Four weeks and many waking dreams later, I’m looking between my little brother – his mouth open, snoring quietly – and the bedroom door. I’ve been awake a few minutes, but nothing I have tried will wake Seb. The mark on his face where I slapped him to try to rouse him is getting redder. Mam’s voice comes again.

‘What’s the matter, boys?’

‘Nothing, Mam. Bad dream!’ I call back.

I run through the dream we’ve just had in my head. The Gravy Lake, the huge man, the dogs …

Then I ran away and left Seb unable to wake from his dream.

My dream? My nightmare.

I look up again at the Dreaminators, then reach up and turn them both off in case they’re still having some sort of effect. It’s already light outside and I pull open the curtains, willing the sunlight to wake Seb, but he lies there in the deepest sleep.

‘Come on, come on, Lil-Bro,’ I mutter, using the nickname I had for him from ages back, which I’d stopped calling him. Then I start shaking him again and Mam comes in.

‘What on earth’s going on, Malky?’

I stand there, naked, in our little bedroom. Mam bends to pick my pyjamas up from the floor. She sniffs them and says, ‘They’re wet, Malky. What’s happened? Seb – what’s wrong?’

Then she, too, tries to wake him.

How do you explain to a near-hysterical parent that you’ve been sharing dreams with your little brother? That, for several weeks, Seb and I have been having the most incredible, realistic adventures thanks to a strange contraption that I stole/borrowed/found (the distinction is becoming less and less important)?

Answer: you can’t, because I’ve tried. Trouble is, it’s all just too … incredible. Mam simply can’t believe it. Nobody could. Well, apart from Susan Tenzin and her grandmother, whose words now come swirling back into my whirlpool head.

What had she said? Something like: ‘You treat this whole thing like a video game. Just press “replay” and everything will be fine, huh? Well, you play with fire, boy! Sooner or later – no more replay. And you will have some explaining to do.’

Right now, though, Mam is shrieking, ‘Seb! Sebastian!’ and shaking him urgently.

Then she suddenly becomes very calm and quiet. Seb is on his side. From time to time, he twitches, and his eyeballs are moving behind his eyelids. Honestly, if you didn’t know, you’d just think he was asleep – which of course he is, only …

‘All right, Malky – what happened? Why is Seb’s face red? There – look!’

‘I don’t know, Mam. We … we were dreaming …’

Mam jabs a finger at the Dreaminator hanging above Seb’s pillow. ‘If you’re talking about these things, then don’t start that again, Malcolm. It’s really not the time.’ She turns back to my brother. She lifts up an eyelid with her thumb and his greenish eye stares out blankly. ‘Seb! Oh, please wake up! Go and get my phone from beside my bed, Malky. Go!’

And so it is that, twenty minutes later, there are two paramedics in our bedroom, doing all of the paramedic stuff like you see on TV – pulse rate, blood pressure, asking Mam if Seb was taking any prescribed medicines, if there were any other medicines in the house that Seb could have swallowed. The redness on his cheek has gone down: they don’t ask about that. Fit Billy has come from next door and is making tea.

And the word I keep hearing is ‘normal’.

Like, ‘Blood pressure, one oh five over seventy, normal. Heart rate, eighty-five, normal. Breathing – normal.’

Mam goes, ‘Stop saying it’s normal. He’s not waking up! That’s not normal!’

And there’s me, just standing there in my dressing gown, feeling helpless, wondering what was happening in Seb’s head, in Seb’s dream.

Except it was your dream, wasn’t it, Malky? How much can he control it?

Is he still being held captive by the main man? He’ll be terrified. That is, if he’s still dreaming. Poor Seb.

I start crying for him – and for me as well, because it’s all my fault.