Nevertheless, Mum insists on us eating there when she’s home in time for dinner. So dinner usually involves eating with piled-up bills and junk mail on our laps. I wonder what Chiu thinks of us. Does he realize that we weren’t coping? Does he see how terribly precarious it had all become?

“What’s this?” he says, holding something up.

I glance at it. “It’s a pamphlet. From Mum’s church.”

“God’s Scholars?” Chiu squints at the ten or so pages of inkjet print that have been scrappily stapled together. Shame knots inside me. Father Michael’s pamphlets are all the same. They depict the tortures and humiliations that are going to befall the sinners in hell after the End Times, all done with just a little too much … relish. Inexpertly hand drawn and coloured in by Father Michael himself. It’s too easy to imagine him working on them late into the night, his mind filled with sadistic glee.

“Weird,” Chiu murmurs.

He starts to pocket the pamphlet, but I snatch it away and return it to the pile. As I slide it back into the stack of bills and junk mail, I stop.

I know what this is.

Mum’s note.

How could I have forgotten Mum’s note?

Scribbled on the back of a receipt in her blockish schoolgirl handwriting: “Early prayer meeting – see you for dinner. Exciting news!”

A cold wedge slides into my stomach.

This is it. This is what I came here for.

“What is it?” Chiu says.

“Just a note from Mum,” I say.

But my heart is hammering. Panic trembles beneath my skin and I know it’s the same awful panic I felt when I read the note for the first time on the morning of my seizure.

Why would this note scare me so much?

Mum goes out to prayer meetings three times a week. There’s nothing new there. I read it again: “Exciting news!”

That was new. Nothing exciting ever happened to Mum.

There’s something else as well. Something missing.

I sift through the envelopes and fliers. I remember searching through this pile in the ordinary world, sick with panic, but I don’t know what I was looking for.

When I found it… No, wait, that’s not right. When I didn’t find it, that was when I knew I had to go outside.

The memory is achingly close, I can almost touch it.

A shout from outside the backdoor interrupts my thoughts. “Kyle!”

I look at Chiu and we rush in the direction of Farah’s voice. We find her in the garage, sitting in Grandad’s old Nissan.

“Hey!” she says, seeming pleased with herself. “Can you drive?”

“No,” I say, flatly. “People with epilepsy don’t get to drive.”

“Can you?” Chiu asks Farah.

Farah grins. “I don’t know, I never tried.” She turns back to the wheel and bobs a little, playfully, like a kid pretending. “Do you have the keys?” she says.

“You’re not serious,” I say.

“Why not? It’s not like we’re going to hit anything.”

“It won’t work,” I say. “It’s been sitting in the garage ever since Grandad died. For one thing, the battery is probably flat and for another, there’s no electricity here.”

“There’s no mains electricity,” Chiu corrects me. “We never tried batteries.”

Reluctantly, I go back to the kitchen to get the keys. I don’t much like the idea of getting into a car while Farah learns to drive for the first time. But I do like the idea of being able to drive to London. If we drive we can be there by nightfall. We can go to the hospital and find Chiu’s machine and then… Well, who knows. But at least we won’t have to walk to London.

I find the keys on the hook next to the door. Their presence seems flimsy, almost not there, as if they might vanish if I take my eyes off them. I wonder what that means. That they’re not fully in this world perhaps? That Mum still thinks about them – about the car, about Grandad? Or that she sometimes picks them up by accident?

I have to concentrate and hold them in my mind like I’m pulling them from Mum’s thoughts. I reach forward … and have them.

Then I go back to the garage and hand them to Farah and she fumbles them into the ignition and turns the key. There’s a low, grinding dead-car sort of noise. We stare at each other.

“That sounded better than I expected it to,” Farah says.

“Something is happening,” Chiu agrees.

I can’t quite allow myself to believe this might actually work.

“Try again,” I say.

Farah turns the key and the engine makes another slower, lower whining noise.

“The starter’s turning, but the engine isn’t catching,” I say.

Chiu looks surprised. “Do you know about cars?”

I shake my head. “Grandad did. I used to hang out in the garage with him when I was little, but he never really taught me anything.”

There’s a hollow clunk as Farah pulls the catch under the steering wheel and pops the bonnet. She flashes me a winning smile. “That makes you our resident expert,” she says. “You better take a look, hadn’t you?”

I go round and lift up the bonnet with an air of resignation. I have vague notions of spark plugs and fuel pumps but my memories are hazy and date back to when Grandad was alive. I only know about starter motors because he once had to replace one and he let me play with the old one, connecting the battery and watching the pinion pop out and connect the electric motor.

I open the bonnet and my stomach instantly lurches in revulsion.

What’s inside is not an engine.

Its shape resembles that of an engine but it’s twisted, tortured and diabolical. I can see the engine block and a mass of thick pipes and wires curling around it. But the wires are in constant motion – reaching like vines, crushing and squeezing – while the engine block itself yields and folds and sinks like it’s being swallowed, reshaping itself painfully and becoming liquid at the same time. The wires multiply, reach and grasp like fingers. I can hear their dry, rubbery squeaking. Usurious, avaricious.

A moment later and my eyes saccade and the engine is restored, back to where it started. I watch this process two or three times, transfixed in horror as the engine is sickeningly devoured again and again before snapping back into place. Only the starter motor remains stable. The idea of a starter motor is the only fixed point.