Unless I turn up at school, Mrs Moncur the administrator will be on to Gram in about an hour to find out where I am. Then things will really start going wrong.

Wronger.

I’m not doing the whole walking-through-the-street-naked-but-invisible thing again. I just can’t face it. For a start, it looks like rain, and for another, my feet are already sore from running around last night barefoot and standing on broken china dogs.

So it’s back on with the disguise. Stocking over head, hoodie pulled up, sunglasses on, coat, trousers, shoes …

Head down, I’m out of the house and running to school. I can do it in eight minutes.

The main entrance is teeming with my classmates, who don’t take any notice as I scuttle past on the other side of the road. Better try the back entrance. There, it’s less busy.

This time, I can’t worry about the security camera, and besides, a cloud of smoke emerging from above the rhododendron bushes tells me that there are people inside what I have come to think of as my changing area, smoking cigarettes.

I wait for a lull in the trickle of students approaching the gate, and then I’m there. I press my invisible thumb on the entry pad. How does the machine read it? I have no idea, but it does, and the gate swings open. I don’t go through, and no one takes any notice at all.

That’s me registered as present, then. It’s double Physics first and there is a chance that Mr Parker will notice my absence, but then there’s also a chance that he won’t …

Back home, I take off my disguise, and put on some slippers and pyjamas instead. It just feels less weird. Lady approaches me and actually wags her tail, which cheers me up.

I’m at the house phone, the one that uses the landline. I want to call Boydy, but Gram’s got my phone and I haven’t remembered his number. Meanwhile, I have another number to discover.

The house phone keeps a memory of the last twenty calls made, but only the numbers come up on the little screen. I’ve just got to hope. One by one, I start to call them, preceding each call with 141 so that the caller is unidentified. Some people don’t pick up those calls. I’ll just have to risk it.

0191 878 4566. Voicemail. ‘This is the Reverend Henry Robinson. I’m sorry I am unable to take your call, but please leave a message after the tone.’

0191 667 5544 … ‘Hello, Diane speaking …’ I hang up.

0870 … no, that’s not a personal number.

118 118 … no, that’s directory enquiries.

I’m down to the fifteenth number, and I have still got nowhere. They all seem to be friends of Gram’s, or voicemail, or company numbers. The sixteenth and seventeenth just ring and ring and ring with no response at all.

The eighteenth I recognise as the school reception.

The nineteenth is my mobile, which Gram must have called.

And so this is the last one in the phone’s memory.

A mobile number that I don’t know. I had actually seen it on the displayed list and hadn’t dared call it because I wanted to do it all methodically, and because I was nervous about what might happen if someone did pick it up.

07886 545 377. If I could see my fingers, I would watch them trembling as I pressed REDIAL.

It picks up straight away.

‘Hello. Richard Malcolm speaking.’

My dad.