit.

He smiles, trying to make the mood a little lighter, and reaches into the bag. His brings out two broken plastic rings and some tangled and cut wires and it’s a few seconds before my mind catches up.

When it does, I feel sick.

The Dreaminators: they’ve been ripped apart almost beyond recognition.

I stare at them. There’s no way I can put them back together.

Chapter 64

‘They’re … broken,’ I say.

‘Yes. Sorry. We have taken them apart, as you can see. We kind of had to, in order to examine them.’ He lifts up the tangle of plastic and woven threads and wire to demonstrate that they have been properly dismantled. As he does so, a few of the crystals fall off and roll on to the floor.

I must look pretty upset because the doctor pulls a guilty face. ‘Can you, um, get more?’ he says.

‘No,’ I say. ‘The man who—’ But I realise I can’t tell them about Kenneth McKinley. ‘The man I got them off at the Lifeboat sale didn’t have any others.’

‘Ah, sorry about that,’ says the doctor. ‘Still – we were able to study them, at least.’

‘And?’ says Dad.

‘Well,’ says the young doctor, ‘there’s good news and bad news. Malcolm, you’ll be pleased to learn that there is nothing, nothing at all, about these Dream … things that could possibly have been harmful to Sebastian. The bad news, of course, is that they have given us no further clues whatever to his condition, but then we didn’t really expect them to, did we?’ He looks over at Dad for that last bit.

Dad sits back on the sofa, looking satisfied.

I say, ‘When you say, “nothing at all”, what does that mean?’