‘Malky! Malky! You in there?’
I’m not sure I’ve ever been more relieved to hear someone’s voice.
‘Susan! Yes! I’m here!’ I’m up against the door, but it won’t budge. ‘Don’t you have a key?’
‘Only to the outside door. The alarm is going to go off any …’
Her last words are drowned out by the piercing wheep-wheep-wheep of a delayed intruder alarm. I do a quick calculation. How long will it take Mr Becker to hear that and come downstairs to investigate? Thirty seconds? A minute? Not even that.
There’s just no way I’m going to be caught stealing from the coffin of a dead man! I’m still holding the candle and I ram it back into its holder.
‘Stand back!’ I shout to Susan. ‘And get ready to run!’
I shove the Dreaminator down my zip-up jacket. Then I grab one end of the wheeled trolley supporting the biggest, heaviest coffin – the black one – and drag it to the far end of the room. I run, pushing it in front of me. I haven’t got long to pick up much speed – maybe five metres – but the weight must help, because the trolley crunches into the door, busting the lock immediately and springing the door open a little. I pull the trolley back and ram it into the door again, forcing it open with a loud bang. The coffin is blocking my exit now, but there is space above so I hop up on to it, and crawl over the top, landing in a pile at Susan’s feet. Already I can hear the front door being opened in the reception area.
Susan and I don’t talk. Instead, we run – back along the dark corridor, through the staffroom, out of the back door into the rear car park.
The only exit from the car park is the passageway past the reception block. Otherwise there’s a wall – a high wall – and on the other side a steep embankment leading down to the old railway line which is now a cycleway. We have no choice. I leap on to the bonnet and then the roof of one of the hearses, which buckles under my weight, but it gets me high enough to grab the top of the wall.
‘Come on,’ I say to Susan. ‘You can do it!’
‘I know,’ she says and follows me as we both scramble over, landing on the other side in a huge blackberry bush, which snags our clothes and rips our skin as we struggle to get free and down the embankment to the cycleway. I feel something crack beneath my jacket, but I can’t stop to check.
Have we been followed? I don’t think so. I have heard no shouts, though the intruder alarm is still wailing behind us.
‘This way,’ I say, pointing in the direction of North Shields, a couple of kilometres away.
And so we run along the track, past back gardens and through a gap in the fence, which tears a long rip in my jacket, and we’re in the playground of Seb’s primary school, and still we don’t stop till we’ve climbed over the spiked railings and we’re at the end of the back lane of Susan’s street with her rear gate to our left and my house a bit further on.
It’s pretty dark at this end, and there’s a patch of grass where I sink to my knees, my chest heaving. With shaking hands, I take out the Dreaminator and examine it. One of the pyramid sides has been bent, and there’s a crack in the bamboo hoop, but it’s otherwise all right. I hope. Susan is less puffed-out that I am, although she’s just as scratched and filthy.
You okay?’ I say after a moment, and she nods. ‘Thanks for getting me.’
‘Kezia just left you!’ she says in a tone of disbelief. ‘When her dad turned up on his motorbike, she tossed me the keys and told me to make myself scarce and to put them back when I was done. I am sorry. I had to wait until her dad had gone from the front office, and he had reset the alarm. What a … what a …’
I’m waiting for Susan to choose her insult for Kez Becker. I have never heard her say anything nasty about anyone.
I still haven’t. She finishes her sentence with a tut and a shake of her head, and hands me back my phone.
I turn it on and stare at it while it boots up. I’m still panting a little – more, I think, from nerves than exhaustion.
‘Oh no,’ I say and Susan crouches down next to me.
‘What’s wrong?’
Eleven missed calls: all from Uncle Pete. Plus two voicemails, and three text messages. Reluctantly, I click on messages. This can’t be good news.
That last one was only five minutes ago. I can’t call him, I don’t dare. Instead, I send a text back.
It’s a poor excuse but it’ll have to do.
Susan and I face each other on the scrappy patch of grass.
‘Do I look as rough as you?’ I ask, taking in her mud-streaked, torn clothes, her hair which for once is filthy and messed up, and a deep thorn-scratch on her cheek.
She smiles. ‘No. You look great! Tiptop. Never looked better.’
We both chuckle nervously before a slightly awkward pause.
She says, ‘Good luck.’ Then she leans in and hugs me, pinning my arms to my sides so I can’t hug her back, even though I was going to.
‘Do you know what you have to do when you use the Dreaminator?’ she says.
‘Not really.’
Susan chews her cheek in thought. ‘Go to the edge of your dream and then go further. That is what Mola said.’
‘Do you even know what that means?’
Susan smiles her closed-mouth smile and says, ‘Not really. Sorry.’ We stand facing each other for a moment, then she says, ‘Good luck,’ again before turning and walking away and I do the same.
I’ve gone about ten metres when she calls my name and I look back. ‘I might see you there,’ she says. I nod and wave, not really understanding or even sure that I heard right.
She might see me there? See me where?
But I soon forget about that. Uncle Pete is standing on the front step when I turn up our little driveway, and he does not look happy.