I didn’t pack much to take to Gran’s, just some clothes and my box of magic equipment. It’s not like I was going to be stuck there. I’d be going to school in less than two weeks and I could go home if there was anything I needed. Maybe later it would be a problem, but that’s what rellies are for, even dysfunctional ones like mine.

Uncle Mike had organised a food delivery, so I put things away as best I could. It’s weird how people organise their fridges and kitchen cupboards. Why did Gran put unopened tins of baked beans in the fridge? I half expected to find corn kernels in the cupboard under the sink, but the contents there turned out to be relatively normal. Then I took the sheets off the bed in the spare room and stuck them in the washing machine. For all I knew, Gran washed the bedclothes herself weekly, just because that’s what people of her generation do, but I reckoned it wouldn’t hurt. Gran also had a dryer, so I was able to get the bedding back on before she and Uncle Mike rocked up about midday.

Gran immediately put the kettle on for a cup of tea. When she opened up the cupboard to get the box of tea bags out, she did a double take.

‘Have you been messing with my cupboards, Grace?’

I explained that I’d simply put away the food that her son had bought, but simple explanations rarely work with Gran.

‘Dear God,’ she said. ‘I have a method. I know where everything is. At least I did know until you messed it all up. Do not do this again, okay? Do you hear?’

I wondered what kind of method meant baked beans had to be refrigerated, but I wasn’t in the mood for confrontation so I just nodded. I knew this would be the first of many conflicts and thought it sensible to save my energy for the important ones.

Uncle Mike kept glancing at his watch while sipping his tea as quickly as possible. There was a good chance he’d get first-degree burns on his lips. I kept my fingers crossed.

‘Better get going, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an open house in an hour and there’s work that needs to be done.’

Gran waved a hand and settled further into her chair. I thought this was the right time for my little trick. My uncle was in a hurry, probably mentally preparing his sad sales pitch, so he’d be misdirecting himself.

‘Uncle Mike,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you’d mind paying me back for a bedside lamp I bought.’

‘A what?’ He glanced at his watch again.

‘There’s no bedside lamp in Gran’s spare bedroom,’ I continued. ‘So I got myself one.’ I fished in my pocket for the receipt. ‘Only thirty-two bucks, but now I’m broke as.’

‘Can’t it wait, Grace?’ He was irritated. Good.

I tried a winning smile.

‘Afraid not. I have to get some stuff for schoolwork during the holidays and I’m down to a few dollars in my account.’ I produced another piece of paper and handed it over. ‘Here are my bank details. Please? It’s important.’

He grumbled, but I hadn’t given him much in the way of options. He reached for his mobile phone, and twenty minutes later I was into his bank account, where I discovered he had stolen twenty thousand dollars from Gran.

How did I perform that trick? Elementary.

Scene: The living room at Gran’s house. There is a laptop computer on the dining table, open and logged in. Michael McKellon reaches into his pocket for his phone. Beryl ‘Isabel’ McKellon sits in a lumpy armchair absorbed in her cup of tea and half a Wagon Wheel. ‘Amazing Grace’ McKellon watches her uncle. There is silence for a few beats while a look of surprise passes over Michael’s face.

Michael: Where the hell did I put my phone? (He continues rummaging in various pockets.)

Grace: Maybe you left it in your car?

Michael: No. I brought it in with me. I never leave it in the car. (This is undoubtedly true because time is money and location, location, location waits for no person.)

Grace: I’ll ring it and find it for you. Maybe you put it down in the kitchen. In the meantime, use my laptop. It’s connected.

Grace exits the living room. Michael McKellon, still grumpy, bends over the laptop, brings up Chrome, finds the website of his bank, enters username and password and then transfers money into the account given. He spends some time making sure that all the details are correct, especially the amount paid, since he worries about overpaying by a few cents. Then he logs out. Grace enters the living room with Michael’s phone in hand.

Grace: Here it is, Uncle Mike. You’d left it in the kitchen.

Michael grabs the phone in a manner that many might consider rude and leaves. Beryl ‘Isabel’ McKellon raises herself from her chair.

Beryl: This tea’s gone right through me, Grace. (She stops at the door.) Though I wouldn’t mind another cuppa when you’re ready. (She exits.)

Camera pans towards the ceiling while Grace steps onto a dining chair. A mobile phone is attached to the ceiling, its lens directed towards the laptop directly beneath it. Grace takes the phone, pockets it. There is a smile on her face. She grabs her grandmother’s cup and exits towards the kitchen.

I suppose I could have done it with some kind of tracking device on my laptop, but I have no idea how to do that. Making Uncle Mike’s phone disappear was simple, though I have to confess watching the video of him on the keyboard and then replaying it in slomo took some patience and a few mistakes when I couldn’t quite see which keys he had pressed. But I got there. And I got into his account. The twenty thousand had been transferred a couple of weeks earlier. How did I know it was from Gran’s account? Because she never remembers and has her log-in details, including her password, on a piece of paper pinned to the fridge. She’d asked me to pay a bill for her about ten days ago which is how I knew her account was down twenty k in the first place.

That’s where Uncle Mike got it. The bastard.

‘How can I help you today, Grace?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me.’

The room was exactly the same, the woman still painfully polite and pleasant. She’d tried, for the longest time, to get me to call her Evelyn. Evi for short. I thought about telling her I didn’t do contractions of names, but as I had no intention of using the longest form either, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

The game had started as it always starts, the prodding and the parrying. I wondered when she would get tired of it. I didn’t think I would. But maybe she didn’t really care. After all, I imagine she is paid the same whether the patient is a sobbing mess or an emotional clam like me. Maybe we were both just getting through the time. Speaking of which, I glanced at my phone to check it. Gran had no problems with me leaving her for an hour or so, but I felt anxious and needed to get back to the house. What did that say about me?

The woman stood, walked to the window and gazed out on whatever scene it afforded. I couldn’t tell from where I was sitting. This was a departure from normal. Most times we just slugged it out from facing chairs in our game of emotional chicken. I was surprised to find I quite liked the change of routine. Then she turned back to me.

‘Here’s the thing, Grace,’ she said. ‘You’ve had meetings with five psychiatric professionals before me. None of them were apparently able to help you and, to be honest, I believe I know why. You do not give anything in these meetings. You’re a closed door. It’s like you treat our sessions as if I’m a detective trying to get incriminating evidence out of you and you’re determined not to reveal any.’

‘Good cop, good cop,’ I said. She smiled thinly at that.

‘As you know, no one is forcing you to have treatment,’ she continued. ‘So I wonder why you bother to turn up at all, if stonewalling is all you want to do. Can you at least explain that to me?’

A few responses sprang to mind. What do you mean by stonewalling? I don’t understand. I’ll have to think long and hard about that question. All the normal smart-arse Grace McKellon replies. But I didn’t give any of them. Looking back, I think it was because she was . . . what’s the word? Human. Like she was genuinely puzzled by me, and not in the way of an intellectual or professional challenge. She was curious. She wanted to know how my trick worked, and suddenly I felt like telling her.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,’ I replied. She looked slightly annoyed and I realised I hadn’t made myself clear. ‘I don’t mean in reply to your question,’ I added. ‘I don’t know what to say in our sessions.’

She sat back down in her chair.

‘I think I’m supposed to be getting to the heart of my “emotional problems”.’ I made the quotation marks in the air. ‘The accident when my father and brother died. That’s got to be it, hasn’t it? All the buried guilt and grief and whatever the hell else. But here’s the thing. I don’t remember it.’ I tapped the side of my head. ‘Up here? Nothing. Zilch. It’s a blank.’ I put my hands on the arm of my chair. ‘I’m not trying to hide anything from you. If I remembered, I’d talk. But I don’t and that’s why I’ve got nothing to say.’

She leaned forward slightly.

‘That’s not what this is about though, Grace. We’ve probably all seen those TV shows where psychiatrists try to get to the bottom of a mystery, unlock some secrets hiding in the past and, when they’re brought into the open, suddenly the patient is “cured”.’ This time she did the air quote thing. ‘God save us from American TV shows, is all I can say.’

‘So what are we doing?’

‘We’re talking,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

The silence went on for probably half a minute.

‘My grandmother is dying,’ I said.

‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry.’

And I did talk. I told her about Gran, and that I was going to be looking after her until the end. I talked about how Gran was infuriating and funny and how I didn’t know how to process what was happening to her. I even talked about my feelings, about love and whether or not I knew what it meant. And here’s another strange thing. I felt better when I was done. Not a ‘huge weight off the shoulders’ type of thing, but . . . better.

It probably wouldn’t last.

There was loads of stuff I didn’t talk about, of course. Uncle Mike. My dead brother Jake and how he hung around me at strange times. My magic.

Some things have to find the right time to be talked about.

We finished on a good note.

‘That’s the thing I really value about Gran,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t deal in bullshit.’ I thought about that. ‘No, actually, she deals in bullshit all the time.’ I remembered George Clooney and the Dalai Lama and Queen Elizabeth, but didn’t bring them up. ‘But it’s a healthy bullshit. We both know what it is and we both accept it. But she tells me the truth, even if she doesn’t spell it out.’ I shook my head. ‘I’m not sure any of that made sense.’

‘It did to me,’ said the woman. ‘So maybe we can agree on something, Grace.’

I raised my eyes.

‘Our meetings must be a bullshit-free zone,’ she said.

I flared my nostrils.

‘Smells good to me,’ I said.