Simon had arranged a gig for me on the Saturday. Another kids’ party for five- and six-year-olds. A parent who’d been there at my first performance had booked me for their tacker’s shindig.

I wasn’t really in the mood. I was tired and Gran was wearing me down, but at least it got me out of her house. Uncle Mike was going to be spending some of the day with her while various workmen came in and tried to make my bedroom liveable. He’d got enthusiastic about the renovations, probably because it would add value to the house. A worthwhile investment.

The party went as well as I could’ve hoped. Simon brought along the pull-up banner and insisted I had it behind me as I worked. It was pretty sad – all these pseudo-magical symbols and wands and crap framing the words The Amazing Grace in the centre. Most of the children were suitably impressed by my routine – pretty much the same as I’d done before – but there was one boy who was glued to his mobile phone and didn’t look at me once. I could hear the faint, vaguely tinny sounds of gunfire coming from his device, so I assumed he was blasting the heads off people in some game that was wildly inappropriate for his age. Tragically, at some point after my show finished, while the kids were cramming things containing vegemite or sprinkles into their mouths, his phone disappeared. The kid was really upset, even more so when it was discovered at the bottom of a fish tank in the front room. The guppies weren’t impressed, but I was.

Afterwards, Simon tried to get me to make a date for the next TikTok video, but I wasn’t in the mood for that either.

‘It’s going really well, Grace,’ he said. ‘We need to keep the momentum up.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We need to keep the punters waiting and desperate for more.’ This probably wasn’t true, but I wasn’t too bothered about the truth. ‘Post something mysterious. Tell them I’m working on something that will truly blow their minds, that it will be a live show on . . .’ I thought a bit. ‘Make up a date and a time a few weeks from now.’ I knew what I was going to do. Well, I knew most of it, but I still had a few details to sort out. I figured Simon giving me a deadline would focus my mind.

‘What’s it going to be?’

‘You don’t need to know,’ I said. ‘But you do need to arrange something for me.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘I need a swimming pool,’ I said. ‘A deep one. And I need it where there aren’t going to be any people. Think you can do that?’

‘No. Probably not.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t know anyone with a pool.’

‘Your sister’s got one,’ I pointed out. I’d seen it at that first party. The kids had been getting into their bathers as I left, which was another good reason for leaving. I have a low tolerance for shrieks as people enjoy themselves. Actually, I have a low tolerance for people. And enjoyment.

‘But they’re always at home.’

‘Then make them disappear,’ I said.

Simon wanted to talk some more, but I wasn’t having any of it. He wanted to know why I wasn’t returning his calls or his texts. That irritated me.

‘We’re not a couple, Simon,’ I pointed out. ‘So don’t treat me like I owe you anything.’

‘I know we’re not a couple,’ he said. ‘Thank God, frankly. I have a girlfriend and she doesn’t treat me like shit. I’m just trying to help you.’

‘Yeah, well. Maybe you should stop.’

I felt a little bad about that, but not very much. What did he mean, Thank God? Was I really that bad? Probably.

He took a deep breath to calm himself. To be honest, I was glad he was annoyed. It made him more interesting. Slightly.

‘Can I give you a lift home?’

I turned him down. I wanted to walk, partly because I was tired of talking but also because it would reduce the time I spent at Gran’s house. I wasn’t sure what that said about me either.

My room was finished. There was a new carpet – a kind of bog-standard grey – and the walls had been painted off-white as promised. The bed had gone, as had the wardrobe and the chest of drawers. Instead, I had a queen-size bed with a slightly dodgy-looking mattress, and a free-standing closet where I could put my clothes. The curtains had disappeared too, replaced by lacy ones that were fairly ghastly but a big improvement. The room looked much better, lighter and airier. It wasn’t what I was used to, but I had a feeling the demons of childhood wouldn’t find it very welcoming.

Uncle Mike was full of himself. He spread his arms around the room, like I was a buyer who could be schmoozed.

‘Nice, hey, Grace?’ he said.

‘Well, I don’t feel like slashing my wrists,’ I replied.

He told me that Sonja had been and gone, that Gran was unusually quiet but not complaining more than normal, and that he had to get off to some meeting that was almost certainly fictitious. I put my box of tricks next to my new bed and went into the front room. Gran was where she always was. But she didn’t have a cup of tea in front of her. Was that a sign she’d given up on life itself, or would I be sticking the kettle on?

‘I wouldn’t mind a brew, Grace,’ said Gran.

We played Scrabble. After I’d made her tea, she asked me to get out the set. It had been years since I’d played Scrabble and it must have been the same for Gran, but she kicked my butt. Then we played another game and she did it again. She came up with words that hadn’t ever been used in the English language but which miraculously appeared in the dictionary when I checked. There’s something . . . diminishing about being thrashed at a word game by someone who should, by rights, be battling dementia. So I made the scorecard disappear. It didn’t make me feel much better, but you take your wins where you can.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ said Gran.

‘Yesterday?’ I put the tiles back into the box.

‘I was grumpy and you don’t deserve it.’ She leaned back into her chair with a sigh. Was that another twinge of pain? I needed to pay more attention. ‘You are a young woman who shouldn’t be looking after an old woman as she dies. When I was your age I didn’t go anywhere near anyone old. I couldn’t stand them. The smell, the wrinkles, the . . . the reminders of what lay ahead.’ She sighed. ‘No one should have to do what you’re doing and I’m sorry the job’s fallen to you. I don’t want it. But it seems what I want doesn’t count for much anymore.’

‘What were you doing when you were my age?’ I asked.

She smiled. It was a strange smile, almost like I could see the process of retreating back into the past. And then she told me. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure what was truth and what was fiction. Let’s be honest, Gran’s grasp on the distinction has never been steady, but . . . if even a third of what she told me was true, then I really hadn’t lived at all. Some of it was scandalous. She didn’t hold back on descriptions of lovers and other things she got up to. The famous people she’d met. The men (and women) who’d been sexually attracted to her and she to them, the drugs she’d taken, the countries she’d visited, the adventures she’d had.

And it was weird.

I listened and I thought that all of this was going to just . . . go. When Gran died, these stories would die with her. Nothing would remain except the memories of her life in my head. And even those would go in time.

I was so involved in these thoughts that I missed what Gran said next.

‘Sorry. What?’

‘I said, do you believe in real magic, Grace? Do you believe in miracles?’

I’d been asked this question before. And the answer I always gave sprang to my mind. There are only tricks. Some people believe in miracles simply because they can’t work out how it was done. I’m not sure how Gran would react to that. Yes, I’d promised her honesty, but honesty can be a difficult thing to deal with. I knew that as well as anyone. And even more disturbing – was Gran hoping that she could cheat death by a miracle? That her cancer could be taken away with a laying on of hands or some other nonsense? Was this a last desperate attempt to escape reality? It made me sad.

‘The famous magician, David Berglas,’ I said, ‘once claimed that he does the impossible immediately, but that miracles can take a little longer.’

It wasn’t an answer. It was misdirection. But Gran is difficult to fool.

‘Do you believe that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. That was a lie. ‘I think some things are difficult to explain away.’ That was true, but not very helpful. I plucked up the courage to ask the obvious question. ‘Why do you ask, Gran?’

She moved her hand towards her teacup, but it was empty, so she rubbed her forehead instead.

‘You make things disappear, Grace,’ she said. ‘And you make it seem so easy. I was just wondering what it would be like if you could make me disappear.’ There was a short silence while I tried to process her words. ‘Sometimes,’ she continued, ‘I think it would be wonderful if you could do with my heart what you can do with a playing card. Reach in and make it . . . gone.’

I couldn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. But I thought I’d answered one of my own dilemmas. I did love Gran. Maybe naked vulnerability does that to you. I wanted to cry.

Instead I made her a cup of tea.

Gran had a nap, so I went to my room to get in some practice. I took four chunky padlocks out of my bag, made sure they were well and truly locked and lay them on the bed. I took a couple of hairpins and put them into my mouth. I didn’t really need to do that, but I thought it was important to recreate as closely as possible the trick I was going to perform. And when I did it, the pins would have to be in my mouth. Then I got out a cable tie and lashed my wrists together, which, trust me, isn’t easy to do without help. Again, it wouldn’t be an accurate reconstruction of the trick – far from it, actually – but it would have to do. I moved the pins around in my mouth, prodded one with my tongue and took it into my fingers. Then I remembered I hadn’t set the stopwatch on my phone, but I wasn’t going to waste energy on that, so I counted in my head. The exact time wouldn’t matter.

It took a minute and a half to unlock the four padlocks.

It’s not difficult, in case you’re wondering. It’s especially not difficult if you’ve done it thousands of times. Of course, there’s always a chance that you come across a problem, maybe something in the mechanism sticking, which is why I keep them well lubricated.

Escapology has gone out of fashion recently. At one time it was all the rage, but I guess when you’ve seen one person escape from padlocked chains underwater then you’ve seen them all. Audiences, whatever they’re watching, need the new. Always more. Yeah, so you can juggle four running chainsaws at once? Yawn. Give me something scarier.

I was going to be dropped into the deep end of a swimming pool, weights attached to my legs, bound by padlocked chains. And I was going to escape. Yawn. But that wasn’t going to be the end of it. Oh no. There was going to be other serious shit going down (and up). But, dull spectacle though escapology might be to the viewing public, it was still important to get it right. Without wishing to state the obvious, I’d drown if it went wrong. And I was keen to avoid that.

I think I mentioned that I am afraid of water, that I won’t go near a swimming pool. True. But what I’d said to Gran was also true. I needed to push myself and that meant confronting my fears. Didn’t mean I was looking forward to it.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that my nightmare came back that night. That’s what thinking about water does.

As always, the dream was basically the same but different in subtle ways. I was suspended in water, visibility down to a few metres, with no way of knowing the difference between up and down. Panic started immediately. My impulse was to do what I do before I sink down in my bath – hyperventilate to make sure I’ve got the maximum reserves of air in my lungs – but that’s not an option when you’re already submerged. I had to fight my own body. I floated for a few seconds, but knew that I would have to move, make a decision and push in a direction that might take me to the surface or force me deeper. No way to tell, no difference in the light or its lack. No clue.

Then I saw something. Correction. I might have seen something. This had happened a couple of times before, but tonight it was a little clearer. A shape beneath my dangling feet, a mound of a slightly greater darkness. I think I knew what it was and a part of me wanted to swim towards it, confirm my suspicions and possibly . . . maybe . . . find answers. But I didn’t know if I wanted the answers. There might be even more terror in that. So I kicked away and the next thing I was upright in bed, gasping, clutching my chest and wondering where the hell I was.

Gran’s spare room might seem a lot brighter than it did, but it still had demons.