Back in Pye’s room, I take a long look round. I’m not sure I’m aware of making it a ‘last look’, but that is how it’s going to turn out.

I look at all Pye’s bits and pieces – the science books, the model of the solar system dangling from the ceiling, his clothes in the wardrobe, his clothes (jeans, T-shirt, bomber jacket) that I’m wearing. On his desk there are more books and a slim box labelled ‘Junior Letter Writing Kit’ with envelopes and paper decorated with pictures of spaceships and planets.

Sitting at the desk, I remove from its frame the picture of me, Dad and Mum. I fold it in half, put it in an envelope and address it to Mum. Well, not my real mum, but the one in Blaydon, the one married to Roddy.

It’s a leaving present. It’s like I want her to have something of me.

Next, I write on a sheet of paper, “Please read this and remember me. Thank you, love from Al.” I put it inside my copy of The Memory Palaces Of The Sri Kalpana and leave it on the bed.

Finally, and my hand is shaking slightly when I pick up the pen, I start a letter to Pye. I don’t know if you’ve ever written an important letter? Texts and emails don’t seem quite the same, somehow, but this has to be spot-on right, and when I start to write the words they just come straight out, no hesitation, no crossings-out, as if everything I know and everything I need are contained in the pen and all I’m doing is holding it and kind of squeezing it on to the paper. I fill one sheet, then another, and my wrist is aching, and just as I’m near the bottom of the last sheet in the box, I realise that I have finished saying what I need to say. I don’t need to re-read it. I know it’s exactly right. I fold the sheets and cram them into an envelope, writing on the front, ‘FOR PYE CHAUDHURY. READ IMMEDIATELY’.

I stand up, flexing my wrist, and shove the envelope in my jeans pocket.

The doorbell goes, I hear the front door open and voices downstairs. Out of the bedroom window I can see a police car is parked outside.

Grandpa Byron’s voice comes up the stairs: “Pye. I mean, Al. Come downstairs, please.”

In the hallway are two police officers, a skinny man and a fat woman and I immediately get what has happened.

Roddy. Roddy seemed suspicious. It was the way he shook his head at Mum as we left. It’s like he was saying, “Something’s not quite right here,” and he followed his policeman’s instincts, made a couple of calls, and here they are, two police officers, being polite and everything, because there is no reason for them not to be as they are just following up enquiries.

“This is Al, is it?” says the man police officer. “How are you doin’, son?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I say, and give a wary smile.

“I’ve just come to ask you and your granddad a few questions, son. It’s nowt to worry yourself about, but we’ve got to follow certain procedures. You go off into your kitchen with my colleague here,” and he nods his head towards the woman officer, “and I’ll be in your front room with your granddad. Then we’ll swap around, OK?”

I shrug and follow the policewoman’s swaying bottom into the kitchen. I suppose they want to question us separately to check out our stories, and seeing as we don’t even have a story (other than the true one which no one would believe), then I could see Big Trouble ahead. Arrests. Investigations. Accusations. Care Homes. Court Orders. DNA tests. Press reports …

The plan I had devised, with the letter to Pye and everything else, could happily have been enacted in a day or two, once I had built up the courage and thought through the details.

No time for that now. Now I am under kitchen arrest by the unsmiling, fat policewoman, and I must act immediately.

It’s early evening, round about the time that Alan Shearer first wakes up, and I can hear him scrabbling in his cardboard box. I go over to him, pick him up and take him over to the police officer. Who just melts. Her eyes go soft, and a soppy smile makes dimples in her cheeks.

“Awwwwwwwwwweee!” she says (really – it goes on for ages and ends in a squeak). “He’s adorable! What’s his name?” I tell her and she giggles. I let Alan Shearer run over her hands and she loves it. So far so good.

Now for the next bit. “I’m just going to put him back in his box,” I say, making sure she has heard, and I take him from her. With my back to her, I head to the shallow box with Alan Shearer in my right hand. With my left, I pull open the pocket of my bomber jacket and as I bend over the box, I make the actions of putting the hamster into it, but instead slip him into my pocket.

“There you go, matey!” I say, and I even move my head and pretend to follow his movements.

As casually as I can, I say, “I’m just going to the toilet,” and I sort of stroll out of the kitchen, dead natural, down the hallway and into the downstairs loo.

I have only got, I figure, about two minutes, probably less. Here is what is going to happen in the kitchen. Fat police lady is in love with Alan Shearer. She cannot resist going over to his box and checking him out. He won’t be there. She’ll look in his bedding, under the little box that’s in there for him to play with, and she’ll assume he has got out using the plastic ruler as a ladder that I deliberately left leaning up against the inside edge of the box, and seeing as she was left in charge, she’ll start looking for him, desperate to find him before I get back from the toilet.

Two minutes? Tops. Anyway, I have already opened up the tiny toilet window, which I reckon I can just squeeze through. Trouble is, I’ll squeeze Alan Shearer as well.

Moving quickly, I take off the loo roll that’s hanging on the wall, and tear off a long strip of paper. I twist it into a rope, tie it on to the cardboard tube, then pop my hamster inside, shutting both ends with a ball of paper. Poor Alan Shearer! But it’s only going to be for a few seconds. Holding on to one end of the paper rope and standing on the toilet seat, I lower the toilet roll out of the window and on to the ground outside.

I’m next. I have to go through feet first, which means standing on the sink and getting my legs through the small window, and I’m just about to push off and out when there’s a knock on the toilet door.

“Al? Are you OK in there?” It’s the police lady.

“Ah … yeah. Nearly finished,” I say from my position halfway in and halfway out of the window.

“It’s your hamster. I think he’s got out of his box.”

“Oh no. Could you go in and look on the floor? He usually goes behind the fridge. Perhaps you could pull that out? I’m nearly finished.” I can tell my odd position is making my voice sound strained, so I add, “Bit of tummy trouble!”

I hear her footsteps move away and I drop out of the window, pick up Alan Shearer and release him from his cardboard tube. Holding him in my hands, I run down to the garden shed and open it up. Now, the shed can be seen from the kitchen, but I just have to trust to luck that she doesn’t look out of the window and that she is presently trying to move the fridge to find Alan Shearer, who is instead happily in the garden tub along with the rest of the time machine stuff.

Carrying a garden tub is tricky anyway, as I discovered that time when I was with Carly. There are handles on the side, but it’s just the size that makes it unwieldy. It’s virtually impossible to run with it, as I’m now trying to do, down the back alley that runs down to the seafront.

But I’m going in the other direction. I’m going back to Chesterton Road, back to the ‘jungle’, the patch of wasteland in front of my old house, number 40. Back to where this all began.

It just feels right.