‘You lied to me, Malky Bell. You have been lying to me since the start, haven’t you? And do you think I did not hear Mr McKinley say Dreaminator? I am not deaf, you know.’

I’ve tried to make a swift getaway, but she has followed me down the weedy path and her voice has gone all quiet again. It’s like … when other people would shout, Susan Tenzin goes the other way.

‘All that “shared dreaming” stuff with your little brother?’ she hisses. ‘It was that … that thing, wasn’t it? And did you … steal it? How, Malky? Why?’

I sigh. ‘It wasn’t stealing. It was borrowing, just a dare – banter, you know? I was messing about with Kez Becker …’

Susan lets out a small snort of contempt.

‘And … one thing led to another,’ I say.

‘Is that the best you can do, Malky? “One thing led to another”?’

I find I don’t have a good answer for her. I mumble something and Susan puts her hands on her hips. From somewhere deep inside me, I hear myself murmuring, ‘I’m sorry,’ for the second time in about a minute.

‘Look what has happened, Malky. You stole, you lied, you used this Dream thing with no knowledge of what it might do to your head and it is sending you crazy! It is like my Mola says: you want all of this stuff too quickly, too easily. All that business in school today? That is the dream world escaping from your head. You’re lucky it has not happened to Sebastian … or has it?’

‘No. Don’t think so.’

‘Good. Maybe he is too young. How would I know? Have you heard about karma?’

I shrug. She says, ‘Mola would not like this definition, but … bad actions have bad results.’

I shrug again. ‘So?’

‘So. If you are asking me, then you have to stop using the Dreaminator and return it to Kenneth. It is that simple.’

There is something in her manner that makes me push back and I say, ‘But I wasn’t asking you, was I?’

She swats away my reply with a flick of her head. ‘Oh, stop being so stubborn. You do realise, don’t you, what you have done? People suffer because of lies, Malky. People suffer because they stand up for the truth. Why do you think my dad is not here? It is because he stood up for the truth, and the liars in charge do not like that. Truth, and honesty, Malky: in a crazy world, they are all we have!’

I want to tell her that I’ve been trying to tell the truth. To Mam, to her, but the mention of her dad distracts me.

‘You … your dad?’ I say.

‘Yes. Put in jail in China for telling the truth about Tibet. They … they do things differently in China. It … it is a long story.’

We stand there for several seconds, glaring at each other, and the pain of Susan’s separation from her dad seems to blaze from her dark eyes.

I wonder about sneaking into Kenneth’s backyard and replacing the Dreaminators in the shed. My stomach turns over at the thought. I can’t do it.

After a moment, I say, ‘I can stop using it, sure. But I’m not taking them back.’

‘Them? You mean there’s more than one?’

I nod and mumble, ‘One each.’

Susan tuts then looks at me closely through her big glasses. ‘Being honest, Malky, means a bad deed belongs in your past. Being dishonest means it is with you forever. Which do you want?’

In my heart, I know she’s right. ‘Is that karma?’

‘No,’ she says. Her voice has softened. ‘That’s just me.’

Susan takes a step forward until she is standing close enough for me to catch her soap-and-apples smell. ‘I will come with you if you want,’ she says. ‘We go there, you hand them back, you apologise, you say that it was just a prank, or whatever …’

‘Banter.’

‘That’s it. It was just banter, you are really, really sorry … and that is it. What can they do? You said that Andi already knows it was you, anyway. So it will be a piece of cake.’

I raise my eyes to meet her intense gaze. ‘Butter cake?’

‘Exactly!’ she laughs. ‘A piece of butter cake.’

‘Tomorrow?’

Susan smiles her closed-mouth smile and says, ‘Yes. Tomorrow morning. Come round here, we’ll go together and we will put everything right. As friends.’

I feel like a heavy box of anxiety has been lifted off my chest.

‘Friends,’ I repeat.