Without the friendship we’d never have discovered the reason we were friends.

You can drive yourself mad going round in paradoxical circles like that.

Simon and Lilly had been going out with each other for a while now, and seeing as Simon is my best friend I seem to get pulled along with them a lot these days. It’s weird getting used to sharing a friend… and… well, Lilly and I weren’t getting on if the truth be told.

Danny lives next door to me and kind of just clings on to my coat-tails. Again, I don’t know exactly why. Simon and I make him the butt of a lot of jokes but he just shrugs it all off.

That day we were just trying to fill up the day while using as little energy as we could.

And then, of course, Danny told us that he had hypnotised his sister.

Simon stared at him, with a disbelieving look that summed up how the rest of us felt about Danny’s revelation.

‘You hypnotised Annette?’ he said, and the spare disbelief he hadn’t managed to put into his stare was crammed into the scathing way he said those three words. There was even a snort at the end of it.

Danny seemed to miss the incredulity and nodded.

‘I’ve been reading a lot of books on the subject,’ Danny said, ‘and I’ve been watching lots of Paul McKenna and Derren Brown on DVD. With the talent show coming up I thought I might ditch the magic act this year and do a bit of stage hypnotism. You know, make people bark like dogs, or eat an onion as if it’s an apple.’

Simon groaned.

Of all of the area’s customs and traditions, the Millgrove talent show is by far the oddest. Every summer since Queen Victoria was sitting on the British throne – with a two-year gap during the Second World War – the people of Millgrove have gathered on the green to compete in the competition. Even when local lads were dying in the trenches in the First World War, the tradition continued.