I meet Susan at the backyard door.

We go into the kitchen and I shut the door so as not to wake Dad. Neither of us says anything: we haven’t discussed what ‘the plan’ might be yet. I’m more nervous than I expected, and we both start speaking in low voices at once.

‘If this is …’ I begin.

‘You will not like …’ says Susan.

We both stop. Neither of us wants to say it, and there’s a moment of silence. Susan breaks it.

‘Mola sometimes applies her own, ah, interpretations to the teachings of the Buddha. And she thinks that Seb is caught in a loop, kind of a mental trap, caused by, erm …’ Susan bites her lip and dries up.

‘Caused by me,’ I offer.

‘Well, only sort of. Partly. Caused by, I don’t know, messing with things you do not understand would cover it. And the Dreaminator. I mean … crystals? Crystals have always had “mysterious qualities”. I looked it up.’

Of course she did.

‘Crystals have been used in mystical healing and ancient religions for, well, forever, really. And pyramids too. Did you know, if you place a razor blade under a pyramid, it will not go blunt?’

‘Really?’ I say.

‘Well … probably. It is difficult to prove.’

I think I have a better explanation. ‘You know when you stop playing a video game, and the characters are still moving but not doing anything?’

Susan gives an embarrassed half-shrug. Of course, she’s not much of a gamer.

‘Doesn’t matter. They become reactivated when you pick up the control again.’

Susan nods. ‘So … you will have to reactivate your dream.’

I puff out my cheeks in frustration. ‘Go back there and what? Get him? How is that going to work?’

Susan says, ‘Perhaps it is like Mola said. “Sometimes the greatest journeys …”’

We finish the sentence together: ‘“… have no map.”’

‘Except,’ I say, ‘I don’t have a Dreaminator. I had one thought, though: perhaps if we looked on eBay or something, or Gumtree, or, or …’

Susan is shaking her head. ‘I have already looked. Everywhere. I do not know if he ever even sold any. Maybe after that TV show he just gave up.’

I nod miserably.

‘But we know where one is, don’t we, Malky?’ she says.

We stay quiet for a moment, contemplating this.

It’s like we’re dancing round the subject, and it is Susan who takes the lead next by saying, ‘The Dreaminator. It is at Becker’s funeral parlour on Front Street.’

I feel cold just thinking about it. ‘But where exactly? In … in his coffin?’

Susan chews her lip as she thinks. ‘I don’t know, Malky. But I would say … maybe? I mean, isn’t that what people do? In films and stuff? You are all dead and whatnot, in your best suit – or kilt in Kenneth McKinley’s case – and you are lying there with a photo in your hand, or a necklace, or something that has been important to you.’

Is that right? Is that what happens? Susan actually doesn’t seem very sure of it. I take a deep breath and say, ‘I don’t want to do it.’

‘Do what, Malky?’

‘I don’t even want to say it.’

‘Say what, Malky?’

I can tell what she’s doing. It’s crafty. She’s making me say it out loud. Once it’s out there, it becomes more real. I force the words out.

‘I … I’m going to have to steal … the last Dreaminator in the world from … from a dead man?’

Susan smiles – a bit sadly, as though she knows how hard that was for me. ‘Yes. But it is not you. It is “we”.’

‘What’s it got to do with you? Why are you helping me?’

She adjusts her specs and looks at me with her deep dark eyes. It’s as if I’ve asked the stupidest question ever. The answer is so obvious to her and, because I know her now, I also know that she is telling the whole truth, and it feels good.

‘Because I am your friend,’ she says.

Something changes between us in that moment. Whatever happens from now on – whatever happens with Seb – I’m not on my own.

I open up Mam’s laptop and, moments later, we’re both staring at the outside of a building shown on Street View.

Becker & Sons

Funeral Directors & Monumental Masons

It’s a newish-looking building in two parts. There’s a reception area with modern glass doors and big windows; next to it, accessible through reception, is a bigger building with a strip of narrow windows at roof level and a set of double doors at one end. I swallow hard. This is a crazy, ludicrous, criminal, dangerous and just plain weird thing to be doing. But it might also be my only chance.

‘How do we even begin to do this?’ I croak to Susan. I mean, it’s all very well to have done dodgy stuff in the past, and got into a bit of trouble, but this is a whole new level of bad. Making it even stranger is the fact that next to me is a girl who has probably never done anything bad at all in her life, yet she’s the one that came up with the idea.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘But we have to do it soon, right? We do not have much time. Tonight, I think.’

At that point, I hear Dad coming downstairs, and I quickly close the window on the laptop. He comes in and looks a bit surprised to see Susan there.

She stands up – stands up! – and says, ‘Hello. I am Susan Tenzin. A friend of Malky’s.’

Wow, grown-ups are suckers for this sort of thing, aren’t they? Dad stops, gives her a tired smile and says, ‘Hello, Susan.’

‘I am very sorry to hear about Sebastian.’

‘Thank you, love.’

‘I was just leaving, wasn’t I, Malky?’

Ten minutes later, Dad and I are in the car heading back to the hospital. As she left, Susan said, ‘I’ll text you later,’ and the thought of that, and what we had half agreed to do, made me go very quiet.

Have I seriously just agreed to do this? I’m not sure, exactly. I still have half a hope that – somehow – I will get our Dreaminators back at the hospital. The whole thing plunges me into silence in the car.

Dad doesn’t really seem to mind. Perhaps he, too, thinks that silence can be full of answers.