Same taxi, same time, and that is the very end of my savings, including the five pounds Grandpa Byron gave me this afternoon, just, well, just because he does sometimes.

And this time, Carly is with me.

I know, it wouldn’t be my first choice either, but in fact I had no choice. I needed twenty pounds for the taxi fare, and I knew Carly would be good for it.

“It’s tonight,” I said, trying to sound mysterious, when I put my head around her bedroom door, but the effect was lost because she had her headphones on and didn’t hear me.

I went in and touched her on the shoulder, making her jump. She swung round.

“For God’s sake, Al—” she started.

“It’s tonight,” I repeated and her expression changed from one of fury to one of awe.

“There’s no moon, so we have to go back to Culvercot tonight.”

“What do I need to bring?”

“Well, I’m twenty pounds short on the taxi fare, but we’ll need some other things as well. Some candles for a start, and a lighter, and –” I was a bit stuck, so I made something up – “a mirror.”

“A mirror?”

“Yes. I’ll see you downstairs at twelve thirty.”

We avoid each other, mostly, for the rest of that Sunday evening. Mum and Steve go to bed as normal, and at twenty-five minutes past midnight I hear Carly’s bedroom door open, and the sound of her footsteps padding down the stairs.

At twelve thirty we’re in the taxi, and it’s only then that Carly pushes back the hood on her top and I see she’s done herself out in full-on Goth style: black lipstick, the lot. I say nothing, but the look on my face must have given it away.

“What?” says Carly. “Do you think it’s too much?”

“No. Not really. I mean, you wanted to look nice for Dad, yeah?”

She gives me a puzzled frown and I dart my eyes towards the taxi driver. She picks it up.

“Oh yeah. Yeah. Dad. Right,” and then she shuts up for the rest of the journey, plugging her ear buds in and listening to music.

When we get there, and I’ve paid the driver, and asked him to wait for half an hour, we start walking towards the patch of bushes in front of the old house.

“What happens now, Al?”

I need to keep her busy and occupied while I go into the bunker and start taking out the equipment that’s in there.

“Did you bring the mirror?”

From a pocket she pulls out a small handbag mirror.

“Perfect. Light a candle, and position the mirror so that the candle reflects in it.” This is total mumbo-jumbo of course, but it sounds like the sort of thing they do in séances. “Meanwhile, I’m going in there to get some of Dad’s stuff.”

Carly looks alarmed. “Stuff? What sort of stuff?”

“Oh … just some computery sort of stuff.”

“So what’s it doing here still?”

“It was kind of hidden. But I have to get it back, you see, because, well … I just do.” Poor, I know, but it seems to satisfy Carly who nods seriously. I then add, “It was a prized possession of his. That’s why we need it. It is imbued with his aura.” Carly’s still nodding slowly, but she has the candle in front of the mirror, and she has lit it. “Picture, Al – go on! This is going on Facebook!” and she hands me her phone and sits cross-legged behind the candle arrangement posing while I have to take a picture. “Great!” she says when I had her back her phone. “I’ll send it to you!”

Everything is dark in the driveway, but something’s missing. Where the Skoda stood is now an empty space.

They’re out! Graham and Bella are out, which is great. It means I’m less likely to get caught. On the other hand, anyone who’s out at one a.m. is likely to be back soon, and catch me in the act of robbing their garage.

There isn’t really time to consider all of this, so I ease open the crack in the garage door and I groan inwardly. There is the Skoda, parked right over the planks covering the concrete stairs.

There is no way I can get access to the bunker.

Although …

Squeezing through the gap in the door I try the handle of the driver’s door and it’s not locked. I ease the double garage doors open, and then stand, wondering how I’m going to get the car out. I can release the handbrake, and put the car in neutral and push it out of the garage silently, where the slight downward slope of the driveway will carry it into the road. Only I have no control over it at all. It might swerve and crash into the gateposts, or it might not stop when it gets to the road, and carry on and hit something else. In short, someone needs to push and someone needs to be in the car.

Which is how Carly comes to be an accessory to not-really-stealing a car.

I sit in the driver’s seat, and she is pushing the front of the car. Slowly, it inches out of the garage. I use the car’s brake pedal to control its speed down the driveway, and I stop it, and pull on the handbrake. All this time, I’m watching the bedroom windows, terrified that I might see a light go on.

By now, Carly’s in a spin of terror and curiosity, even more so when I start lifting up the planks of the stairway.

“Al! What are you—”

“Shhh,” I say, sharply. “Just help me,” and, to be fair, she does. It’s a quicker job with two of us, and in only a couple of minutes, I’m turning the circular handle of the bunker door and it pops open with a breath of musty air.

Carly puts her head in the doorway and gives a low whistle. “Frea-key!”

But there’s no time to stand and admire it. “Here,” I say, and hand her the laptop and cables. “Take them up the stairs and come back.”

While she’s gone, I lift up the zinc tub: it’s not so much heavy as really unwieldy. Carly’s back, panting, and together we get it out of the bunker until it’s resting next to the computer on the floor of the garage.

Back go the planks, and we take the tub and its contents to the waiting taxi. All we have to do now is push the car up the driveway and into the garage.

Have you ever tried to push a car uphill? It weighs a ton. Or to be precise, it weighs a tonne. No, really, it does.

Carly’s in the driver’s seat this time, and as soon as she releases the handbrake, the car starts to roll back, completely ignoring my efforts to push it into the garage. I’m heaving my whole weight against it, and I manage to stop it rolling, but I can’t push it back, however hard I try.

That’s when I see the light go on in the upstairs window. It’s only a sliver of yellow through a crack in the curtains and I know Carly hasn’t seen it. I crouch down behind the car and tap frantically on the back window. Peering through the glass my heart sinks – her ear buds are in again and she can’t hear me. The light is on now in the house’s front door window, and still she hasn’t seen it! I scramble round to the passenger door of the car and begin thumping on the window, when the front door opens and Graham is silhouetted in the light. I see Carly’s head turn in alarm towards the light, and then spin round looking for me.

I hear the clunk of the car’s central locking system. Graham has locked her in the car with his remote key! Meanwhile, I’m backing out of the driveway, shielded from his sight by the car and the hedge.

“Bella!” calls Graham back into the house. “We’ve got ourselves a thief!” He walks towards the car, clutching his dressing gown around him, and looks in. “Aw. It’s only a young ’un as well. What will the police say, I wonder? Was that you earlier today in our cellar, eh?”

I’m watching this unfold from a position of relative safety when Graham takes out his mobile and starts talking to the police.

“Fifteen minutes? That’s a long time to respond to an emergency … Well, no. No one is in imminent danger, no … I suppose it gives me chance to get dressed …”

I have an idea, but I’m not sure if I can pull it off. I can see Bella looking through the upstairs window, but she doesn’t see me. And nor does Graham, when I sneak round the back of the car, and when he shuffles in his slippers down the driveway to look out for any approaching police cars, that’s when I sneak behind him, and through the open front door.

I grew up in this house, so I know exactly where to go. Immediately to the right of the front door as you go in is a toilet, and that’s where I’m hiding when Graham comes back in.

I’m gambling that no one would naturally put their car keys in a dressing-gown pocket.

To my relief, I hear the chink of his keys on the table by the front door, and then his footsteps going up the carpeted stairs.

“Quarter hour, they say, love,” he calls to Bella. “I’ve locked the little cow in the car. Can’t be more’n about fifteen.”

And then I’m out, picking up the keys as silently as I can and opening the front door slowly, slowly. I know the trick of closing this door quietly, and lift it a bit by the letterbox and it shuts silently.

I can see Carly staring, astonished, as I come out the front door, and I’m about to click the remote key to let her out when I stop. It’s going to go blip when I open it.

I turn and insert the house key into the front door’s lock, and lock the door, leaving the keys dangling. Only then do I press the button on the car key. The corner lights on the car flash, and sure enough there’s a little blip sound, which echoes in the street’s silence.

Immediately, Carly’s out, and I’m next to her, running down the driveway. I half turn, keeping my face partly obscured, and see a furious Graham pounding on his bedroom window, followed a few seconds later by the sound of the front door rattling.

His next move will be to go out the back door, and through the garage. But by now we’ve reached the taxi, and I hold my hand out to Carly in a ‘slow down, act cool’ gesture, which she does, and we get in.

It’s not until we’re out on to the coastal road that she holds up her hand and we exchange a silent high-five.