61.

I rocked on my heels, drew back my arm and uncoiled like a whip. Throwing well is all about timing, unleashing from the feet upwards through the core and back and shoulders, snapping the elbow just so, flicking the wrist. The brick-chunk flew. Too high, I thought at first: I’d never thrown anything with such force. The rock was airborne forever. It sailed above the cone of brightness cast by the security light, black against the night sky. I lost sight of it for an instant. Then there was a crash, as loud as if someone had smashed a wine bottle against a wall, and the light vanished. Night slammed in from all sides, a wave of darkness closing over all of us.

‘Nice!’ whispered Amelia, opening her eyes.

I froze for a moment, not quite believing I’d done it. But I quickly came to my senses. One of the guards was shouting something. I bundled Amelia onto the bike. Her night vision would be sharp instantly. ‘Go, go,’ I urged, turning the key for her. I needn’t have worried; she shot off confidently down the road. In her wake, on soft feet, I slipped through the darkness and round the side of the building. I must have passed within a few metres of the nearest guard, stumbling out into the road after Amelia. He didn’t go far before giving up. In the meantime, I very nearly ran straight into a fence – it clipped my shoulder – but I’d memorised the angle well and I stopped in the darker darkness in the shelter of the warehouse, my eyes already pulling shades of grey from the night now the light was gone.

In fact, I soon discovered I could see too well. Edging round the building I realised another floodlight covered the ground to the rear of it. Worse still, there was another guard. Just the one on this side, but he was also wearing a holster and pacing back and forth. I couldn’t see the floodlight on this side, not without walking onto the guard’s patch, so there was no way I could disable it. And by the time I’d crept back to the front of the warehouse the men standing sentry there had turned on a second light, this one mounted on the building itself, high above the roller-door, and whereas beforehand they’d looked like they couldn’t be bothered, they were now very alert indeed, patrolling the full forecourt in synchronised dog-legs.

I was pinned down, I realised, unable to move either way without being lit up, and at the mercy of any guard who decided to have a good look along this thin strip of darkness squeezed between the side wall and the fence. How had I thought this manoeuvre would pay off in the first place? I wanted to punch myself for taking such a stupid risk. Instead I crouched down low, pressed tight to the corrugated warehouse wall, and wracked my brains for what to do next.

It was then that I heard her. Mum’s raised voice, muffled, distant and yet right there.

‘But there’s no more time!’ she was shouting. ‘No. More. Time!’

It was definitely her. I pressed my ear to the wall, straining to hear more, but nothing more came, and of course I couldn’t yell in reply. Instead, under my breath, I pleaded with her to call out again. The longer she didn’t, the more I began to doubt myself. I’d wait, I decided, wait and listen for more, to prove I wasn’t mad. Where else could I go after all?

Nowhere. For hours. Right through that awful night I was stuck in a trap I’d set for myself, clinging to the memory of what I thought I’d heard, tormented by the clear and present quiet. It was punctured by occasional traffic noise and the rise and fall of city-hum, but nothing else. I waited there, struggling to stay alert, praying for I don’t know what: the guards to go away; Mum and Dad to emerge on their own, unscathed; help to come?

None of those things happened. It was only when the charcoal wall of the warehouse against which I’d pressed my cheek all night began to turn a lighter grey that I realised I had no choice but to help myself. Careful to angle my phone into my chest I texted Amelia three words: ride by slow.

Instantly I received a one letter reply: k.

And within the minute I heard the drone of an engine, low at first but rising. I’d crept up to the front corner of the building, had one eye on the forecourt, was praying for the guards not to be too close. Either way, I had to go for it, hoping that if they did spot me the sight of a person running away would be more confusing than alarming.

Amelia puttered into view, a slow grey blur.

I waited until the very last minute, then made a sprint for it, dashed straight out of the parking lot and jumped up behind her on the slow-moving bike. Sure I could hear footsteps behind us, a man’s voice shouting over the noise of the engine, I squeezed Amelia as hard as I could. She got the message and accelerated. Before we turned the corner I glanced over my shoulder, just in time to see a car shoot off the forecourt and turn our way.