I’m standing on the front step, and I discover that I just can’t do it.

I can’t confidently stride forward and out into Eastbourne Gardens and turn right up towards school like I normally would.

I’m almost certain it’s because I am naked.

Not that anyone can see me, of course. But I can feel the breeze on my bare stomach and it’s just not right.

I try to imagine that I am wearing a swimsuit, which helps.

I get out of the door and a few metres up the road before turning back when I see old Paddy Flynn shuffling down to the seafront on his Zimmer frame. I know in my heart that he can’t see me. It’s all going on in my invisible head.

And while I dither on the doorstep, I run through the plan again:

1. Go onstage, invisible.
2. Take the guitar from Boydy, who will be murdering some song or other.
3. Make it look like he’s levitating the guitar.
4. Boydy gets loads of applause and people say he’s awesome, so …
5. He forgives me for calling him fat, which I didn’t really, but I did more or less.

I couldn’t tell you why it bothers me so much, what I did to him. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t even want to be friends. But it does. Maybe it’s because if I don’t try to make it up to him then I’m just as bad as Aramynta and the others.

More than anything, it’s the look on Boydy’s face that day in the school canteen. The look of someone who has just discovered that everything is not as he thought it was. I can relate to that.

Whatever the reason, it seems like I’m doing this.

First, though, I have to get out of my front door, and perhaps the answer is clothes.

I’m not doing the clown mask again, though, that’s for sure.