Old Kenneth McKinley takes a shallow puff of the cigarette that Susan made, blowing the smoke out straight away, and closes his eyes again. Then he raises his head and looks first at us, then at the lengthening column of white ash on the end of the cigarette.

I go to the record player and somehow find the ‘on’ button. The black disc revolves, the arm-thingy descends, and the strange, discordant music begins again. Mr McKinley waits until I’m sitting down.

‘I don’t actually smoke it, you know,’ he says. ‘My chest cannit take it. I just like the smell. It helps me to think.’ True to his word, he doesn’t place the cigarette in his mouth again, but holds it in his fingers, allowing the smoke to curl up to the stained ceiling.

Then he starts speaking, and it is exactly as though he is giving a speech. Something he has said before.

‘There was a time – not so long ago, either – when the world seemed as though it was open to new ideas.’ He pauses, then fires us a look over his round glasses. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Yes,’ Susan and I say in unison, and we really are. There is something about his way of talking that forces you to pay attention.

‘Well, that was the world I grew up in. Everything was changing; everything was new. Jet aeroplanes, heart transplants, space travel, foreign holidays, pocket calculators, central heating, colour television, cures for this disease and that disease, computers, oh – the excitement about computers!’

Mr McKinley wafts the cigarette under his nose and resumes his little speech.

‘After the horror of the war with Hitler, we thought we were creating the perfect world! And all the while we were ignoring what was right in front of us. What was right within us. Inside us! Hmm? And look at us now, eh? We’ve become more interested in staying alive for as long as we can than in actually living the life we have.’

I shift on the couch and the paper under my bottom crackles. This has all the signs of a speech that could go on for a long time, but I don’t care. I think I know where this is going, and I want him to get to the Dreaminators. Susan has leaned forward and is nodding along enthusiastically.

‘The limits of the conscious mind, my wee friends, have never been discovered. As for the un-conscious … well, that might as well be limitless.’ He sighs. ‘But no one wants to know. Not these days.’

He flicks the cigarette, with good aim, out of the window.

‘We would like to know, Mr McKinley!’ says Susan. From anyone else, something like that would sound too keen, creepy even. But it’s obvious that Susan is being sincere. It’s the mention of the conscious and unconscious minds, I think: it’ll have something to do with her meditation.

At that point, Andi bustles back in and starts sniffing and tutting and flapping a tea towel towards the open window.

‘Oh, Kenneth!’ she says, crossly. ‘You must think I was born yesterday! It’s bad enough for yourself, but worse for these two, and I’m entitled to work in a smoke-free environment! Did he ask you to do it?’ she says to me and Susan.

‘No,’ I say, automatically lying.

‘Yes,’ says Susan, and I think her response is just as unthinking. Mr McKinley’s teeth go clack-clack and he looks annoyed at being interrupted.

I don’t want to go. I want to find out more, but Andi is fussing with the tea tray and says, ‘You should take this leftover cake home with you.’ Susan gets to her feet and looks at her neat little wristwatch.

‘I think we’ve taken up quite enough of your time,’ she says in her prim, grown-up way. ‘It has been delightful.’ I’m desperately trying to tell her no with my face, my eyes, but she’s not looking at me.

Just then, there’s a loud bell and I’m so tense I actually jump, making Susan turn in surprise.

Mr McKinley stretches out his skinny arm to an ancient telephone next to him on the table. It’s one of those with a handset resting on top of a box-thing and he picks it up and holds it to his ear.

‘That’ll be you, will it, Uri?’ he says, a warm smile spreading over his face. ‘Hold one moment.’ Mr McKinley presses the handset to his chest and looks at us. ‘It’s my son, Uri. It’s been wonderful to meet you. Thank you for coming. We’ll continue this another time, shall we? Goodbye.’

He turns back to his phone call and starts chatting while we head to the living-room door. Just like that, it’s over.