First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019

Published in this ebook edition in 2019

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Text copyright © Ross Welford 2019

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover illustration copyright © Tom Clohosy Cole

Ross Welford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008256975

Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008256982

Version: 2018-12-12

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Whitley Bay, Not Many Years From Now

Introduction

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Part Two

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Part Three

Chapter Fifty-one

Chapter Fifty-two

Chapter Fifty-three

Chapter Fifty-four

Chapter Fifty-five

Chapter Fifty-six

Chapter Fifty-seven

Chapter Fifty-eight

Part Four

Chapter Fifty-nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-one

Chapter Sixty-two

Chapter Sixty-three

Chapter Sixty-four

Chapter Sixty-five

Chapter Sixty-six

Chapter Sixty-seven

Chapter Sixty-eight

Chapter Sixty-nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-one

Chapter Seventy-two

Chapter Seventy-three

Chapter Seventy-four

Chapter Seventy-five

Chapter Seventy-six

Chapter Seventy-seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

Books by Ross Welford

About the Publisher

I’ve got this framed poster on my bedroom wall that Dad got me for my birthday. I see it every morning and every night, so I know it off by heart.

THE WISDOM OF THE DOGS

Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs.

If what you want is buried, dig and dig until you find it.

Don’t bite if a growl is enough.

Like people in spite of their faults.

Start each day with a wagging tail.

Whatever your size, be brave.

Whatever your age, learn new tricks.

If someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit near and nuzzle them, gently.

It’s all true. Every single word. As I discovered last summer, when the world nearly ended.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, allow me to introduce (drum roll …):

Mr Mash: The Dog Who Saved the World!

I love him more than anything. I know that sounds harsh on Dad and Clem, but I think they’ll understand, especially after what happened over that summer.

We don’t know exactly how old he is, how he became a stray, or even what sort of dog he might be. He’s got shaggy fur – grey, brown and white – and ears that flop over at the ends. He’s got a cute, inquisitive face like a schnauzer, big soft eyes and a strong, very waggy tail like a Labrador.

In other words, he’s a mishmash. When we got him from the St Woof’s shelter, the vicar said I could name him, and so I said ‘Mishmash’, which sounded like ‘Miss Mash’, but, because he’s a boy dog, he became Mister Mash.

Mr Mash: my very best, very stupid friend. His tongue is far too big for his mouth, so it often just lolls out, making him look even dafter. He’s completely unable to tell if something is food or not, so he just eats it anyway. This, in turn, means he has what the vicar calls ‘a wind problem’.

You can say that again. ‘Silent and violent,’ Dad says.

‘Disgusting,’ says Jessica, but she never liked him much anyway.

Without Mr Mash, the world might have ended.

Really.

It’s six o’clock on a warm summer’s evening and Ramzy Rahman and I are staring at the back entrance of the Spanish City entertainment centre, not daring to knock. Mr Mash has just scoffed a Magnum that someone dropped on the pavement and is licking his chops, ready for another. He even ate the wooden stick.

There’s a massive double-height steel door in the white wall – one of those doors that’s so big that there’s a normal-sized door cut into it. In the middle of the normal door – looking totally out of place – is a knocker like you’d see on the door of a haunted mansion. The metal is green, and in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head.

Mr Mash looks up at the wolf’s head and curls his lip, though he doesn’t actually growl.

Around the corner, on the seafront, men in shorts push babies in buggies; cars with dark windows hum along the coast road; and people pedal FreeBikes in the cycle lane. Ramzy nudges me to point out Saskia Hennessey’s older sister, in just a bikini, flip-flops and goosebumps, shimmying towards the beach with some friends. I keep my head down: I don’t want to be recognised.

Above us, the sky is the intense blue of late afternoon and it’s so hot that even the seagulls have retreated to the shade. Ramzy is doing his familiar shuffle-dance of excitement, and I feel I should calm him down.

‘Ramzy,’ I say, patiently. ‘We’re just visiting an old lady. She’s probably lonely and wants to give us tea and scones, or something. Scroll through photos of her grandchildren. And we’ll be polite and then we’ll be off the hook. That’s not an adventure, unless you’re very odd.’

Ramzy gives me a look that says, But I am very odd!

Eventually, I lift up the wolf’s head, which hinges at the jaws, and bring it down with a single sharp rap that echoes much louder than I expected, making Ramzy jump.

His eyes are shining with excitement and he whispers to me, ‘Tea, scones, wolves and adventure!’

Dr Pretorius must have been waiting because no sooner have I knocked than we hear several bolts sliding back on the other side of the door, and it opens with a very satisfying creak. (I see Ramzy grin: he would have been disappointed if the door had not creaked.)

Now, to complete his delight, there should have been a clap of thunder, and a flash of lightning revealing Dr Pretorius in a long black cape, saying, ‘Greetings, mortals,’ or something.

Instead, it’s still bright and sunny, not even slightly stormy, and Dr Pretorius – as long and as thin as a cat’s tail – is wearing the same woollen beach robe as when we met her this morning.

She just says, ‘Hi,’ in her throaty American accent. Just that: ‘Hi.’

Then she turns and walks back into what looks like a large dark storage area. With her bushy white hair on top of her thin dark body, she reminds me of a magic wand.

She has gone several steps before she stops and turns to Ramzy and me.

‘Well? Whatcha waitin’ for? The last train to Clarksville? Come on in. Bring the mutt if you have to.’

On the other side of the cluttered storage area is a narrow flight of metal stairs leading up to a platform with a handrail. She doesn’t wait to see if we are following and so I peer round the high, dusty space. It’s piled with boxes, bricks, bags of cement, ladders, planks, a small cement mixer, a leather sofa propped up on its end and a builder’s skip filled with rubble. There’s other stuff too: a horse’s saddle, a car seat, bar stools, an exercise bike, a huge machine for making espresso, and something the size of an old-fashioned cartwheel on its side, half covered by a dusty blue tarpaulin.

Ramzy pokes me in the back and points to it. ‘Psst. Check out the copter-drone!’

I have heard of copter-drones, obviously, and I’ve seen people demonstrating them on YouTube and stuff, but I’ve never seen one for real. I’m thinking that Clem would be dead jealous that I’ve seen one before he has. Then I remember that I’m not supposed to tell anyone that I’m here.

Dr Pretorius is saying: ‘… my green wolf knocker – d’you like it? It’s called verdigris. From the old French, green of Greece. It’s copper carbonate caused by the brass tarnishing in the salty air. Same as the Statue of Liberty. But you knew that, didn’t you?’

We say nothing, following her up the stairs, both of us casting curious glances back at the storage area and what might – or more probably might not – have been a copter-drone.

She stops at the top and turns. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Oh aye. Definitely,’ says Ramzy, nodding enthusiastically.

‘Liar!’ she snarls and points her long brown chin at him. I notice that her white halo of Afro hair quivers when she talks, then goes still when she stops. ‘What’s the chemical formula for copper carbonate?’

Ramzy’s poor face! His mouth droops. Ramzy is clever but not that clever. ‘Erm … erm …’

Dr Pretorius turns again and marches along the metal landing, her beach robe billowing behind her. ‘It’s CuCO₃,’ she calls over her shoulder. ‘What do they teach you at that school of yours, huh? Is it still self-esteem and climate change? Ha! Come on, keep up!’

We trot after her, Mr Mash’s claws click-clacking on the metal walkway.

She halts by a pair of double doors in the centre of a long, curved wall and faces us. She takes a deep breath and then starts a coughing fit that goes on for ages. At one point, she is almost bent double as she hacks and coughs. It kind of spoils the dramatic moment, but then, as suddenly as she started, she stops and straightens up. Her face softens a little. ‘Ah! Don’t look so scared, fella. I’m just gettin’ old is all. What’s your name?’

‘R-Ramzy. Ramzy Rahman. Ma’am.’

The side of her mouth goes up and she chuckles. ‘Ma’am? Ha! Well, you got better manners than I have, buddy. Invitin’ you into my place without even a proper introduction. So we’ve got Ramzy Rahman and …?’

‘Georgina Santos. Georgie for short.’ I don’t do the ma’am bit. I can’t carry it off like Ramzy.

‘OK, Georgie-for-short and Ramzy-ma’am. That was my little test, see? But from now on no more lies, huh? From here on in, I’m trusting you. Did you tell anyone you were here?’

Ramzy and I shake our heads, and both say, ‘No.’

‘Noooo,’ she drawls and takes off her thick glasses, bending down to peer at us with her strange pale eyes. ‘So is it a deal?’

We both nod, although I’m not at all sure what the deal is exactly.

‘Deal,’ we say together.

Seemingly satisfied, she turns round and flings open both doors, growling, ‘Well, ain’t that dandy? We’ve got ourselves a deal! Welcome, my little chickadees, to the future! Ha ha ha haaa!’ Her laugh is like an arpeggio, each bark higher than the one before, ending on a loud screech.

Ramzy catches my eye and smirks. If Dr Pretorius is pretending to be a crazy person then she’s overdoing it. Only … I think it’s real.

Mr Mash gives a little whine. He doesn’t want to go through the doors, and I know exactly how he feels.

I’ve tried really hard to work out where the whole thing started. By ‘the whole thing’, I mean Dr Pretorius’s ‘FutureDome’ stuff, the campervan explosion, the Dog Plague, the million-pound jackpot … everything. And I think it started with Mr Mash:

Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs.

That’s number one on my Wisdom of the Dogs poster. I know it sounds a bit final so I’ve come up with some exceptions:

1 People (Ramzy’s Aunty Nush, for example) who have grown up in countries and cultures where dogs are not pets. So it’s not really their fault.

2 Postmen and delivery people who have been attacked by dogs, though it’s really the owner’s fault for not training the dog properly.

3 People who are allergic. I have to say that because of Jessica. More on her coming up soon.

But, exceptions aside, I think it’s a pretty good rule. Dogs just want to be with us. Did you know that dogs have lived alongside humans for pretty much as long as we’ve been on earth? That’s why we have the expression ‘man’s best friend’. (And woman’s, and children’s as well, obviously.)

I was born wanting a dog. That’s what Dad says, anyway. He says my first words were, ‘Can we get a dog?’ I think he’s joking but I like to pretend it’s true.

Next to the poster on my bedroom wall I’ve got a collection of pictures of famous people with their dogs. My favourites are:

 Robby Els and his poodle.

 G-Topp and his (very cute) chihuahua.

 The American president and her Great Dane.

 Our king with his Jack Russell (I met the king once, when I was a baby, before he was the king. He didn’t have his dog with him, though.)

 The old queen with her corgis.

Anyway, eventually we got a dog. It was March last year, not long after Dad’s girlfriend, Jessica, moved in. (Coincidence? I don’t think so.)

I knew something was up. Dad had taken a couple of calls from his friend Maurice, who used to be a vicar and now runs St Woof’s Dog Shelter on Eastbourne Gardens. Nothing odd about that, but when he answered he would say, ‘Ah, Maurice! Hold on,’ and then leave the room, and once when he came back in he was smirking so much his face was nearly bursting. Of course, I didn’t even dare to hope.

I asked Clem, but he’d already started his retreat to his bedroom, otherwise known as the Teen Cave (a retreat that is now more or less complete). He shrugged and – to be fair – getting a dog was always my thing, not my brother’s. If it doesn’t have a smelly petrol engine, Clem’s not all that bothered.

Not daring to hope is really, really hard when you’re hoping like mad. I’d look at the calendar on my wall – 12 Months of Paw-some Puppies! – and wonder if we’d get one, ranking my preferences in a list that I kept in my bedside drawer.

1 Golden retriever (excellent with children).

2 Cockapoo.

3 Chocolate Labrador.

4 Great Dane (I know, they’re massive. ‘You may as well buy a horse,’ says Dad).

5 Border collie (v. smart, need lots of training).

I even tried to work out what was going on in Dad’s head. It was like, Jessica’s moving in, Clem’s growing up, Georgie’s not happy about any of that, so let’s get her a dog.

Which suited me fine. And then … I came back from school one Friday, walked into the kitchen and Dad was there. He said, ‘Close your eyes!’ but I had already heard a dog whining behind the door.

I have never, ever been happier than when Dad opened the door to the living room, and I first saw this bundle of fur, wagging his tail so much that his entire backside was in motion. I sank to my knees and, when he licked me, I fell instantly, totally in love.

Dad had got him from St Woof’s, and we didn’t know his age. The vicar (who knows about this sort of thing) estimated him to be about five years old. Nor did he fit anywhere on my list of favourite dog breeds.

So I made a new list, where ‘mongrels’ was at the top.

It lasted a month. Twenty-seven days, actually. Twenty-seven days of pure happiness, and then it was over. Trashed by Jessica, who I try so hard to like – without success.

It wasn’t Mr Mash’s ‘wind problem’ that was the issue.

I for one would have put up with that. Although sometimes the smell could make your eyes water, it was never for long. No: it was Jessica, one hundred per cent.

It started with a cough, then wheezing, then a rash on her hands. Jessica, it turned out, was completely allergic.

‘Didn’t you know?’ I wailed, and she shook her head. Believe it or not, she had simply never been in close enough contact with dogs for long enough to discover that she was hypersensitive to their fur, or their saliva, or something. Or maybe it developed when she was an adult. I don’t think she was making it up: she’s not that bad.

OK, I did – occasionally – think that. But after Jessica had an asthma attack that left her exhausted, and her hair all sweaty, we knew that Mr Mash would have to go back.

It’s probably unusual to have the best day and the worst day of your life within a month, especially since I was still only ten at the time.

I cried for a week, and Jessica kept saying she was sorry and trying to hug me with her bony arms, but I was furious. I still am, sometimes.

Mr Mash went back to St Woof’s. And the only good thing is that he is still there. The vicar says I can see him whenever I like.

I became a St Woof’s volunteer. I’m way too young officially, but Dad says he persuaded the vicar to ‘bend the rules’.

Actually, it wasn’t the only good thing. The other good thing was that there were loads of dogs at St Woof’s, and I liked them all.

But I loved Mr Mash the best, and it was because of him that – fifteen months later – Ramzy and I ended up meeting Dr Pretorius.

It was morning, about nine, and there was a cool, early mist hanging over the beach. There was me, Ramzy, Mr Mash, plus two of the other dogs from St Woof’s.

I had let Mr Mash off his lead, and he’d run down the steps and across the sand to the shore, where he likes to try to eat the white tops of the little waves. Ramzy was holding on to ugly Dudley who can’t be let off the lead because he has zero recall, which is when you call to a dog and he doesn’t come. Dudley once ran as far as the lighthouse, and would probably have run further if the tide hadn’t been in.

So there was Mr Mash down by the shoreline, Dudley straining on his leash, and Sally-Ann, the Lhasa apso, sniffing the stone steps very reluctantly. Sally-Ann’s a ‘paying guest’ at St Woof’s and I genuinely think she’s snobby towards the other dogs there, like a duchess having to stay at a cheap hotel.

At the bottom of the steps was a tall old lady cramming a load of white hair, bit by bit, into a yellow rubber swimming cap. I nudged Ramzy. ‘It’s her,’ I whispered. ‘From the Spanish City.’ At that stage, we didn’t know her name, and hadn’t even met her, although we had both seen her before.

We hung back at the top of the steps. The old lady snapped on a pair of swimming goggles, shrugged off a long beach robe and started walking across the sand towards the sea. The tide was in, so it was a short walk, but long enough for us to stare in wonder.

Her one-piece bathing suit matched the vivid yellow of her cap and made her long legs and arms – a rich dark brown – seem even darker. She had almost no flesh where her bottom should be: just a slight swelling below the scooped back of the swimsuit. She moved confidently but slowly and didn’t stop when she got to the water, just carried on walking until the sea was at waist level, then she bent forward and started a steady swim out towards a buoy about fifty metres away.

What happened about fifteen minutes later was Mr Mash’s fault. By now, Ramzy and I were on the beach. We’d seen the old lady come out of the water and walk back up the sand to where her stuff was. She was a bit scary-looking, and I didn’t want to have to pass her as we went back up the steps, so we stayed by the shoreline.

I have no idea what Mr Mash could have found even slightly edible about a yellow swimming cap, but suddenly he was running up the beach to where the old lady had dropped it, and he had it in his jaws.

‘Hey! You! Get off that!’ she yelled, and then I was running too.

‘Mr Mash! Off! Off! Leave it!’ I yelled.

‘Give it to me!’ shouted the old lady, and that was it. Mr Mash leapt up at her with the swimming cap in his mouth, and over she went on to the sand, banging her wrist on the steps as she fell. I heard something scrape and the old lady exclaimed in pain.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry! He’s just being friendly!’ I cried, and the lady sat upright, sand sticking to her wet skin where she’d fallen. She rubbed her wrist while, behind her, the daft mongrel slowly chewed her bathing cap.

On her wrist was a big watch, one of those ones with pointers and numbers, and she was looking at it. Then she held it up to show me a wide scratch on the glass front.

‘Your dog did that,’ she said. ‘And what the heck is he doing to my swim cap?’

‘I’m really sorry.’ It was pretty much all I could think of saying. I just wanted to run away.

Ramzy, meanwhile, was wringing his hands and shuffling in the sand like he needed to go to the loo, his mouth pulled tight into a line of fear. His skinny legs were trembling and making his enormous school shorts shake. Dudley was yapping with excitement on the end of his lead, while Sally-Ann sat nearby, facing the other way as if she was trying to ignore the commotion.

The woman looked at me carefully as she got to her feet and pulled on the long woollen beach robe that reached to her ankles. ‘You’re lucky my watch isn’t broken,’ she said to me, in her strange, low-pitched American accent. Then she added, ‘You’re the two I saw a few weeks ago, aren’t you?’

I nodded. ‘I … I’m sorry about your wrist. Is it OK?’

‘No, of course it’s not OK. It hurts like heck and there’s a great big scratch on the crystal of my watch.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you said. I get it. You’re sorry. Jeez, is that dog gonna eat the whole darn thing? It sure looks like it.’ Her huge white Afro bobbed as she talked. She stretched her sinewy neck to peer at me and I think I squeaked in surprise when I saw her unusual pale blue eyes: I don’t think I’d ever seen a black person with eyes like that and it was difficult not to stare. I dragged my gaze away to look at Mr Mash.

‘Stop it, Mr Mash!’ I said. I tried to pull the cap from the dog’s mouth, but it was ruined. ‘I’m sorry!’ I said again. Then, ‘Stop that, Dudley!’ to Dudley, who had a dead seagull in his mouth. It was all pretty chaotic.

The old lady replaced her thick spectacles, then she folded her skinny arms with their papery skin. She looked me up and down. ‘How old are you?’ she snarled.

‘I’m eleven.’

‘Hmph. What about Mr Madrid over there?’ She jerked her thumb at Ramzy, who was still hopping from foot to foot with anxiety. He was wearing his black Real Madrid football top, although – so far as I know – he doesn’t follow the team. It’s not a real top: it’s made by Adidas but I don’t think he cares.

‘He’s ten,’ I said.

‘And five-sixths,’ Ramzy chipped in, then immediately looked embarrassed. He’s the youngest in our year.

A trace of a smile appeared on the old lady’s face: it wasn’t much more than the slight lifting of one side of her mouth. I didn’t know then that it was an expression I would get used to. She flexed her wrist and winced. ‘Five-sixths, huh? Well, ain’t you the big fella?’ She took a long breath in through her nose as if she was making a big decision about what to say next.

‘I really don’t want to have to report all this,’ she said, staring out at the sea, and then her eyes flashed to the side, measuring my reaction. ‘You know – a stolen swim cap, a potentially serious injury, a damaged watch, an outta control dog …’

‘Oh, he’s not out of—’

‘Like I say, I don’t want to have to report it. That would be a drag. But you two could help me.’ She turned round to face us and put her long hands on her narrow hips. ‘You know the Spanish City?’

‘Of course.’ I pointed to the big dome a little way in the distance.

‘Yeah, course you do. Come there this evening at six, and we may be able to forget about all … this. And don’t tell anyone, either.’

Ramzy was nodding away like an idiot, but that’s because his Aunty Nush, who he lives with, is super strict about good behaviour. I think he’s on his last chance or something so he’d agree to anything. Me, on the other hand …

I half raised my hand and said, ‘Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, only you say don’t tell anyone, but we don’t know you, and …’

She stared at me, unblinking, and her large glasses seemed to magnify her pale eyes.

‘There’s a rule, honey, and know that you know it: if a grown-up you hardly know asks you to keep a secret from your mom and pop, it is always a bad idea.’

I nodded, wishing she’d stop staring, but I was unable to take my eyes away.

‘It’s a cast-iron rule,’ she said. I nodded again, and swallowed. ‘Which I’m gonna ask you to break.’

She let this sink in. ‘See you at six this evening.’ She turned and, in one movement, gathered up her sandals and yellow beach bag and stalked off up the steps. Then she turned. ‘Pretorius. Dr Emilia Pretorius. Good to meet ya.’

Beside me, Mr Mash sicked up the pieces of bathing cap, then started to eat them again. (Later I added bathing cap to the ever-lengthening list of things Mr Mash has eaten.)

‘What d’you reckon?’ asked Ramzy, watching her go.

I thought a bit and then pointed to his football top. ‘How many ladies of her age would recognise Real Madrid’s away kit?’ I said, impressed. ‘Plus – Mr Mash quite liked her.’

Which meant I was prepared to give her a chance.

So here we are, the evening of the same day, back in the Spanish City.

‘Ha ha ha haaa!’ cackles Dr Pretorius again and I honestly don’t think she’s acting. I think she’s just excited.

Beyond the double doors it’s dark – I mean, totally dark – till Dr Pretorius barks, ‘Studio lights!’ and brilliant pinpoint lights flicker to life on thin metal rails that criss-cross the domed ceiling high, high above us.

We’re in a vast, round windowless room with walls clad entirely – floor to ceiling – with a dull dark green … foam, I suppose? It looks spongy, although I don’t dare touch it. The ceiling and floor are matt black, and in the centre of the room is a single deckchair: the old-fashioned type with red-and-white striped canvas. That’s it.

We are inside the dome of the Spanish City – the mosque-like building that dominates the seafront of Whitley Bay – and it is huge.

‘You like?’ says Dr Pretorius, sweeping a proud arm into the blackness, and her voice echoes round the vast emptiness.

‘Yeah!’ I say, and Ramzy nods, but before I’ve finished my syllable she turns and glares.

‘Liar! How can you? You have no idea what this is. I warned you: you must tell me the truth, and only the truth! Now, I’ll try again. You like?’

‘Erm …’ I don’t know what to say this time, and I’m scared I’ll get it wrong again. This Dr Pretorius is pretty intimidating. Ramzy rescues me.

‘To be honest, Dr Pretorius,’ he says, ‘there’s norra great deal to like. But I’d certainly call it impressive. Striking. Erm … remarkable.’

‘Ha! You’re learning! That’s more like it. You know a lot of words. Where are you from, kid? That north-eastern accent’s mixed up with something else, isn’t it?’

Ramzy hesitates. ‘Well, my home country doesn’t really exist any more. There was a war and, well …’

‘I get it, kid. We’re all lookin’ for a home, huh? Well, this is mine. Welcome to my lab-ratory, or – as you English say – my la-bor-atory, ha! Come this way. Stay to the side. And … hold up a second.’ She sniffs the air. ‘Can you smell … burning rubber?’

‘I’m sorry. That, erm … that’s Mr Mash. He has a slight erm … digestive problem.’

Dr Pretorius’s hand covers her face and her voice is muffled. ‘You don’t say!’ She looks at Mr Mash and then her gaze flicks to the door as if she’s considering sending him out, but she doesn’t. It makes me like her a little more.

My eyes have become accustomed to the gloom, and we follow her round the side of the circular room. She pulls aside a thick green curtain to reveal a narrow doorway, and the three of us, plus Mr Mash, squeeze through.

‘Control-room lights!’

Blue-white strip lights come on to reveal a long room with white tiles on the floor and walls. There are workbenches, sinks, a big fridge, an eight-ring cooker and a black iron grill. It’s obvious that this was once a restaurant kitchen.

Along one wall, above a wooden desk, are three huge, blank computer screens and a large keyboard with coloured keys – the kind they have in the tech lab at school. And everywhere – on every shelf, on every surface – are endless bits of … stuff. Boxes of wires, components, tiny tools, rolls of gaffer tape, a soldering iron, boxes of screws and nails, and a selection of eye-shields, helmets, gloves and glasses for use with virtual-reality games. Some of them are dusty and look years old, with different names on them. Google, Vis-Art, Apple, Ocean Blue, Samsung … Some of the names I recognise but most I don’t.

On one aluminium worktop lies a computer and a monitor – an old one, from the last century, with its insides spilling out as though it’s been dropped and no one has swept up the pieces. I don’t think anyone has swept anything, to be honest: the whole place is pretty rank.

Below the desk are several cabinets, housing – I suppose – the actual workings of the computers. A few lights blink but they make no sound, not even a hum.

On a worktop next to a sink is a wooden board with a wrapped loaf of bread, and some butter and cheese, plus a load of dirty cups. Mr Mash has found some crumbs and snuffles around, trying to locate some more.

Dr Pretorius eases her long body into a wheeled desk chair, adjusts her spectacles and taps the keyboard on the desk, which makes the middle screen come to life.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ says Dr Pretorius but she doesn’t sound sorry at all.

Her fingers tap and type while page after page scrolls up on the screen. The two other computer monitors light up with images that flash by, too fast to see properly, before they stop on a picture of a beach.

It’s a moving image, from three different angles, one on each screen.

I look at Ramzy, who has been silent since we walked in. He gazes at the screens, his mouth hanging open.

‘Don’t worry, guys,’ says Dr Pretorius behind us. ‘It gets better. Here.’ She holds a bicycle helmet in each hand, and waits for our reaction. ‘Well, put ’em on,’ she says, eventually. ‘Adjust them so they’re a good fit, and make ’em tight: tighter than you’d normally wear.’

A tiny earbud plugs snugly into each ear. She helps us with the straps and buckles, fiddling and pulling, till Ramzy says, ‘Argh! It’s too tight!’

‘Can you breathe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it isn’t too tight. OK – follow me. The dog stays here.’ She leads us out of the control room and back into the studio and we stand with our backs to the foamy green wall.

I look down and realise for the first time that we’re standing on a kind of path that runs round the whole of the circular floor. The floor itself is a huge disc filled with … what? I bend down to look closer.

‘One-millimetre matt-black ball bearings,’ says Dr Pretorius beside me. ‘Billions of them, half a metre deep. You can walk on them – it’s OK. They’re packed tight. You won’t sink.’

She stands before us, checking the helmets and finally lowering a curved steel bar that attaches to the helmets like a visor. It rests above our eyes. ‘That’s the 3D generator,’ she says. ‘It’ll dazzle a bit but you’ll get used to it. You’ll probably also feel a little discomfort on your scalp, but it’s nothin’ to worry about.’

Ramzy says, ‘This is just like the Surround-a-Room at Disney World!’

I get the impression that that was not the right thing to say, although I can’t be sure. Dr Pretorius blinks slowly and takes a deep breath through her nose, as though considering her response. Eventually, she says, ‘Dead right, sonny. Only this is waay better. This is a game that’s gonna change the world. OK, this way.’

She leads us towards the deckchair. The ball bearings feel odd underfoot, like walking on soft gravel. ‘When the program starts,’ Dr Pretorius says, ‘the floor will shift a little beneath you. It might feel strange at first but you’ll get used to it.’ She turns and goes back into the control room, pulling the curtain behind her and closing the door with a thunk. In my ear, there’s a crackling noise, then I hear her say, ‘Ready? OK – let’s do this!’

It is only then that I realise that I have no idea what I’m doing. I have just gone along with this unquestioningly, strapping on a weird bicycle helmet, stepping on to a floor made of tiny balls, beneath a vast dark dome, while outside people stroll around and eat ice creams, and …

I have exactly the same feeling as the first time I went on a roller coaster. I must have been about six. I was with Dad, and we were in the front car. It had crawled up a steep slope, and it was only when we got to the top that I looked down and realised that I was much higher than I wanted to be.

Five minutes before now – less! – I was banging on the big double door with a wolf’s-head knocker and now I’m about to test some new … what? A game? Who IS this woman?

I am terrified. How, I am wondering, did I end up here?

‘Ramzy? I don’t like this.’ I reach out and grip Ramzy’s hand, then I call out, ‘Stop!’ and then louder, ‘STOP!’

But it’s too late. The pin lights in the ceiling all go off and everything goes dark.

Exactly where we’re standing in the Spanish City was – till very recently – a restaurant, although I never went inside it. Years before that it was a ballroom, then a discotheque, with cafes and amusement arcades; outdoors there was a permanent funfair dominated by a huge white dome, and the whole thing was called the Spanish City.

Granda, who grew up here before he moved to Scotland with Gran, says he remembers an ancient, rattling roller coaster made of wood and iron called the Big Dipper. By the 1990s, though, the Spanish City was almost a ruin, and it stayed like that for years, apparently.

It was all refurbished a few years ago, and there’s no funfair now, and no Big Dipper. But there are still ice-cream shops and cafes in another section – swanky, expensive ones like the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms that make Granda suck his teeth and go, ‘You’re kidding! That much for a pot of tea! I tell you, when I was a kid …’ and so on.

The king visited the Spanish City once, before he was the king. I was a baby, and there’s a picture of me and Mum, and the king looks like he’s smiling at me, although that’s just the angle of the picture. He was smiling at something else. It’s in a frame in our hallway.

Anyway, last winter the restaurant under the dome closed down. No one knew why. Saskia Hennessey’s mum worked as a waitress there and one day she was called in and told she no longer had a job. But … she was given a shedload of money, the family all went to Florida and had brand-new laptops when they came back, and Mrs Hennessey got a job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms, anyway.

It was the same for everyone who worked there, according to Sass.

One day: busy restaurant. Next day: removal vans being loaded with tables and chairs. Week after: builders moving in with sledgehammers and skips.

It all still looks the same from the outside. But no one knows what’s going on inside. Well, no one knew – till Ramzy and I met Dr Pretorius.

One day, before the October half-term, Ramzy and I were walking home from school and I was talking to him about all this, and about me meeting the king, wondering out loud what on earth was happening, when he just marched up to a bloke in an orange jacket and a hard hat who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks and broken wood by the big back doors of the Spanish City building.

‘Excuse me, sir – what’s happening in there?’ Ramzy asked him, while I cringed with embarrassment. (‘Sir’!) Mr Springham, our teacher, says Ramzy has ‘no social filter’: he’ll talk to anyone.

The man seemed glad of the chance to rest his load.

‘Haven’t a clue, son. Perfec’ly good restaurant, aal ripped oot! Big shame if y’ask me. Looka that …’ He pointed at a large slab of shiny stone in his barrow. ‘Nice big piece of Italian marble, tharriz. Come to think of it, I’ll have that for meself, like. It’ll make a canny garden table!’

‘So … what’s going in instead?’ says Ramzy. The man took off his hard hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. He looked up at the dome.

‘Dunno, son. Some sort of music or film studio, I reckon. There’s a load of fancy equipment goin’ in next week. Y’know: lights an’ projectors, an’ computers an’ that.’ He nodded to an elderly-looking lady in a hard hat who was crouching and checking the labels on a stack of silver canisters like fire extinguishers. She turned and stared at us, fiercely. I didn’t recognise her, not at first.

‘Aye, aye. Cannit stay here gabbin’ wi’ yous. Ol’ Dr Wotsit over there’ll be on to us.’ He picked up his barrow and resumed his work.

Ramzy turned to me. ‘See? You’ve only got to ask!’

As we walked away, I looked back and the old lady had stood up and was still staring at us. She was tall and thin, and I looked away. A few metres further on, I dared to glance back again, and she was still looking at us, and I felt as though I’d been caught doing something wrong.

I recognised her: I had seen her sometimes down on the beach, swimming. Even in the winter.

Whatever she was building was huge as well. The silver canisters I recognised as Liquid Weld: Dad uses it in his car workshop, but he only has one of them. The old lady must have had about twenty.

I looked back again, and something happened. A look? A connection? I don’t know, but I had the definite feeling that she was watching us both for a reason. I think she even smiled to herself, satisfied with something, or perhaps I was imagining it.

Back in the dead-dark Dome, without warning, the curved metal band above my eyes glows a dazzling blue-white – a light that is so sharp it almost hurts. I squint and, as the brilliance fades away, shapes begin to form in front of me. Within seconds, long, thin poles become palm trees, and the dark floor turns white as it’s transformed before my eyes into a tropical beach.

And I mean a real beach: not some corny yellow virtual-reality beach, with clunky graphics, viewed through a heavy headset. This is much, much more realistic than anything I’ve ever seen in any VR device.

I let go of Ramzy’s hand and he says, ‘Whoaaaaa!’ – a long sigh of amazement.

In front of us is the deckchair, and now, to either side of it, stretches a wide crescent of creamy-white sand, fringed with palm trees, leading down to a rippling turquoise ocean a few metres in front of us.

I turn round 360 degrees. The illusion is perfect. I look up, and the blue sky has little clouds in it, and there’s a darker grey cloud on the horizon.

Then I notice the sounds: the breeze; the scratching noise that palm leaves make in the wind; the breaking of the little waves; an old moped going past on a distant road. From behind me is the sound of tinny music. I turn, and there’s a shack selling drinks where the music is coming from. Behind the counter stands a grinning barman. I smile and lift my hand in greeting.

He waves back. His movements are not at all jerky, although his arm becomes a little pixelated, and there’s a slightly dark outline around him.

OK, I’m thinking. This is pretty good – no, it’s more than pretty good, it’s excellent but, you know …

I don’t want to sound cynical and spoiled, but I mean, I have played virtual-reality games before. This is good, and definitely better than the one at Disney World, but … well, why the big secrecy?

‘It’s pretty good!’ I say out loud, looking around again.

‘Pretty good?’ shouts Dr Pretorius through the earpiece and it makes me jump. In just a few seconds, I’d almost forgotten that I was actually inside a large dark dome in Whitley Bay. ‘Pretty good? Is that the best you can do? Pretty good?’ Her normally deep voice has become a squeak.

‘I … I’m sorry. I mean, it’s excellent. It’s …’

‘Touch the sand! Go on – it won’t bite you! Touch the sand!’

I hunker down, stretch my hand down into the sand and give a little squeal of amazement. You see, I know that under my feet is a half-metre-thick layer of tiny metal balls. But that’s not what I touch. Instead, I touch …

Sand. At least, that is what it feels like.

The grains trickle between my fingers. I gasp and hear Dr Pretorius’s throaty chuckle. ‘It’s better than “pretty good”, isn’t it?’

I nod. ‘Yes. It … it’s perfect!’

‘Ha! Not quite, but thank you, anyway. Touch the sand again and feel it carefully.’

I reach out and pick up another handful of sand. Ramzy does the same and says, ‘It’s … cold? Shouldn’t it be warmer from the sunshine?’

‘Hmph,’ she says, then there’s a rattling of the keyboard. ‘How is it now?’

Suddenly the sand is warmer. ‘Not too warm?’ she asks, and I shake my head, stunned into silence.

‘What the …?’ I look over to Ramzy and his face is contorted in pure terror. ‘Georgie! Behind you!’

I swing round and I scream. About five metres away, a scorpion the size of a coffee table is raising its huge pincers at me, its quivering tail arched over its back, and it’s advancing towards me.

I have only ever seen scorpions in pictures and on TV. They’re not – I’m very glad to say – native to the north-east coast of England. But I know this much: they’re no bigger than your hand, and they’re usually poisonous.

This one reminds me of a huge, shiny black lobster, tinged with red, with an extra-long jointed tail that curves over its back. There’s a dark orange bulb at the end with a long spike. Its claws are like a crab’s and they snap together menacingly as the scorpion scuttles forward and then sideways on its eight jointed legs. I can see slight imperfections at the scorpion’s edges: a bit of blurring in the movement, like when the barman waved at me before.

Unfortunately, knowing that it’s a virtual-reality scorpion doesn’t make it much less scary.

‘Dr Pretorius!’ I shout. ‘Ramzy!’

Ramzy is frozen to the spot in fear, and all I hear in my ear is Dr Pretorius muttering, ‘Oh, for cryin’ out loud: not him again.’

The creature takes two scuttling steps towards me and I aim a desperate kick at it. To my astonishment, my foot connects with its claw. I feel my foot kick it – but still it comes forward. Without thinking, I run up the beach, away from the scorpion, which has raised itself up on its legs. It doesn’t appear to have eyes: instead, there are raised mounds on top of its head like glistening black half-footballs, but still – they seem to be looking right at me.

I notice a strange sensation as I run: it’s not exactly like running on sand. More like running on a bed of tiny metal balls, which shift beneath my feet, although right now I’m more interested in putting distance between me and a massive black scorpion.

‘Dr Pretorius! What is that thing?’ I yell. Ramzy has picked up the deckchair and throws it. His aim is good, but the chair passes straight through the scorpion, as though it is a ghost.

‘Tsk. Don’t worry,’ says Dr Pretorius through my earpiece, sounding more frustrated than anxious. Then she says, ‘Why, you little …’ but I think she’s talking to the scorpion.

Together, Ramzy and I retreat further up the beach, but still the scorpion comes at us, scampering through the sand two or three little steps at a time.

Then, without warning, it opens its pincers, rises up on its jointed, hairy legs and starts to sprint towards me. I turn to run and stumble forward, landing with my face in the sand at the exact moment that the band above my eyes goes dark.

Everything is silent.

When the pin lights come on again in the Dome a few seconds later, I’m still in the centre of the studio, panting. Ramzy is kneeling next to the upturned deckchair on the black floor where the scorpion was. Dr Pretorius comes out of the computer-control room and walks towards us through the floor of tiny steel beads, beaming with delight as I blink and pant.

‘Welcome to MSVR – multi-sensory virtual reality, kiddos! And congratulations on being the first people in the world to experience it.’ She clasps her long hands together and shakes her head, her halo of white hair quivering. ‘Nearly there,’ she says. ‘Nearly there!’

I’m still breathless after my encounter with the huge scorpion. Dr Pretorius notices and adds, ‘Aw, hey, honey. Sorry about Buster! He’s kind of a bug in the system. I must do somethin’ about that. He wouldn’t have hurt ya.’ Then she adds, ‘I don’t think, anyhow, ha!’

Ramzy and I sit on the long desk in the control room while Dr Pretorius bashes violently at the multicoloured keyboard like she’s playing whack-a-mole. In front of us we each have a can of supermarket cola and biscuits from a packet. If Ramzy is disappointed – I had promised him home-made scones – he doesn’t show it as he crams another two biscuits in his mouth. At our feet, Mr Mash snuffles around for dropped crumbs.

Dr Pretorius doesn’t look at us while she speaks.

‘You – bash-bash-tap – just sit there – tap-tap-BASH – and I’ll be with you in a minute – tappity-tappity-BASH-BASH – darn you! No – not you. Ah, the heck with it: I’ll sort it out later.’ She whacks the keyboard one last time and turns to us in her swivel chair. ‘It’s that darned scorpion. He’s gettin’ ahead of himself. He shouldn’t even be there.’

Ramzy and I nod as though we understand everything she’s saying.

There’s a slightly awkward pause before Dr Pretorius says, ‘So how was the Disney World Surround-a-Room?’ She practically spits the words and turns back to her keyboard as if the answer doesn’t matter, although it obviously does.

‘It was awesome,’ I begin, and then decide to backtrack. ‘I mean, awesome is probably overstating it. It was good. Very good. Pretty good. I mean, there are probably better ones. That is …’ I’m gabbling and I’m not even sure why.

Ramzy rescues me. ‘Do you know Surround-a-Room?’ he asks Dr Pretorius, more conversationally.

‘Know it? A little.’ She’s pretending she doesn’t care.

Ramzy and I exchange looks. For some reason, I think she knows it more than a little, but I don’t know why.

‘I just wrote some of the code, that’s all,’ she says. ‘The program that created it? The visuals, the audibles … that sorta thing. The massive goggles you had to wear. The rainforest Surround-a-Room is … well, it was like a child to me. A child that never grew up.’

Dr Pretorius gets to her feet suddenly and her voice is louder, the words tumbling out. ‘Remember the sand you touched? Remember how you could feel it – even though there was nothing there?’ I nod. ‘And the scorpion – when you kicked it, your foot connected, yeah? You felt it. But when you –’ she points at Ramzy, who jumps – ‘threw the deckchair at Buster, and it went straight through him? Did you wonder about that?’

‘Yes?’ we both say, slowly. I mean, I did wonder about it, but it was just one bit of a load of wondering I’ve been doing in the last ten minutes.

Dr Pretorius picks up the bicycle helmet that I was wearing and turns it upside down. The inside surface is dotted with tiny metal bumps.

‘Everything we see and hear and touch is processed in the brain. Without our brain, there’s nothing. Are you with me?’

Ramzy and I glance at each other, unsure where this is going, but Dr Pretorius isn’t even looking.

‘But your brain can be tricked. Optical illusions, magic tricks, déjà vu – they’re all tricks of the mind. We’ve been doing it since we lived in caves. And now this!’

She holds the helmet aloft like a trophy, glaring at us.

‘This, my friends, is the greatest illusion of them all. Or will be. The projector here –’ she runs her finger round the curved metal band that sat above my forehead – ‘deceives your eyes into seeing whatever scene is programmed. No more heavy goggles! But it is these that make the big difference. These nodes here, and here, and here …’ She’s pointing out the little metal bumps on the inside of the helmet that connected with my skull. ‘They send signals to the parietal lobe, and …’

‘Wait,’ says Ramzy. ‘To the what?’ I’m glad Ramzy’s here. For once, his habit of questioning everything is not an annoyance.

Dr Pretorius looks unhappy to be interrupted, but then she says, ‘It’s OK. It’s taken me a lifetime of study to understand this. The parietal lobe is the part of your brain that deals with touch and sound, and the other senses. With careful programming, the computer here can deliver signals to these nodes that will in turn send little electrical impulses to your parietal lobe and trick your brain into feeling, say, heat from a virtual sun. That’s actually an easy one. Sand is much trickier: to actually feel very fine grains running through your hands? That’s quite an illusion. I’m rather proud of it. Another cookie?’

I give her a blank look. I’m still trying to process this, and biscuits are not going to help. Ramzy, on the other hand, clearly thinks that they will help, and takes two more.

‘So, when I kicked the … that scorpion thing, it was what – a trick of the mind?’

‘Exactly! Just like the sand. The program tricked your brain into believing the scorpion was solid, and your foot felt it, just like your hands felt the sand – even though neither was there.’

‘And when I threw the deckchair –’ says Ramzy, spitting crumbs – ‘obviously, the chair just went straight through it.’

Dr Pretorius winks. ‘Smart kid. Though that’s something I’m working on.’ Then suddenly she claps her hands and gets to her feet. ‘Enough for today! There’s a lot more I have to do before it’s complete.’

‘You mean it’s not finished?’ queries Ramzy, taking the last biscuit as he hops down from the desk.

She says no more. Ramzy and I are silent as we follow Dr Pretorius out of the studio with Mr Mash and down the metal stairs to the empty loading bay. Instead of going to the door we came in, though, she doubles back and unlocks another door with a large, old-fashioned metal key.

‘Short cut,’ she says.

The door opens into the interior of the Spanish City arcade. There’s a noisy room full of slot machines and kiddie rides, the Gelato Parlour (which is just ice cream if you ask me), the expensive fish-and-chip shop and the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms. It feels like we’ve come through a secret entrance, although it was just a locked door.

The main arcade is a few metres in front of us, and we push through the crowd, but then I have to stop. Sass Hennessey’s mum has just served a plate of chips to a table outside the cafe when she catches my eye.

‘Hi, Georgie!’ she says as if Sass and I are best friends. Ramzy grins at her, even though he doesn’t know her, I don’t think. ‘Nice to see you, pet. And, er …’ She looks at Dr Pretorius curiously, probably wondering who she is.

I mumble, ‘Hi.’

‘How’s St Woof’s, Georgie? Saskia’s told me all about it,’ says Sass’s mum, gathering glasses from a table. I’m already hurrying towards the entrance and don’t answer. There is something in the way she looked at Dr Pretorius that has unnerved me.

I could be wrong. Maybe she does know who she is. Maybe Dr Pretorius is a regular in here. What do I know?

Dr Pretorius leads us out on to the busy street. ‘Come back same time tomorrow. And don’t forget: this is our secret! You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’ She turns and goes back the way we came, and Ramzy and I watch her white hair bobbing above the crowds.

‘Well. That was pretty adventurous, wouldn’t you say, Georgie? Hey – Earth to Georgie!’

I’m miles away, staring up at the blacked-out upper windows of the Spanish City dome.

‘What can she mean, Ramzy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet …’

‘Dunno. We’ll probably get to test out some weapons or something: the Battle of the Giant Scorpions! Or …’

‘No. I don’t think so. This isn’t about games. This is about something else.’

Ramzy gives me a quizzical squint. ‘You don’t trust her?’ he says.

I think about this.

Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs.

Dr Pretorius was OK with Mr Mash. She definitely didn’t dislike him. She even tolerated his smelliness. (He dropped what Dad calls ‘a proper beefy eggo’ in the control room and she pretended not to notice. That was nice of her.)

On the other hand, we only met her this morning, and she’s already sworn us both to secrecy.

‘I don’t know,’ I say to Ramzy, eventually. ‘But there’s something going on.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘let’s find out. Same time tomorrow. It’ll be an adventure.’

I smile at him. ‘OK.’

So that’s that. We’re trusting her, for now.

And mad scientists have to be mad for a reason. Right?

For the next few weeks, our afternoons after school with Dr Pretorius settle into something of a routine. She never calls us on our phones, and we have no way of contacting her other than thumping on the door with the wolf’s-head knocker at a prearranged time and day. It is all very ‘old-school’ as Ramzy says, clearly thrilled.

Once inside, we sometimes test a new MSVR environment. Other times, though, we just hang out in the control room, watching, mesmerised, as she programs her computer to create new worlds for us to explore.

Once I had a headache afterwards, but it didn’t last long. Ramzy too. Dr Pretorius didn’t seem overly concerned, and gave us each a paracetamol.

(It turns out that it’s definitely a copter-drone under the blue tarpaulin, by the way. One day it was uncovered and lying flat: a bucket seat in the middle of ten spokes, each with rotor blades attached. It’s obviously home-made: there are exposed wires, and lumpy welding, and one bit beneath the seat is made from the bent lid of a McVitie’s biscuit tin. Dr Pretorius saw me staring and said, ‘Yup. That’s my next project. Solar-powered too: unlimited range.’)

And all the time we’re there, in the Dome, Dr Pretorius keeps telling us that we ‘ain’t seen nothin’ yet’. That there’s going to be a Big Experiment, although she won’t say what it is. She does check that we are keeping it all secret, though, by saying things like:

‘No one knows, huh? You two – my co-conspirators!’

‘We’re the only three people who know about this – what a gas that is!’

And if this all sounds a bit sinister written down, it doesn’t feel like it. As Ramzy says – so often that it’s now a bit annoying, to be honest – it feels like a huge adventure.

As for visiting Dr Pretorius, that requires deception, which I’m not keen on – but, as it turns out, I don’t actually have to lie:

1 I’ve got St Woof’s, plus, I’m a library monitor so I’m often late back from school.

2 Jessica is at work all the time these days, and hasn’t ever taken much notice of what I’m up to at school.

3 Clem has been doing his exams and only emerges from the Teen Cave to dump his teacups in the sink, so he never even asks.

4 And Dad? Dad’s just happy if I’m happy. Which I am, so, you know – yay!

Ramzy has it tougher. It’s not his dad: he drives a truck and is away on long deliveries most of the time. It’s his scary Aunty Nush, who I’ve only met once. She looks after Ramzy and his two little brothers and speaks hardly any English. She’s super strict. Ramzy has to lie a lot. It’s usually about doing extra study at school.

‘Ramzy, you’re only ten. There is no “extra study” at school.’

We’re walking to the corner shop after school, Ramzy’s school shorts flapping in the breeze. He looks a little ashamed. ‘I know, but she’s not going to phone the school to check, is she? She can hardly get past hello as it is. Anyway – you’re my study buddy. Just so you know.’

‘Thanks a lot! So now I’m a part of your lies?’

‘I haven’t got a choice, Georgie! My aunty’s a nightmare. She used to make me carry an electronic tracker till it sort of accidentally broke. She’d install one on my phone if it wasn’t such an antique.’ He holds up his ancient pay-as-you-go phone, which looks like it comes from the nineties.

We’ve reached the shop where the owner, Norman Two-kids, is sweeping the pavement outside. He glares at us and follows us in. (He glares at everyone, not just us. And Norman Two-kids is not his real name. Everyone just calls him that, thanks to his rule that no more than two schoolchildren can enter his shop at any time in case they steal all the sweets or something. He’s always shouting, ‘Nor-man two kids at once!’ in a high-pitched voice with a strong accent that we can’t place.)

Ramzy buys a top-up for his phone, which he pays for with a bag of loose coins, making Norman mutter under his breath with annoyance.

I always end up feeling a bit sorry for Ramzy. It’s his big puppy eyes, I guess, and his teeth, and his ears, and … well. I find myself taking off my library monitor badge and handing it to him. ‘Here. You can say you’re on the Library Committee as well. That should be good for a few late-homes.’

He grins his rabbit-tooth smile. ‘Thanks, study buddy!’

‘Just don’t let Mr Springham see you wearing it.’

He pins the badge on to his faded school shirt. ‘Let’s not forget,’ he says, ‘that Dr Pretorius is old and she’s lonely! We’re doing a service for the community!’ and that removes any remaining guilt I might have had at my slight deception.

We head to the Spanish City, as we always do.

We go to the Dome, as we always do, and Dr Pretorius sits at the computer, as she always does.

We play a game in the virtual-reality environment, as we always do.

But then, when we take off the helmets, Dr Pretorius says something she doesn’t always say.

‘I guess you want to know what this is all about, huh?’

We stare at her. Of course we do. But neither of us can think what to ask.

She gives a final, decisive whack on her keyboard to begin a rendering of a huge Roman arena, with gladiators and chariots, then she swings her chair round and looks at us hard.

There’s a silence while we wait for her to speak, and I study her old, lined face. Her sky-blue eyes are as sharp and captivating as ever, but her skin seems paler, duller, and I immediately understand when she coughs violently and says, ‘I may not have long left, kiddos. I’m engaged in a battle against time, and there’s stuff I need to complete before I … before I leave you.’

Ramzy frowns. ‘Aww. Are you moving?’ I roll my eyes at him. Even I knew what she meant, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

Instead, she barks, ‘Moving? Ha! Do I have to spell it out, kid? I’m dyin’. A fatal heart condition that the finest physicians in the land are powerless to combat. And before I check out I need to know that my life hasn’t been wasted, you know?’

Ramzy just goes, ‘Oh,’ and looks at his scuffed shoes.

‘Yep. Oh, indeed. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’

There it is: that phrase again. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. What on earth could it be that is so big and important?

‘I tell ya, kids, it’s going to be extraordinary. You’ll be the first to experience it.’

I think she wants us to go ‘Wow!’ or something, or even just say thank you, so I do.

‘Wow,’ I say but I don’t think I’m very convincing. The silence afterwards is a bit awkward, so I fill it by saying the one thing that I have been wondering.

‘Why us?’

She grins her wolfish grin. ‘You wanna know? You wanna know the whole truth?’

When someone asks you that, there’s only one answer you can give, even though the outcome might be uncomfortable. I shrug one shoulder and say, ‘I guess?’

She turns back to her keyboard and taps it a few times till a series of still photos appear. They’re satellite pictures of the street outside – Marine Drive – which leads to our school. A few more clicks show pictures of Ramzy and me, taken from a distance, but pretty sharp. The pictures scroll down, one after the other: Ramzy in his thick, too-big coat in the winter, the two of us riding FreeBikes one day, me in my red, white and blue costume for the school’s International Flags day … And so on.

Ramzy speaks up, a touch of indignation in his voice, ‘You … you were spying on us?’ I have to say, it’s all a bit creepy.

‘Aah, relax, kid! Look: what do you notice about these pictures?’

We peer at them, but I can’t think of anything (apart, obviously, from how strange it is to be photographed without knowing it). Eventually, Dr Pretorius says, ‘Look, guys – you’re the only two on your own! Every other kid is with a parent, or childminder, or whatever. Well, those that don’t get a car or a taxi home.’

It’s true, of course. Ramzy and I are pretty much the only kids who walk home alone.

‘That told me something. And then when you started to quiz my builder that day? I figured, Hmm – curious kids. You see – you kids are all so darn protected these days. You don’t play out in the street, you get taken everywhere – everybody except for you. I’d see you on the beach with those dogs, and walking home on your own. And well … it turned out you were just what I needed. Also – you don’t wear glasses. Multi-sensory virtual reality requires near-perfect vision.’

‘So … that day on the beach, when we met?’ says Ramzy, suspiciously.

‘All kinda engineered. Well, apart from your dog eating my swim cap. That was a piece of luck.’

‘Your watch?’ I say.

‘Already scratched.’

‘Your wrist?’

She averts her eyes and even looks a bit embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’ She glances up and sees our shocked expressions. ‘Hey – don’t bail on me now. We’re so close.’

‘So close to what?’ I say. I can’t keep the impatience from my voice. Dr Pretorius narrows her eyes.

‘You’ll see. Trust me, kid. You’ll see. It’s nearly time for the Big Experiment.’

‘Today?’ says Ramzy, who’s still buzzing after shooting down an attack helicopter containing scary-looking aliens.

Dr Pretorius doesn’t answer directly. She just says, ‘Gimme a week, kiddos. One week. I’ll take you somewhere no one has ever been before.’ She unlocks the door that leads through to the Spanish City arcade and the tea rooms. I do a quick check for Sass Hennessey’s mum and am relieved that she isn’t there. She has seen me a few times, I’m pretty sure – and although she hasn’t said anything I still worry that she might.

Although, as it turns out, there are bigger things to worry about.

Because this is the week that everything goes wrong.

It is the week everybody learns about the plague.

First, though, I need to explain about St Woof’s.

The old parish church of St Wulfran and All Saints – known to everyone as St Woof’s – is a smallish church not far from the seafront, and old, with a short, fat steeple. Except it’s not a church any more – at least not one with a congregation, and a choir, and weddings and stuff. Now it’s just a building in the shape of a church. It’s got heavy wooden doors and, together with the thick sandstone walls, they do a good job of holding in the noise made by twenty-five dogs.

It is also my most favourite place in the whole world.

I first took Ramzy to St Woof’s at the start of last term. I wanted him to know what I’d been talking about (or, as he put it, ‘boring everyone senseless with’ – thanks, Ramz).

The first thing a newcomer notices about St Woof’s is the noise: the howling, the barking, the yapping and the snuffling. I love the noise almost as much as I love the second thing you notice – the smell. I was horrified to see that Ramzy had clapped a hand over his nose.

‘Oh, by goodness,’ he said through his pinched nose. ‘It stigs!’

‘You get used to it.’ I hardly even notice it any more, to be honest. Dogs do smell a bit, but they usually smell nice: sort of warm and woody. And – fun fact – their paws smell of popcorn. Honestly!

(I know their breath can be a bit fishy and I’m happy to admit that their poo really is foul, but then – sorry to say this – whose isn’t?)

Anyway, it was a Saturday morning, just before we start the weekly clean, when I turned up with Ramzy and that’s when St Woof’s smells the strongest.

‘Good morning, Georgie!’ said the vicar. I like the vicar: he’s quite old, probably seventy. He’s sort of lean with shaggy grey hair like an Irish wolfhound. That day he was wearing a huge, hand-knitted jumper and fingerless gloves. He sat at the long table just inside the door. ‘And who do we have here, perchance?’ he said when he saw Ramzy. He talks like that. You get used to it.

Without waiting for me to answer, Ramzy clicked his heels together and saluted. ‘Ramzy Rahman, at your service, sah!’

The vicar was a little taken aback, but then lots of people are when they first meet Ramzy. After a few seconds, though, he returned the salute and smiled.

‘Welcome aboard, Private Rahman! I suppose you’ve come to help, ah … Sergeant Santos?’ He removed his glasses and reached under his baggy sweater to extract an untucked shirt tail to polish them on. Ramzy nodded, enthusiastically.

‘Top-notch! Tickety-boo! Many hands make light work, eh?’ He replaced his glasses and peered at a worksheet on his desk. ‘You are on your usual station, Georgie. Clean first, brush afterwards, and remember …’ He held up a finger, his eyes looking humorous for a moment. We said it together:

‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord!’

‘Jolly good, Georgie. Off you go!’

Ramzy’s face was contorted in puzzlement as we walked away. ‘What the heck was that?’ he said, easily loud enough for the vicar to hear.

‘Shhh! No idea. It’s old Bible stuff. The vicar likes it. It’s kinda fun, and he …’

‘Wait. He’s a vicar?’

‘Used to be. He doesn’t wear the gear. Grab that bucket there. This was his church. Then I guess no one came any more so they turned it into St Woof’s and allowed him to stay on.’

Most of the old wooden church seats have gone. Instead, in the centre of the church is an indoor exercise pen covered in sawdust. Around the sides are all of the kennels. It’s pretty awesome.

My station, the vicar had said. I love that. It’s like the four dogs in the adjacent pens on the first level actually belong to me. My name goes on the board like this:

Station 4

Saturday volunteer: Georgina Santos

and I feel a little surge of pride even though it’s just handwritten on a whiteboard.

The dogs on Station 4 are some of the longest residents at St Woof’s, who have a promise that they will never, ever ‘put a dog to sleep’.

That’s what some other dog shelters do. If they can’t rehome a dog, or find its original owner, then after a few months the vet comes and …

Do you know what? Even thinking about it upsets me. That’s why I love St Woof’s. They will try to rehome dogs but, if they can’t, well … they become long-term residents.

With Ramzy following me, I gave him a tour and I just couldn’t help sounding a little important as I pointed out the cages, and the care sheets hanging outside each one. It’s quite old-fashioned: things are written down by hand on the sheets, like fresh-water top-up (tick, with a pencil on a string); daily brushing (tick); stool check (tick) … and so on.

And as for the dogs themselves …

1. Ben. Jack Russell crossed with something else, possibly spaniel. Black, white and brown. Age – about six. Quite snarly with new people, which is why he hasn’t found a home yet.

Ben bared his teeth at Ramzy, who backed off.

‘It’s OK,’ I reassured him. ‘His bark really is worse than his bite.’

‘He bites as well?’

‘No! Not usually. He gave me a little nip once, but I think he was playing.’

Ramzy didn’t seem reassured, and kept his distance while I topped up Ben’s water, picked up a poo with a poo-picker and put it in the bucket that Ramzy was holding at arm’s length.

2. Sally-Ann. Sally-Ann’s a ‘paying guest’ because her owner, Mrs Abercrombie, is very old and is often in a care home. She’s brown and white, very hairy and always has a haughty look on her flat face. (The dog, that is, not Mrs Abercrombie, although come to think of it they are quite alike.) Sally-Ann is a pure-bred Lhasa apso.

3. Dudley. A brown Staffie/bulldog cross who looks terrifying because half of one ear is missing, plus some teeth, one eye and a patch of hair on his side. We think he was in a fight and he’s now very timid.

He shrank away from Ramzy, trembling. He’s OK with me, though, and I felt a little smug when he let me pat him.

And finally my favourite:

4. Mr Mash. You’ve already met him, but that day he was especially friendly, wagging his tail and rolling on to his back for a tummy rub. I think Ramzy fell for him too.

The other people at St Woof’s are also nice. They’re all older than me, but they don’t treat me like a kid. Well, apart from Saskia Hennessey who is older than me – by a whole eight months – and treats me like I’m about five, even though she only walks the dogs and certainly doesn’t have her own station.

I happen to know (from Ellie McDonald at school) that Sass’s mum pays her to be a volunteer dog-walker, which if you ask me is totally weird. It’s not volunteering if you get paid for it. On top of that, I don’t even think Sass likes dogs all that much.

That day she was standing by the poop chute in the old vestry when Ramzy and I came in with the bucket and I felt my good mood deflate just a little.

The poop chute is a wide, square tunnel that leads to a big pit outside, where all the dog poo goes. You lift off the lid of the hatch and tip the poo down it, and then add a cupful of activator, which breaks down the poo into compost, which the vicar then spreads on his allotment. (I’ve only just found this out. We’ve been eating his home-grown stuff for years. Eww.)

You can imagine: twenty-five dogs produce a lot of poo, and doing the poop chute is the only bit of St Woof’s that I don’t really like, although, because of Ramzy, I was trying not to show it.

Sass is a big girl, who’s in our year at school, but looks about fifteen. She’s already got boobs and hips, plus a double chin and a round belly to go with them. She’s really strong and can lift up the twins, Roddy and Robyn Lee, one under each arm.

My stomach fluttered when I saw her because, although she’s not exactly a bully (Marine Drive Primary has a zero-tolerance approach to bullying), she still manages to be scary.

‘Wow – look who it isn’t!’ she said, fixing her small eyes on Ramzy. ‘You two make a happy couple walking up the aisle together!’

I gave her a tight smile, pretending to find her comment funny, but didn’t say anything, which I find is usually the best approach. Sass crossed her arms and tilted her chin towards Ramzy. ‘Is that your school shirt you’re wearing? At the weekend? You are allowed to change, you know.’

I hadn’t noticed till then, but Ramzy was indeed wearing his blue school polo shirt under his too-big jacket. Ramzy shrugged and murmured, ‘It’s clean. And I like it.’

She’s quite intimidating and, as I lifted the lid of the poop chute, Sass took a step forward and said, ‘Careful you don’t fall in.’

It made me flinch, as though she was going to push me. I kept quiet as I tipped the contents of the bucket down the hatch. Ramzy, though, never keeps quiet.

‘At least she’d fit,’ he murmured. Ramzy, I thought. That’s not necessary.

‘What was that? Are you making fun of—’ She was cut off mid-sentence by the vicar, who came in, rubbing his hands.

‘Ah! Good work, good work! The hands that removeth the dog poo are blessed in the eyes of the Lord.’

‘Is that the Bible?’ asked Ramzy.

‘No, no – that’s just one of mine,’ said the vicar.

As Ramzy and I left, Sass scowled at us.

That’s the thing with her. You know that expression, ‘If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing’? Well, Sass seems to have got it the wrong way round: ‘If you can’t say anything mean, say nothing.’

It was a mean comment by Sass Hennessey that, six months later, nearly caused the end of the world. And if you think I’m exaggerating then let me explain.

You see, up until recently, all of the dogs in St Woof’s were healthy. And now … well, now they’re not.

And it is all down to me.

It has become a big thing in the last year or two: Disease Transmission Risk. At school it’s DTR this, DTR that, and the only good thing about it is that you only need to cough in class to get sent home.

Last year, every classroom at Marine Drive Primary had a hand sanitiser installed by the door. I think it was a new law.

So one of my jobs when I’m at St Woof’s is the maintenance of the sani-mats and hand-sans in the quarantine area. The sani-mats are wet, spongy mats that clean the bottom of your shoes when you go in and out of the quarantine area, which is where dogs go when they’re sick.

Anyway, it all happened a few days after our first visit to Dr Pretorius and the Dome.

I had topped up the disinfectant in the sani-mats first, then I went into the quarantine section to see Dudley, who had a tummy bug. It wasn’t his first time there, either, so I wasn’t especially worried. If you remember, he’d been gnawing on a dead seagull at the beach, and I thought that might have been the cause.

He was behind a fence of wire mesh that comes up to my chin. There were wellies and rubber gloves by the entrance gate, which I put on before I went in. He wagged his bent tail weakly.

‘Hello, you funny old thing!’ I said. ‘Are you feeling better?’ Normally, I’d let Dudley lick my face, but we’re not allowed to do that with the quarantined dogs, so instead I gave him a good old tickle on his tummy. It wasn’t quite the same with rubber gloves, but he didn’t seem to mind.

A family had been in to see him a few days before, perhaps to adopt him, but I think he was just too odd-looking.

‘The little girl thought he was cute,’ said the vicar, ‘and she said something to her mum in Chinese. Then they all had a long conversation which I didn’t understand – except the dad was pointing to Dudley’s eye, and his teeth and his ear, and then they left.’

Poor, ugly Dudley! I thought of the little Chinese girl falling in love with him and then her dad saying he was too strange-looking.

Secretly, though, I was very relieved. I know it’s better for a dog to be with a family rather than in St Woof’s, but I couldn’t bear it if Dudley was adopted.

I looked at him carefully. He didn’t seem very well, poor doggie. He hadn’t eaten much of his food, but he had drunk his water and done a poo in the sand tray, which I washed out and sanitised, and I did everything right, exactly according to the rules. Then I threw his soggy tennis ball for him a little, but it didn’t excite him very much and anyway I bounced it too hard so that it went over the fence and rolled away and we had to stop.

I was coming out of the quarantine area, I’d done the sani-mats and I was about to do the hand-sans (which were empty) and who was standing there but Sass Hennessey. She did this little hair flick and stood with one hand on her round hip.

‘Hiiiii!’ she said but there was zero warmth in her eyes.

‘Hello, Saskia,’ I said.

‘I was just saying to Maurice that he’s got the place looking really smart now,’ she said.

Maurice? Maurice? Nobody calls the vicar Maurice, apart from my dad who’s known him for years. Everyone else calls him vicar or Reverend Cleghorn. It was so typical of Sass to call him by his first name, though. I was annoyed already, and what came next was worse.

‘That ugly old mutt in there,’ she said with her head on one side, all fake sorrow. ‘It really would be kinder just to put him down, don’t you reckon?’

That was it: the mean comment I mentioned before. It took me a few seconds to realise she was talking about Dudley. Dudley – my second-favourite dog in the whole of St Woof’s! I could feel my jaw working up and down, without any sound coming out.

‘Are you OK, Georgie?’

‘Yes, I’m fine, Sass.’ But I wasn’t. I was furious. In silence, I refilled the hand-sans, removed my gloves and put some of the gel on my hands, rubbing it in angrily while she just stood there. Then I took off the wellies.

‘Look, I didn’t mean …’

‘You know we don’t do that here. So why did you even say it?’ I was furious.

‘But if he’s very ill and old …’

I snapped, loudly: ‘He’s not that ill and he’s not that old. All right?’

I could tell Sass was a bit taken aback. She said quietly, ‘Ooo-kaaay,’ and I thought for once I might have got the better of her.

She bent down and gingerly picked up Dudley’s spit-soaked ball that had rolled towards the door. She handed it to me and I was forced to say ‘Thanks’. It was an odd sort of peace offering.

I turned the ball over in my hands as I watched her walk away, and then tossed it back to Dudley, shutting the quarantine door behind me.

I was still cross when I got back to my station. Ramzy was waiting for me, and he was holding Ben, the snarly Jack Russell, who was trying to lick his face.

‘Look!’ he laughed, dead proud. ‘I’ve made a friend!’

‘So you have,’ I said. ‘Good boy, Ben,’ and I let him nuzzle my hand. Then I went round the rest of the dogs in the station, giving them a final stroke before I left.

‘Bye, vicar!’ I said, pulling on the big door.

‘Goodbye, Sergeant Santos and Private Rahman!’ said the vicar, giving another salute. ‘Jolly good work!’

So that was it. Damage done. I had started the End of the World.

Obviously, I didn’t know it at the time. I’ve kept the secret till now: how I handled the tennis ball that was infected with Dudley’s germs, germs that he had picked up from the little girl who had wanted to adopt him. I then passed on the infection to poor Ben by letting him lick my germy hands, and then to the other dogs …

Turns out that all the DTR lessons in the word can’t stop someone being stupid.

Or – for that matter – being so furious at Sass’s mean comment that my mind was all over the place. Which amounts to pretty much the same as being stupid.

‘Give me a week,’ Dr Pretorius had said. It was seldom out of my thoughts. Another week of secret-keeping.

Secrets are easy to keep so long as no one finds out.

So long as no one sees you. Someone who knows your brother, say. Someone who has just started working at the Spanish City and notices you coming out of the door at the back of the arcade.

Sass Hennessey’s sister, Anna, for example, who is in the same school year as my brother Clem and whose mum had got her a Saturday job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms.

Give me a week, give me a week. It was going around in my head, like some annoying song that gets stuck, as I was walking back from the Spanish City, up our lane, swinging my school bag. I was surprised to see Clem come out of Dad’s workshop, wiping his oily hands on a towel.

We live in a farmhouse, although it’s not a proper working farm any more. Nearly all of the other farms around us have been sold for development. You can stand by Mum’s tree in the top field with the cows, and see houses and cranes and half-built flats in every direction apart from to the east, where the sea glints silver in the distance. (The cows are not ours, though I wish they were.)

Down the lane from our farmhouse is Dad’s workshop where he restores old cars, and a barn with bits of engines, exhausts, and car doors and stuff.

It looked like Clem had been expecting me.

‘Hi, Pie-face,’ he said. He was cheery. He used his nickname for me for the first time in ages. This made me suspicious but I smiled.

‘Been anywhere exciting?’ he asked.

The truth? I had been a participant in a medieval jousting tournament, charging towards Ramzy on a virtual horse (made from an old piano stool and the saddle I had seen on the first day in the loading bay).

‘St Woof’s,’ I lied. I hated lying, even to Clem. I could feel my cheeks going red.

‘And how is he?’

‘Who?’

‘That dog. Ben?’

‘Oh, fine! We went on the beach. The usual. He’s great.’ Clem was watching me, carefully, and I didn’t like it.

He paused for what seemed like forever before saying, ‘Instant recovery then?’

I gave Clem my ‘puzzled but innocent’ look: half-smile, blinking.

Clem said, ‘The vicar called me. He’s been trying to ring you but your phone’s been off.’

That was true: we always switched our phones off in Dr Pretorius’s studio – something to do with electromagnetism. I’d forgotten to switch mine back on.

‘Let’s keep this simple, shall we?’ Clem counted off on his blackened fingers as he said: ‘One: some dog called Ben is sick. He’s in quarantine. That’s the vicar’s message. Two: Anna Hennessey’s seen you at the Spanish City with your buddy Ramzy Whatsisname and some spooky old lady. Three: you’re lying to me, because you’re blushing. And four: I want to know why.’

‘Or what?’ You’ve got to remember: this is my brother. He’s supposed to be on my side.

‘Or I’m telling Dad.’

OK, so maybe he’s not on my side any more. Clem nodded, pushed his glasses up his nose with an oily hand and turned to go back into the workshop, expecting me to follow him.

Did I have a choice?

Up till recently, I’ve hardly seen Clem for weeks, it seems. He’s finished his exams so isn’t back at school till September. He was supposed to be going to Scotland with his friends, but it all fell through when one of them got a girlfriend. So he hasn’t got much to do before we all go to Spain later in the summer.

For the last couple of weeks, he has occupied himself by messaging people, listening to music, helping Dad in his workshop and growing a patchy beard. He now looks about twenty.

The thing is: I miss him. Something happened to Clem maybe a year ago. The brother I grew up with – the boy who played with me when I was tiny, who let me ride on his back for what seemed like hours, who lied for me when he didn’t have to when I left the tap on and the bath overflowed, who told me his screen login so I could watch stuff when Dad said I couldn’t, who once laughed so hard at my impression of Norman Two-kids at the corner shop that he fell off the bed and banged his head …

… that boy had moved out of our house.

In his place came a boy who looked exactly the same, but behaved differently. A boy who hardly smiled, let alone laughed. A boy who wanted to eat different food from us and, when Dad refused to cook separate meals, got shouty; a boy who could spend a whole weekend (I’m not joking) in his room, emerging only to go to the toilet; a boy whose response to pretty much everything was to roll his eyes as if it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Dad said it was ‘normal’.

But … there was one good thing about Clem changing, and it was this: I think I succeeded in persuading him not to tell Dad about Dr Pretorius, and it was all down to his beard. Sort of. Let me explain.

He was full of questions, and the main one was, ‘Why is she so secretive? If I’d invented something like that, I’d want everyone to know.’

‘I don’t know, really. She says she’s got something even better to show us soon, but right now I think she’s probably scared that someone will steal her idea.’

And then I added something that – not to sound boastful or anything – was utterly and completely brilliant, and I didn’t even plan it. I looked at the floor, all sorrowful, and said, ‘I know it was wrong, Clem. I really should have told a grown-up. But … I think you probably count as that now?’

Clem took off his spectacles and held them to the light to check for dirt and smears. It’s something he does a lot. ‘Perfect vision required, eh?’ he said, obviously flattered by me calling him an adult, and I nodded.

‘So she says. It’s why she can’t test it herself.’

‘She’ll need to sort that out if it’s to be commercial. Two-thirds of people wear specs, you know?’ He picked up a spanner from the bench and turned back to the rusty old campervan that he and Dad had been working on, which meant our conversation was over.

‘You won’t tell Dad?’

‘Not for now. But be careful.’ He actually sounded like a grown-up then.

Now I could worry about something else instead. The vicar had said Ben was sick. What was that all about?

Everything, as it turned out.

I couldn’t worry for long, though, because that evening was Mum’s memorial.

Mum: the mother I never knew.

‘Mum’s Memorial’ sounds like it’s some big event, but it’s just a little thing we do every year, mainly for Dad’s sake, I think.

Mum died when I was very little. We have lots of photos, and a film clip shot on Dad’s phone, so I know what she looked like. In the film, I’m lying on a playmat and I am giggling and trying to grab the toy that Dad is dangling above me.

There’s music playing in the background: a song called ‘You Two’ from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dad is singing along.

‘Someone to care for; to be there for.

I have you two!’

Mum’s there too: she’s pretty, with long hair in a ponytail, and a big smile. She’s laughing at Dad’s groany singing voice, and he’s laughing too. Then Clem comes in, and he looked so cute when he was five – especially his chubby knees – and joins in the song.

Which makes Mum giggle more, and the camera pans up to her face with this big smile and then the picture stops.

So I suppose it’s not really a memory, is it? It’s a video clip, shot on Dad’s phone. I’ve seen it hundreds and hundreds – maybe even thousands – of times.

‘Cow flu’ they called it: that’s what she died of. Eleven years ago, the virus was carried across the world on people’s shoes, in their fingernails, in their stomachs, in infected meat and foodstuffs, and milk. Thousands and thousands of people died, most of them in South America. Thousands more cattle had to be killed to stop it spreading. Millions of litres of milk were poured away while doctors and scientists worked around the clock to develop the vaccine: the special injection that would halt the spread of the disease.

They did discover it, of course. Eventually. But it was too late for Mum. She became one of twelve people in Britain to die of cow flu.

(It was also how Dad met Jessica. Every year Dad raises money for the new biobotics research unit to investigate diseases. It’s where Jessica works and, as Dad says, ‘One good thing leads to another …’)

So Mum’s ashes are buried beneath a cherry tree in the field where the cows usually are. I know that sounds a bit weird, burying someone near cows when they died of cow flu, but Dad insisted.

‘She was an animal lover, just like you, Georgie,’ he said once. ‘She wouldn’t blame the cows for cow flu.’

You can see Mum’s tree from our kitchen window, standing out against the sky, bent and buffeted by the winds off the sea, and fertilised by the cows beneath it. Sometimes I catch Dad sitting at the kitchen table, drinking his favourite super-strong coffee, and staring at the tree. It blossoms every spring: a beautiful cloud of white like a massive candyfloss, although there has never been any fruit. Dad says it’s too cold.

Every year on her birthday, we – Dad and Clem and I – gather by Mum’s tree. Only this year Dad’s girlfriend Jessica was with us. You can probably guess how I felt about that.

It was evening and the sun was lower and cooler.

‘She’s looking good,’ said Dad as the four of us processed up the field towards the tree. Dad always refers to the tree as ‘she’.

She’ll be losing her leaves in a week or so …

She’s done well to withstand that gale …

That sort of thing. I think it’s because he likes to imagine the tree as being Mum, but I’ve only just realised that. I mentioned it to Clem about a year ago, and he just rolled his eyes as if I’d just said that I’d discovered that honey was sweet.

The vicar from St Woof’s was already at the tree when our little group got there. He’d come over the back way.

We’re not exactly religious, but the vicar is an old friend of Dad’s from way back, in that way that adults can be friends even though they’re years apart in age. Dad was one of the last people to go to St Wulfran’s Church before it closed down.

That evening the vicar was wearing his vicar stuff – the black tunic with the white collar – under his zip-up jacket.

We gathered beneath the tree’s leafy branches, looking back down the hill towards the sea, and we did exactly what we do every year.

1 Dad reads a poem. It’s always the same one: Mum’s favourite, Dad says, by someone ancient called Alfred Tennyson. It starts like this:

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning at the bar,

When I set out to sea …

I don’t really understand it, even though Dad has explained it to me. It’s about dying, basically, which is sad, but Dad has a nice voice and I like hearing it.

2. The vicar says a prayer with old-fashioned words. I have heard this every year now, and can almost remember it all: Almighty God, we pray for Cassandra, and for all those whom we see no longer … Then my favourite bit: and let light perpetual shine upon them. I mouth along with the words when I can remember them.

3. Then Dad takes out his Irish penny whistle, and Clem his big old tenor recorder that he got as a prize in primary school. They both play an old hymn called ‘Amazing Grace’. Under any other circumstances it would sound awful: the high-pitched whistle, and Clem’s squeaky and inaccurate playing. But somehow, on that cool evening in summer, the tune is perfect, rising above Mum’s cherry tree and floating off into the wind and down to the ocean.

And all the while, Jessica has this face on like she’d rather be anywhere else.

While the vicar was saying the prayer, I cracked open my eyes a little, and saw her: eyes wide, gazing around everywhere, not praying at all. Then our gazes met for a second, and she just stared at me. I’m sorry to say it, but I hated her at that moment.

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