The room is huge and over-warm, with a high ceiling and a big bay window looking on to public gardens and, beyond that, the priory and the River Tyne. Two of the walls are lined from ceiling to floor with crammed bookshelves, spilling over with papers and folders and books jammed in any old way; the others have wallpaper with a bright but faded symmetrical pattern. There’s a long sideboard and an equally long buttoned sofa in faded green.

Looking up, I see dozens of huge silk scarves in various colours and patterns hanging from the ceiling, and between them dangle pendants of all kinds: a bamboo wind chime, two large, round glass discs winking in the light, and a mass of blue butterflies linked together with thread that I can hardly see. The whole effect is a bit like being in a magical, multicoloured antique shop.

A high-backed armchair faces the window.

Despite the thick, warm air, through the soles of my socks the tiled floor feels cold. We hesitate in the open doorway. The music is much louder in here: classical music of violins and horns – the kind of stuff that Susan probably likes.

‘Well, come in if you’re comin’ in and closhe the door behin’ you! I cannit abide a draught!’

The voice is slurred and muffled and comes from the direction of the armchair. When I approach, I see a bunched-up tartan blanket with someone sitting under it, low down and slightly hunched over. Next to the chair is a large silver cylinder, upright on a trolley. A rubber tube comes from it to a plastic mask that is fitted to the old man’s face.

When Susan and I get near, he squirms in his chair to sit up straighter. It’s only then that I realise that he’s not under a blanket, but actually wearing a huge blue-and-green tartan cardigan. He removes the oxygen mask from his face and uses a skinny, shaky hand to smooth down his white hair, of which there is a lot. His thin face has more lines than anyone I’ve ever seen, and he peers at us suspiciously through the purple spectacles perched on his large, veiny nose. It’s the face from the Dreaminator box, for sure, only much older and definitely not grinning.

‘Not too close!’ says Andi as we get nearer, but he waves his hand to dismiss her.

‘Och, ignore her! Come’s closhe as you like. Y’don’t have lyshe, do you?’

Lice? I feel myself reddening. Seb and I did have nits last term.

‘No, but …’

Susan interrupts. ‘No, Mr McKinley. We definitely don’t have lice.’

‘They’re fine, Kenneth. Really. Be nice.’ Andi is unrolling something from a long box.

‘Och, very well. You’d better set down on Andi’s paper. What thash for, I have no idea. You’re not thinking of shoiling yourshelves, are you?’

‘Just keeping you alive, Kenneth,’ says Andi with a smile, as she tears off a long sheet of soft, wide paper from her roll and places it on the seat of the sofa for us. We sit down cautiously. The old man responds with a gargling growl in his throat as if he thinks her efforts to keep him alive are a waste of everyone’s time.

As well as the music, I now detect another noise: a clacking sound that comes from the old man when he speaks.

‘You’ll wait, I hope, until we get to the end of thish movement? Mr Bruckner, I find, is not a composer that can be hurried.’ And there it is again: clack-clack.

His eyes are closed, but his hands are moving in time with the strange music, as if he is conducting an invisible band. Andi crosses the room to an old-style record player where a black vinyl disc is revolving and, when she pushes a button, the music stops abruptly.

The old man opens his eyes at the sudden silence. What happens next is an amazing transformation. It is almost as if Mr McKinley becomes younger before our eyes. He doesn’t, of course, but as he talks it is as if he is warming up. He slurs less, and straightens up, raising his wrinkled neck from out of his slumped shoulders, like a tortoise.

‘Come now, Andi. That surely wasn’t necessary?’ he says.

‘Mr Bruckner can wait, Kenneth. You have visitors,’ says Andi. ‘Susan Tenzin and Malcolm …?’

‘Bell.’

‘Malcolm Bell. And Susan has brought cake.’

The old man rattles the phlegm in his throat and it’s as if his mind clears at the same time. His eyes, which are almost hidden beneath a hedge of white eyebrow, widen a little. ‘Och, yes. I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to my wee abode. Andi – we’ll take tea right here, I think.’ Then that noise: clack-clack.

Mr McKinley has the face of someone who has recently been on a strict diet. My Aunty Gina did it once and she looked awful. His jowls hang thinly and there’s a long strip of loose flesh starting under his chin and swooping down until it is concealed by a black silk cravat tucked into his cardigan top. His trousers, shiny with age, seem far too big for his skinny legs.

His long hands are thin and knuckly and crisscrossed with blue veins, with one big, showy gold ring with a large purple stone. It swivels a bit loosely on his finger. I look at him, he moves his jaw a little, and the noise comes once more: clack-clack.

He clears his throat again and says, ‘Och, well: this is nice. I’m so glad you’re not garrulous. I just can’t abide garrulous people. Far better to keep your mouth shut, and have people think you’re stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt is what I always say! Don’t you agree, Malcolm? Good Scots name that, by the way!’

I don’t get this, but I smile and nod, anyway, and he smiles back: a white grin showing teeth that must be a least sixty years younger than him. When the clacking noise happens again, I realise that his teeth are false ones, and liable to dislodge from time to time, making the noise. His voice is full of phlegm, his accent singsongy and definitely Scottish. It’s like listening to someone gargling with pebbles.

He turns to Susan as Andi comes back into the room, wheeling a trolley clinking with teacups and a plate of butter cake.

‘Tell me, Susan,’ he says. ‘Can you enlighten me a wee bit further about who you are? Why are you here?’

He smiles awkwardly. It really is like the grouchy man of a minute ago has been replaced by someone doing his best to act charmingly. I think of the words in the Dreaminator package: ‘You may know me from my appearances on stage, radio and television …’ This is definitely someone who is used to putting on an act.

While Susan gives him the spiel about Community Outreach Marden Middle School, I look round the extraordinary room with the colourful decorations hanging limply in the warm air. There is a sharp smell of ointment of some sort, disinfectant, wood polish, and … old tobacco? But now there’s another smell: a sour, cabbagey odour that gradually wraps round us. It gets worse over the course of about ten seconds.

Susan pauses in her little speech to cough as the stink reaches her.

‘Dearie me,’ says Mr McKinley at last. ‘I’m afraid that rather, ah … arresting aroma is emanating from Dennis. Dennis, you’re a disgusting old beast …’

Dennis? Surely not …?

Surely yes. At the mention of his name, a huge old black-and-ginger dog heaves itself to its feet from its position under a heavily draped table and limps forward, one of its front paws wrapped in a purple bandage. It stops and raises its greying muzzle towards me.

‘He sleeps most of the time these days, just like me,’ Mr McKinley says. ‘Still a good guard dog, though, aren’t you, old son? Saw off a bunch of prowlers from our backyard not so long ago, didn’t you? Paid a price for it, though. One of the wee scunners trapped his paw in the back door. Nearly tore his claw off. Still, it’s almost better now.’

The evening with Kez Becker floods back. Meanwhile, Dennis has begun a low growl. There’s no doubt he remembers me from the backyard that night.

I stand very still. Surely it must be obvious to everyone what I’ve done?

I swallow hard.