Mason’s already looking over my shoulder for someone else to talk to when I say, ‘Listen, man. I was doing all of this stuff in my dream. I was in control. I knew I was in the dream!’ I haven’t even got to the bit about Seb yet.

He steps back, kind of dramatically, looking at me through half-closed eyes.

‘You what? You “controlled” a dream?’ he says, making air quotes with his fingers. ‘How does that work then?’

‘I … I don’t really know. It’s like I was asleep but awake at the same time?’

He repeats this back to me, and I feel so relieved that at last someone understands that I laugh. ‘Yes, man! Yes! That’s exactly what happened. I tell you …’

‘Crazy, you are! That’s just not possible. You were asleep, Malky, man. You can’t be awake and asleep at the same time.’

‘But it’s true, Mason! I was there. And my brother was too!’

‘You had a dream about your brother? Big deal!’

‘No! I mean my brother …’

I am about to tell him that Seb had the same dream as me at the same time. That Seb was sharing my dream. But, as the words form in my mouth, I realise that people have turned to listen, and that it’s going to make me sound even crazier.

‘… Yeah. You’re right,’ I say after a moment, and I fall silent.

‘Honestly, Bell. Summer holiday’s sent you soft in the head.’ He squeezes his way down the queue past a group of Year Fives. It seems as though he’s trying to get away from me, but he’s probably just hungry. Still, it looks like I’m going to be sitting on my own for lunch on the first day of term.

Seb had the same dream as me.

‘They are called “waking dreams”, Malky,’ says a voice behind me. ‘And I believe you.’

Chapter 19

I turn and there is Susan Whatsername who has been standing close by all this time without me realising.

‘What?’ I say.

‘I heard what you said to that boy. I do not think you are lying.’

She has detached herself from her group to stand next to me. The girls she was with – school-orchestra types – eye her carefully and she lowers her voice till it’s really hard to hear her over the din of the school dining hall.

‘They’re called “waking dreams” or “lucid dreams”. It is more common than you might think.’ There it is again: this girl’s precise, adult way of talking. ‘My grandmother can do it. Hello again, by the way.’