Dr Nisha is back on duty. She comes in while we’re all gathered round Seb’s bed, and we stand aside while she does things like shine a light in his eyes and tap things on an iPad. When she’s done, she tells us that Seb will be kept in hospital a little longer ‘for observation’.

‘All of Sebastian’s functions appear to be normal, ‘she says with a puzzled smile. ‘The injuries on his wrists and face have almost completely disappeared, which everybody here is saying is remarkable, and I have to agree. I have never seen anything like it. Are you feeling all right, Sebastian?’

He grins his gappy grin in reply and holds both of his thumbs up. ‘Pretty awethome!’

Dr Nisha sighs. ‘I warn you now: it may be that we never know exactly what happened. I can tell you, though, this was a close-run thing.’ She picks up a clipboard and flips a couple of pages. ‘His heart rate, for example, went crazy very early this morning. The duty nurse reported “very disturbed sleep, twitching, thrashing, excessive REM” – that is—’

‘Rapid eye movement,’ I chip in, just because I’m feeling smart.

‘Yes. It seems like he was having an extremely vivid dream.’

I say nothing, of course. But all of the adults – Mam, Dad, Uncle Pete, Mormor – exchange looks and I just know they are thinking about the incident yesterday with the deconstructed Dreaminators. Mam’s gaze eventually settles on me and, when our eyes meet, I know this won’t be the last I hear of it.

Dr Nisha looks at her notes again. ‘At six twenty-six, we thought we had lost him. Sebastian’s heart and brain activity stopped for twenty-two seconds.’

I do a quick metal calculation. That would have been the time Seb and I took our big leap off the cliff, and for a moment – just a second, really – my stomach turns over with the memory.

The fear, the sun in my eyes, the people chasing us, the fog below …

‘You okay, Malky?’ says Dr Nisha. ‘I know this is upsetting. It’s odd – at the precise moment his heart rate was most extreme, he said something, didn’t you, Seb?’ She smiles at him. ‘He opened his eyes, and said, “Let’s go, Malky!”’

I say, ‘It was, “Let yourself go, Malky!”’

Dr Nisha gives me a funny look. ‘Actually, you’re right! How did you know that?’

Eventually, the rest of them all head off for breakfast, but Seb’s already had his, and I’m just not hungry. So the two of us stay in his little room next to the intensive care unit. He’s not hooked up to anything. He’s sitting in his bed, propped up on fat pillows. There’s only one thing I want to know.

‘What happened to you?’ I say. ‘When you were asleep, and you were dreaming, and tied to that stake, and being beaten …’

Seb’s eyes look up as if he’s retrieving a memory.

‘Oh yeah,’ he says. ‘That wasn’t nice. But …’

‘Wasn’t nice?’ I am amazed. ‘You mean … you don’t remember it all?’

He thinks again. ‘Not really. Not all of it.’

‘Do you remember the mammoth?’ I start laughing. ‘Naked Mola?’

‘Naked what?’

I realise that he has never even met Susan’s grandmother.

‘Thing is, Malky – this was your dream … wasn’t it? I was just … in it, somehow. Now it feels just like it was a nightmare, you know? Not nice, but …’

I look again at his wrists. His bad dream is retreating from his memory like his wounds, and I could not be more relieved. I’m standing over his bed and I don’t know why I do this thing, maybe for the first time ever, but I kind of fall forward and gather my little brother in my arms and squeeze, and he squeezes back.

‘I love you, Seb,’ I say, and he laughs and says, ‘Yeah, whatever.’

Then he quickly adds, ‘Hey, did you see the wound on my thigh?’

‘No. What is it?’

He pulls back the bedsheet. ‘The doctors are a bit worried. Here.’ He lowers the waistband of his pyjamas to expose his thigh and the top of his buttock. ‘Can you see? There. Look closer. Closer!’ I bend over until my nose is almost touching his white bum. I still can’t see anything.

That’s when he lets off a huge fart, right in my face, and turns nearly breathless and purple with laughter.

I think it’s Seb’s way of saying, ‘I love you too.’