She always struck me as the kind of girl who’s going to be a star. Some people are just like that. You know that they will, as my grandad used to say, land butter-side-up.

There was no way that Danny – who, no matter how hard he tried, would always end up butter-side-down – could have done what he had told us he had.

Danny’s face was pale and thin, with dark semicircles under each eye, and his hair was a dirty brown colour, tousled on top. He was small for his age. Heck, it was my age too – and that’s fifteen and a half, thanks for asking – and I was almost a full head taller than him. And he seemed to exaggerate that smallness by hunching his shoulders and bending his back.

‘You should have seen it,’ he said, his eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘It actually worked. I mean, I knew it could work, but still, I didn’t really think it would.’

He ignored our disbelieving looks.

‘I got her to relax. And I guided her into a hypnotic state. I didn’t even need to say “sleep” like they do on the telly. As I relaxed her, her eyes closed and her body went… sort of floppy. I hadn’t even thought about what I’d get her to do when she was hypnotised, to be honest. So I told her that she was late for school – it was well past eight in the evening – and suddenly she flew into a panic, running around, throwing stuff into her school bag and complaining about the alarm clock not waking her up.’

He shook his head.

‘It was priceless,’ he said.

He waited for one of us to say something.

And waited.

There was me, Simon McCormack, Lilly Dartington and Danny. We all lived down the same road in the small village of Millgrove, and we’re all roughly the same age, so we tend to hang out together.