I’m beginning to panic, and I can hear my panic-voice getting louder and higher. ‘But you made the Dreaminator: you must know!’

‘Och, I long ago gave up havin’ any proper control over my dreams. I used to meet wee Uri and that was about it. I’d just allow my dreaming mind to do whatever it wanted and you know – as you youngsters say – go with the flow.’

‘And that worked? That was okay?’

‘Aye, it was,’ he says, smiling slowly. ‘And I got to meet my son again.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Of course.’

Kenneth gives me a long stare. ‘This is a lot of talking when you’ve got a job to do, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Can you run?’ I ask.

Kenneth answers by bobbing up and down on the spot a couple of times, and then starting to jog up the beach like a much younger man, his knobbly knees working hard and his shiny black lace-ups kicking up sand. I catch him up, limping badly, then for the second time in an hour I find myself running up the rocky incline to where the clock tower will be in 10,000 years’ time, through the low, dusty bushes of the Turk’s Head pub, crossing the space where the seafront road will be and on to the wide plain that leads to Custard Canyon and eventually the Gravy Lake that one day will be Marden Quarry.

I keep wanting to test my dream-control. ‘Fly!’ I shout, and stretch out my arms, but I remain stubbornly earthbound. I try not to think about how I will rescue Seb if I have to do it, you know, normally. That is, without the power of dream-control.

We run faster and faster. The agony in my foot hasn’t lessened, my chest is hurting, my legs are tired, and we’re still only halfway.

As he runs alongside me, Kenneth seems hardly breathless at all, which must, I figure, be a big advantage of being dead. He lifts up his arm to look at his wrist.

‘I don’t mean to alarm you, wee man, but outside your bedroom it’s getting light and you’ll be awakening naturally in about half an hour. Maybe less, actually.’

In reply, I grit my teeth, pump my arms harder and lengthen my stride until I can see a small speck in the distance, standing on the lip of the canyon. A moment later, I recognise the tiny, round shape, more or less exactly where I had left her before.

By the time I draw up next to Mola, I have a painful stitch in my side, and I am so light-headed with exhaustion that it stops me noticing how much my foot is hurting. Five seconds later, old Kenneth McKinley, ninety years of age, saunters up in his kilt – breathing no more heavily than if he had just walked up the steps to his front door.