First published in Great Britain 2019

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2019 Jenny McLachlan

Illustrations copyright © 2019 Ben Mantle

The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

First e-book edition 2019

978 1 4052 9367 9

Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9368 6

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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For my girls, who have never

stopped believing in Roar

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

Back series promotional page

There is a wizard in Grandad’s attic.

I’m sitting in his garden looking up at the attic window, and I can clearly see a dark shape standing just behind the glass. I give my sister a nudge. ‘Look, Rose. You can see its pointy hat and everything!’

Rose swipes at the screen of her phone. ‘There isn’t a wizard in the attic, Arthur. Leave me alone. I’m busy.’

I glance over her shoulder and see that she’s busy liking someone’s picture of a puddle. When I look back at the window the strange shadow is still there. My eyes trace the outline of shoulders, a head and a slightly crooked hat, as I try to work out what it could be . . . A reflection of the trees? Some rubbish Grandad’s dumped up there?

Then I see something that makes goose bumps prickle my arms: a tiny white patch – like a puff of breath – is misting the glass. I squeeze my eyes shut and rub them. When I open them again the white patch has gone. I smile nervously. Mum’s always saying I’ve got an overactive imagination.

‘It’s probably the inflatable skeleton,’ I say, ‘the one Grandad got for Halloween, and the hat could be from the dressing-up box –’

‘Be quiet, Arthur,’ says Rose. ‘You’re annoying me.’

With a sigh I give up on Rose and wander around the garden. I peel some bark off a tree, kick a punctured football into a hedge, then hang from a branch. Tap, tap, tap goes Rose on her phone. I drop to the ground and look up at the attic window. ‘It’s still there,’ I say.

‘Arthur!’ Rose snaps. ‘Will you shut up about wizards? I’m not going to play with you!’

I groan and flop back down on the grass. Every summer Mum and Dad leave us with Grandad while they go camping. It used to be brilliant. Rose and I would spend the whole week doing whatever we liked – building dens, swimming in the sea, eating cereal three times a day – but since Rose got her phone she’s become totally boring.

‘Om-pom-pom . . .’ Grandad drifts out of his shed, his grey hair and beard standing out against his dark skin. He grins at me, then starts hacking at a bush with a pair of rusty secateurs.

‘Grandad, have you put a dummy or something up in the attic?’

He laughs. ‘Not me, mate.’

I turn back to Rose. She can’t stare at her phone all day. ‘How about we check out the attic, then go and catch crabs off the end of the pier?’

‘No.’

‘Play ping-pong?’

‘No.’

‘Go to the arcade and pretend to be pirates and see if we can find money that’s fallen out of the slot machines?’

She shakes her head in alarm. ‘No way!’

‘But you used to love doing that.’

‘You used to love doing that, Arthur. I went along with it.’

Suddenly Rose jumps to her feet and stuffs her phone in her pocket. Mazen Bailey, Grandad’s next-door neighbour, has appeared on the trampoline in her garden. Mazen Bailey is a horrible person, but Rose worships her because she’s thirteen, two years older than us, and has her own YouTube channel called Totally Mazen!

Rose scrambles on to the wheelie bin and leans over the wall. ‘Hi, Mazen!’

‘What have you done to your hair?’ shrieks Mazen, then she joins Rose at the wall and they begin a whispered conversation, every now and then glancing in my direction.

‘Arthur,’ says Rose, ‘what was it you saw in the attic?’

I hesitate. They’re smiling, waiting for me to say something stupid, so I say, ‘A shadow.’

‘Yeah, but what did the shadow look like ?’

‘A wizard,’ I mutter, making them burst out laughing. I feel my cheeks burn and I point at the window. ‘I’m not imagining it! Look!’

And they do look, but Rose shakes her head. ‘There’s nothing there, Arthur!’

‘There is . . .’ I protest, but then I realise she’s right. The window is just a blank empty square. ‘You’ve got to stand in the right spot,’ I say, moving from side to side. ‘Make sure the sun isn’t reflecting on the glass.’ But no matter what I do, I can’t make the shape come back.

With a final giggle Mazen says she’s got to go. ‘Come round later, Rose. You can try out my trampoline.’

‘Really?’ cries Rose. ‘Thanks!’

Mazen disappears inside her house and Rose jumps off the wheelie bin.

‘Really? ’ I say, imitating her gushy voice. ‘Thanks! ’

Quick as a flash, Rose throws her arms round my legs and sends me crashing to the ground. Rose is good at rugby . . . but I’m good at wriggling. I try to escape by twisting and turning like a snake, but Rose just tightens her vice-like grip.

‘Let go of me!’ I shout.

‘Not until you stop being annoying!’

‘I’ll stop being annoying –’ I try and fail to kick her off – ‘when you stop being boring, which will be NEVER!’

Rose squeezes harder until my legs start to go numb. ‘Drain,’ she says in a deep, slow voice. ‘DRAIN . . . DRAAAAIN . . .’

This is something we used to do to each other – pretend we could drain each other of energy by holding on tight and not letting go. Rose hasn’t done it for years, but it’s still surprisingly effective. Already my legs feel weak and heavy, like lumps of concrete.

‘Twins!’ We look up and see Grandad standing over us. ‘I don’t want to break up your game, but I thought you’d like to know there’s a surprise waiting for you in the attic!’

We jump to our feet.

I knew I saw something up there. Grandad’s surprises are legendary. He’s built us a tree house, go-carts with working lights, and even a raft that we take on the river. Whatever he’s done in the attic, I bet it involves that wizard!

‘Race you!’ I yell, making a dash for the back door.

I’ve only gone three paces when Rose overtakes me. She shoves me on my shoulder, shouting, ‘See you later, loser!’

I try to make my short legs work faster, but Rose is such a good runner and she drained me so well, there’s no way I can catch up with her. So instead I go with insulting her, and I shout the insult that I know annoys her the most, and I shout it all the way through the house and up the stairs.

‘You look like me! You look like me! YOU LOOK LIKE ME!’

‘Whoa . . .’ I say, standing at the attic door.

I’ve not been up here for a few years, but it’s even messier than I remember. Bags and boxes are piled knee-deep across the floor and toys are scattered everywhere. There are broken bikes and a canoe tucked into the eaves, and I can just see the old sofa buried under a pile of blankets. It’s a tip, but just standing in this dusty, untidy room makes me happy. This is where Rose and I used to play – the best games that went on for hours.

‘I can’t see any surprise,’ says Rose, poking around behind the sofa.

My eyes go straight to the window. I’m expecting to see the inflatable skeleton, or a load of boxes . . . but there’s nothing there at all. For a second I’m disappointed – I was so sure the wizard was going to be part of Grandad’s surprise – but then the prickle of fear comes creeping back because I’m sure I saw something up here.

Just then Grandad comes wheezing into the room. ‘So what do you think of your surprise?’ he says.

I pull my eyes away from the window. ‘We can’t find it.’

Grandad laughs and throws his arms out wide. ‘That’s because you’re standing in it!’

Rose blinks. ‘What do you mean, Grandad?’

‘The attic is your surprise. Isn’t it amazing?’

Rose and I share a look of confusion. Grandad’s done some pretty weird stuff over the years – including dying his beard green for Christmas – but he’s never given us his attic as a present.

He looks at us eagerly. ‘Do you like it?’

I nod. ‘Yeah, it’s really . . . surprising.’

Rose is less polite. ‘Is this some sort of joke, Grandad?’

He walks around the messy room, kicking things out of his way. ‘I know it doesn’t look like much at the moment, but once you’ve cleared it out, I’m going to turn it into a den for the two of you. I’ll put a TV over there, replace the sofa, put a popcorn machine in the corner. Whatever you want. It will be yours!’

I smile as I imagine how amazing it will look. Even Rose’s eyes light up, breaking her number-one rule of never showing she’s into something. ‘I’ve always wanted a proper den,’ she says. ‘Not the sort of thing me and Arthur used to make with blankets. Can we have beanbags?’

Grandad laughs. ‘Shaped like burgers?’

And that’s when my mind catches up with what Grandad just said. ‘Hang on. What do you mean, once you’ve cleared it out?’

‘Well, look around! How can I make you an amazing den if all this junk is up here?’ He pushes a wobbly pile of boxes. ‘I’d like to help, but I can’t, not with my asthma.’ To prove his point he bends over and breaks into a hacking cough.

‘Inhaler,’ I say, and obediently he pulls out his asthma inhaler and has a puff.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he says, straightening up. ‘Now, after you’ve got the attic empty, we can spend the rest of the week painting.’

Rose groans. ‘Do we have to, Grandad?’

I’m with Rose on this. In just over a week we start at Langton Academy – a huge secondary school that’s packed full of big, scary kids and that has a no-talking-in-the-corridors rule – I do not want to spend my last days of freedom doing DIY.

‘You have to if you want a den,’ says Grandad. Then he grabs a pile of comics and heads for the door. ‘I’ll be in my shed.’

For a moment Rose and I stand there staring at the chaos. Then Rose picks up a metre ruler – which for some reason is wrapped in tinfoil – and starts clearing a path through the middle of the junk. ‘This is my half,’ she says, then she tosses the ruler into the messier part of the attic, ‘and that’s your half.’ Next she opens a cupboard and starts pulling out books. After a moment, she says, ‘No wizards in here, Arthur.’

With a sigh I pick up a sports bag and start stuffing it full of National Geographic magazines.

Suddenly Rose gasps. ‘Hang on . . . I think I’ve found one!’

I can’t resist looking up.

Rose is grinning and holding up a large dusty book. ‘My mistake. It’s not a wizard. It’s a French dictionary.’

I go back to the magazines. Something tells me this is going to be a very long day.

Rose decides that we’re going to put everything in the garden before sorting out what’s going to the tip and what’s going to the charity shop, and ‘Hurry up, Arthur!’ soon becomes her favourite phrase. But it’s hard to hurry up when there’s so much cool stuff to look at.

I discover a magic set, a whole pillowcase stuffed full of Playmobil pirates, and I even find a wizard’s hat perched on top of an oar. I wonder if this could be what I saw at the window, but the oar is right at the back of the attic. There’s no way I could have seen it from the garden.

I put the hat on and creep up on Rose, planning to scare her, but when she turns round she just narrows her eyes and says, ‘Didn’t you once have an imaginary friend who was a wizard?’

She’s right, I did. His name was Wininja and he was stealthy and a bit magical.

‘He was a wizard-ninja, Rose. Big difference.’

She smiles. ‘Is he standing next to you right now, Arthur, whispering in your ear?’

The moment she says this I have this sensation that someone could be standing next to me and I have to fight the urge to look. Rose goes back to her books and I glance around the attic, my eyes lingering on the darkest corners. ‘Hurry up, Arthur!’ Rose snaps.

While Rose takes her bag downstairs, I decide to get started on the dressing-up box. I take out an armful of clothes and dump them on the floor. I’m just trying to detangle a ball of beards and wigs when I spot a Quality Street tin buried at the bottom of the box.

I pull it out and feel the weight of it in my hands. It’s round and dented, and has a picture of a soldier and a lady on the front, and when I shake it I can hear something rattling around inside. I sit down and prise at the lid until it opens with a shower of rusty flakes. All that’s inside is a foil chocolate wrapper and a large folded piece of paper. The piece of paper has the word ‘SECRIT!’ written on the front in my own handwriting.

I stare at the thick, yellowing piece of paper, holding my breath as I wonder what I once thought was so secret. Carefully I unfold it and spread it out across the attic floor. It’s a hand-drawn map, covered in tiny pictures and carefully written labels, something Rose and I must have made years ago.

The map is of a wobbly land almost cut in half by a river. One side of this land is as colourful as a cartoon with emerald-green trees and bright blue lakes. The other half has hardly any colour at all. It’s filled with blackened mountains, jagged grey cliffs and forests of stick-like trees. Written along the top of the map, again in my spiky handwriting, is one word: ROAR.

‘Roar . . .’ The word sounds so familiar when I say it out loud.

My eyes follow the zigzag waves one of us has drawn across the sea, and suddenly I remember the way those waves crashed against the cliffs and how there were so many of them the sea seemed to churn and boil. Just when I’m thinking that this map must have been inspired by some place Mum and Dad took us on holiday, I remember something else: me and Rose bursting into this attic and shouting, ‘Let’s play Roar!’

I smile. Roar isn’t a real place. It’s a game that Rose and I used to play, one that was so good, we drew a map of it.

As I gaze at the map the game comes creeping back to me. I see mountain ranges stretched between the folds of the paper and a curving coastline dotted with coves and cliffs. There’s a cluster of jelly-shaped islands labelled Archie Playgo, a castle rising out of the sea, and three dragons soaring through the sky. Butterflies, or maybe fairies, are dotted everywhere and sly-looking unicorns peer from between trees. I can’t actually remember sitting next to Rose and drawing these things, but still my mind tingles with recognition and something else. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.

Rose’s footsteps pull me back to the attic.

‘What’s that?’ she says, kneeling next to me.

‘It’s a map we drew of Roar.’

She frowns. ‘What’s Roar?’

‘That game we used to play. You must remember!’

‘Not really . . . We played loads of games up here.’

‘But Roar was our favourite. There were wizards and mermaids and we’d fight and have adventures. We played it loads!’

Rose looks at me with wide, amused eyes. ‘If you say so, Arthur.’

I point at the blackened castle rising out of the sea. It’s labelled The Crow’s Nest. ‘That’s where the baddie lived, and look –’ I tap a black circle – ‘that’s my ninja-wizard’s cave. There he is!’ A smiling face peeks out of the cave, a pointed hat sitting on his head. ‘I’m sure you had a friend too . . .’

Rose searches the jelly-shaped islands until she spots something: a girl’s head poking out of the sea. She has blue hair drifting around her and the word ‘Mitch’ written by the tip of her silver tail. ‘Mitch . . .’ says Rose, frowning. Then she smiles. ‘She was a mermaid-witch!’

‘With a bad temper –’

‘And webbed fingers and a magic tail!’

Sun streams through the window and outside the birds sing. Just for a moment, it’s like it was when we were little, when we used to finish each other’s sentences and make stuff up faster than we could think it.

Together, we stare at the map. Suddenly Rose shakes her head and jumps to her feet. She grabs a bulging bin bag and drags it towards the door. ‘Hurry up, Arthur,’ she calls over her shoulder, ‘or we’ll never get our den.’

When I hear the bag thumping down the stairs I turn back to the map. I can’t resist.

My eyes wander over pathways and streams and mountain passes, and I start to lose myself in this strange place we invented. Then something catches my eye – a flicker of movement, a flash of light – and I find myself staring at the Crow’s Nest. I see something that I missed before. A face is looking out of a window. The face is pale with round eyes and a crooked stitched mouth. It’s a scarecrow, a boy, and I can just make out two wings sprouting from his back.

‘Crowky,’ I say, the name coming easily to my lips. I stare at his black button eyes and his smile seems to stretch.

‘I’d almost forgotten about you,’ I whisper.

After lunch Rose disappears to our room, and Grandad comes up to the attic to check on our progress.

‘Carrying all the stuff down the stairs is taking ages,’ I complain, staggering under a pile of magazines. ‘We need a quicker way.’

Grandad looks out of the attic window. ‘Maybe you could use this.’

I join him and I see that the garden is directly below us. ‘I suppose we could lower everything down on a rope . . .’

‘Or maybe,’ Grandad says, grabbing a handful of my magazines, ‘you could chuck it all out!’ And before I can say, no, that’s a ridiculous idea, he’s hurled the magazines out of the window. They flutter through the air and land all over the grass. He turns to me with a gleam in his eye. ‘Your turn, Arthur!’

‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous?’

‘Not if we only do the small stuff. And no glass or metal, right?’

‘Right,’ I agree, nodding seriously. Then, with a yell, I hurl out the rest of the magazines making Grandad laugh with glee.

Then we get down to the serious business of throwing the contents of the attic out of the window. We go into a bit of a frenzy, whooping and yelling as bags burst open mid-air and boxes explode on the patio.

Eventually, and predictably, Rose comes up to ruin our fun.

‘Grandad, your pants are hanging in a tree!’ she cries. ‘Why have you even kept them?’

‘I was saving them to use as dusters,’ he explains, then, possibly because Rose looks so disgusted, he shuffles off to collect them, coughing all the way down the stairs.

‘Inhaler!’ Rose and I call after him. Then Rose flops down on the sofa, pulls a piano keyboard on to her lap and starts randomly pressing the keys.

‘Do you want to chuck some stuff out?’ I ask, hauling a bag towards the window. ‘This one’s full of cuddly toys.’

‘Nah.’

So, while Rose’s creepy music fills the attic, I throw the cuddly toys out. Grandad appears and tries to catch them. When a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh hits him in the face he starts to fight it. It’s really funny. I turn round to tell Rose to come and watch, but then I change my mind. There’s no way she’s getting off that sofa.

Rose used to be all right. No, she was better than all right. She was funny and laughed at my jokes and, except for the dark, she wasn’t scared of anything. It was Rose who jumped off the harbour wall one summer, right in front of all those teenage boys, and Rose who worked out that we could sledge down the sand dunes on trays. At school we were in the same class and played together every break time. I thought Rose liked this as much as I did, until our head teacher decided to mix up the Year Five classes.

We were given a piece of paper and told to write down the names of three people we wanted to be with. I wrote down one name: Rose. I didn’t need anyone else. But then our teacher left the pieces of paper on his desk and I saw Rose’s list. She’d written:

Angel

Nisha

Briony

Rose was really happy in 5A with her three friends. Across the corridor in 5B, I wasn’t so happy. Then Rose got her phone and got into YouTube, make-up and her mates, and the Rose I knew just sort of disappeared.

I turn back to the window and shake out the last of the toys. Grandad is lying flat on his back now, letting them fall all over him. After the last teddy has bounced off his stomach I go to clear out the darkest corner of the attic.

I push aside a chunky TV and find myself staring into the sparkly eyes of a rocking horse. It rocks slightly, eyes wide, teeth bared, as if it’s angry about being left in this dingy spot for so long.

I grab its mane and pull it out. ‘Look who I’ve found, Rose!’

She looks up. ‘What? It’s just the old rocking horse.’

‘Yes, but it’s your old rocking horse, isn’t it? It was you who painted it black and covered it in glitter, and then you said it belonged to you and I was never allowed to sit on it. What did you call it?’

‘Prosecco,’ she says flatly. ‘You’d better put it in the charity shop pile. Someone might want it.’

Suddenly I want to make Rose admit that she used to love this rocking horse. I want her to look at it, and be interested in it, and stop being cool, just for a second . . .

‘Hey, Rose.’ I drag it towards the window. ‘Do you think Prosecco would like to fly?’

She looks up. ‘What’re you on about?’

‘He’s been stuck in the attic for too long. I think he’d like to feel the wind beneath his hooves.’ I’m at the window now.

She leaps off the sofa and grabs hold of the mane. ‘You can’t throw him out of the window, Arthur. He’s an antique!’

‘He?’ I say. ‘He? ’

Rose narrows her eyes.

‘Do you think you can you still talk to him, Rose?’

She yanks the rocking horse out of my hands. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Then she crouches down and presses her ear to his mouth. ‘What was that, Prosecco? Uh-huh. Got it.’ She looks up. ‘Prosecco wants me to tell you that you smell like the corridor outside the boys’ toilets. In fact, Prosecco thinks that the corridor outside the boys’ toilets might actually smell of Arthur.’ She smiles sweetly. ‘It looks like I can still talk to him!’

‘Yeah? Well, maybe I can too.’ I stick my ear next to its mouth. ‘Sorry, Prosecco? You think Rose’s perfume smells like cat poo after it’s been in the sun? OK, I’ll pass it on.’

Now it’s Rose’s turn. She rams her ear against his mouth. ‘Uh-huh, yep, got it.’ She looks up. ‘What Prosecco actually said was that it’s you who smells like cat poo after it’s been in the sun. You got it wrong because, unlike me, you don’t speak fluent Moonlight Stallion.’

Moonlight Stallion. Ha! I knew Rose was still into Prosecco! He used to pop up in loads of our games and I’m sure she was always sitting on him when we played Roar.

Roar. In a flash it’s back, and an image darts into my mind of Rose sitting high on Prosecco, bossing me around and translating his insults for me.

Prosecco rocks forwards and again I feel like he’s looking at me. I tug him towards the window by his tail, suddenly desperate to get away from his sparkly staring eyeballs. ‘He still wants to fly,’ I say. ‘He said so.’

Rose’s hands grab the tail. ‘I’d let go of that if I were you.’

‘Why?’

Her voice drops to a dramatic whisper. ‘Because since you last saw Prosecco his tail has become poisonous and every single strand stings like a bee. The pain is intense, Arthur, and it will shoot through you like a thousand needles burrowing into your skin!’

‘So? You’re holding the tail too!’

She shoves her face close to mine, eyes shining, and whispers, ‘The poison only affects BOYS!’

A chuckle makes us look up. Grandad is standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you two playing again. Nothing could make me happier.’

‘We’re not playing, Grandad.’ Rose lets go of Prosecco’s tail. ‘We’re fighting. Big difference.’

‘Sounded a bit like playing to me,’ he says, then he sits on the sofa, props his feet on a suitcase and says, ‘Well, get on with it. This attic won’t clear itself out.’

It’s fun having Grandad in the attic. He plays tunes on the keyboard and seems excited by everything we find.

Grandad and Nani grew up in Mauritius, and when I discover something I think came from there I show it to him: an empty bottle of Labourdonnais rum, one of Nani’s old saris, a tin that once contained Bois Cheri tea.

‘I can smell home,’ says Grandad, sticking his nose in the tin and breathing deeply.

All this nostalgia makes Grandad move on to singing sea shanties in French, and Rose and I fall quiet as his deep voice fills the room. We’ve only visited Mauritius once, when we were little, and I can hardly remember it. I can hardly remember Nani either. She died when we were three. Rose and I start to put anything that might have belonged to Nani on the sofa next to Grandad. He glances down at the beads and scarves and boxes, but he doesn’t stop singing until Rose pulls a half-deflated dinghy into the middle of the room.

It’s not the dinghy that interests him, but something hidden behind it.

He disappears into the shadows of the eaves and comes back dragging a camp bed. ‘Remember this old thing?’ he asks.

I catch my breath. It’s an ancient camp bed, one of those ones on wheels that folds in the middle, like a table-tennis table. It has a mouldy-looking orange mattress, rusty springs and a plastic headboard . . . It’s rubbish, but just looking at it makes my heart beat fast because Rose and I loved playing with it. We kept it closed, and the folded mattress made a damp, dark tunnel which we would dare each other to crawl through. I can clearly remember the spine-tingling feeling I got when I pushed my head inside and forced myself to go into the darkness.

‘Arthur weed in that,’ says Rose.

‘I did not! I spilled a Fruit Shoot in there.’

‘Whatever,’ she says with an infuriating smile.

Grandad runs his hand through the dust on the headboard. ‘Well, one of you definitely did something to it. Look at this!’

I see some words are scratched into the plastic headboard.

‘“Enter here for the Land of Roar”,’ I read, although what it actually says is,

I slip my hand in my pocket and touch the corner of the map.

‘What’s the Land of Roar?’ asks Grandad.

‘Just some game we used to play,’ says Rose.

Suddenly I know exactly why we scratched those words on to the headboard. ‘This was how we got there,’ I say. ‘We’d crawl into the bed, shout, “Hear me roar”, and when we came out the other side we’d be in Roar!’

Rose groans. ‘We’d be in the attic, Arthur.’

‘I know,’ I say quickly. ‘I mean, it’s how the game always began.’

Grandad pats the bed. ‘Well, how about it, twins? Fancy crawling through the bed and having one last adventure in Roar?’

Rose looks at him in horror. ‘Grandad, we haven’t played games like that for years. Plus I’m not going anywhere near that stinky old wee mattress.’ She gives the bed a shake. ‘It’s heavy. Do you want me to help you get it downstairs so we can dump it at the tip?’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘We’re saving the big stuff for the end. Right, Grandad?’

He nods. ‘But I have seen one big thing we can get rid of.’ He picks up the dinghy and carries it towards the window. ‘Let’s see how far this baby can fly!’

He forces it halfway out then gives it a massive shove. Rose and I get to the window just in time to see the dinghy float over the garden wall and land on the Baileys’ conservatory.

‘Oh dear,’ says Grandad. ‘I suppose I’d better get it back.’

‘I’ll go,’ cries Rose, dashing out of the attic.

Soon I see Rose run outside, climb on the wheelie bin and scramble into next door’s garden. Mazen is on her trampoline; she acknowledges Rose’s presence by shrieking, ‘What are you wearing?’ then doing a backflip.

‘Well, Arthur?’ Grandad is watching me. ‘Are you up for taking one last trip to Roar?’

Honestly? I’d give anything to play Roar with Rose again. Just me and her, and a load of dragons and unicorns and no thoughts of starting secondary school. But it’s impossible. I’m too old and I couldn’t do it without her. The rush of excitement that I felt when I saw the bed has gone and in its place is a heavy lump of disappointment. ‘No thanks, Grandad. Rose is right. We don’t play games like that any more.’

Outside, we can hear Rose and Mazen talking, then the squeak of trampoline springs.

‘Who said anything about playing a game?’ Grandad grins then turns away. ‘Come on. I saw a bag of tennis balls earlier. Let’s see if we can chuck them as far as Mazen’s trampoline.’

By the end of the day the attic is empty.

Well, almost. The camp bed is sitting in the middle of the room, watched over by Prosecco, but everything else has gone: the dressing-up clothes, the plastic weapons, the Playmobil, the cuddly toys. Even the Quality Street tin is down in the garden in the tip pile.

I take one last look around the room, and turn out the light.

Grandad seems to have forgotten about the meal commonly known as dinner so Rose and I heat up a pizza we find at the bottom of the freezer then put ourselves to bed. We have to. It’s midnight and Grandad is out in the garden, dancing round a bonfire he’s made out of old newspapers and egg boxes.

The pizza and trampolining have put Rose in a good mood because she starts kicking the bottom of my bunk bed, distracting me from the book I’m reading. The only downside to staying at Grandad’s is having to share a room with Rose.

Eventually the kicking stops and I try to get into my book. Clearing out the attic has left me feeling a bit weird and on edge, but soon I find myself pulled into the story. It’s about a girl who discovers she’s descended from a Samurai warrior and can defeat any enemy by summoning the ghost of her ancestor. I wouldn’t be worried about starting secondary school if I had a Samurai ghost on my side.

Rose’s voice drifts up from the bottom bunk. ‘Arthur . . . Mazen says you’re going to be eaten alive at Langton Academy.’

Some people believe that twins can read each other’s minds. I can’t read Rose’s mind, but sometimes she can read mine.

‘Mazen says, because you can’t play football and you got a telescope instead of a phone for your birthday, everyone will think you’re weird.’

I really don’t like Mazen Bailey.

‘Oh, and Mazen says you should use product on your hair. To make it, you know, less big or people will laugh at you.’

Actually I think I might hate Mazen Bailey.

‘Arthur? Can you hear me?’ Rose gives the bottom of the bed an extra big kick. ‘Mazen was only trying to help. She’s in Year Eight so she knows.’

‘Mazen Bailey,’ I say, after a moment of dignified silence, ‘believes that The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars film, so obviously her opinion counts for nothing.’

Rose goes quiet and all I can hear is tap, tap, tap, tap.

‘Rose, are you sending her a message?’

‘Shh,’ she says. ‘Did you just say obviously her opinion counts for nothing, or clearly her opinion counts for nothing?’

I throw myself over the side of the bunk bed and make a grab for Rose’s phone, but she just pushes me away and keeps typing. ‘Rose, if you press send I’ll –’

She looks up, interested. ‘Yes? What will you do?’

‘I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’ What can I do? What power do I have over Rose these days? She doesn’t want to hang out with me. I don’t make her laugh any more. Everything about me annoys her. ‘I won’t sleep in here!’ I shout.

She bursts out laughing. ‘So? That would be great!’ Then she presses her finger down. ‘Ooops . . . I just pressed send!’

Rage surges through me and I badly want to hit Rose, but I can’t, because she’s my sister and hitting my sister when I was six might have been just about OK, but hitting my sister when I’m eleven is wrong.

Rose laughs. ‘You look funny, Arthur. Are you going to cry?’

Over my dead body, I think, but I do have a painful lump in my throat because what Rose just did was so disloyal. Rose and I are twins. We’re supposed to stick together!

The lump in my throat gets bigger and I have to squeeze my eyes shut to make it go away.

‘You are,’ Rose says confidently. ‘You’re going to cry.’

But I don’t cry. Instead I do the thing I always do when there’s a chance I might cry. ‘ARRRGHHHH!’ I scream in her face. Then I grab my duvet and stomp out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

No way am I sleeping in the same room as my disloyal, evil, mocking sister. No way am I ever speaking to her again. No way am I even going to breathe the same air that she breathes . . .

There’s just one problem.

Where can I sleep?

Grandad’s house is big, but it’s also full. There are two spare bedrooms, but neither of them has beds. One of them has got Grandad’s drum kit in it, and the other’s full of books and Nani’s old things. Then I remember where there’s a perfectly good bed. One that folds in the middle and has a mattress covered in orange and brown flowers and ‘Entur heer for the laned of ROAR!!!’ scratched into the headboard.

A bed that I’m ninety-nine per cent certain I didn’t wee in.

It turns out attics are extremely creepy at night, especially empty ones.

Moonlight streams in through the single window, lighting up the camp bed and making Prosecco look extra glittery. I step inside, my duvet trailing behind me, and flick on the light switch.

Nothing happens.

It takes several more pushes before I realise the bulb must have gone. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to sleep. I don’t need a light to open up a camp bed and fall asleep.

And yet . . . it is very shadowy up here, and quiet, and Prosecco’s silver eyeballs are staring right at me. I take a step to the left. Prosecco’s still staring at me. Step to the right. He’s still staring. This is stupid. Prosecco can’t stare. He’s made of wood and doesn’t have functioning eyeballs, and Prosecco is not a he: Prosecco is an it, an inanimate object!

That for some reason is rocking ever so slightly.

I’m about to step forward when I have the uncanny feeling that someone, or something, is up here in the attic with me. Immediately I think of the shadow I saw at the window, the wizard, and for a second I actually feel weak at the knees. So I decide to do what Dad says he does whenever he feels scared. I laugh out loud.

‘Ha ha ha ha!’

Wow. Dad is so wrong about that.

I tell myself that it’s my mind playing tricks on me again, then I put my shoulders back and walk towards the camp bed. I’m a step away when I hear a tiny fluttering sound. I freeze and hold my breath and listen. I hear it again. It sounds like wings brushing against something, and wings remind me of the map, and of the wild-looking face grinning at me from the window of the Crow’s Nest.

Crowky.

I’ve thought a lot about Crowky since I found the map. It was Rose who invented him out of the two things I hated most in the world: scarecrows and crows.

My scarecrow fear began when I once got lost in a maize maze. I’d run on ahead of my family and suddenly realised I was all on my own. Except for the scarecrows, and they were everywhere. I ran round a corner and saw a policeman scarecrow; I ran left and saw a Father Christmas scarecrow. I was about to start screaming when I spotted Mum on the next path. ‘Mum!’ I shouted, forcing my way towards to her and grabbing the sleeve of her denim jacket. Then her arm fell off.

It wasn’t Mum. It was an Elvis scarecrow, and that’s when I started screaming.

I swear to this day that their jackets were identical.

I’d have probably got over the scarecrow thing if, later in the day, Rose hadn’t thought it would be funny to feed some birds by sprinkling crumbs in my hair. A crow landed on my head and got a bit stuck, and the next time we were in Grandad’s attic Rose came up with Crowky. She could do his voice really well, all scratchy and wicked. ‘I’m going to get you, Arthur Trout! ’ she’d rasp, filling me with dread. ‘I’m going to get yoooou! ’

And it’s exactly that dread I’m feeling right now as I stand as still as possible, hardly daring to breathe, listening to every sound.

A pipe gurgles. The window rattles in its frame. Outside, Grandad’s bonfire crackles. Then I hear it: a violent, wild fluttering as if something huge and feathery is trapped inside the camp bed.

I turn and run for the door.

Rose, I decide, is forgiven.

‘Arthur, are you telling me you’re scared of a camp bed?’ Rose’s laughter floats up to me as I stare at the ceiling, for once pleased that the room is lit by her stupid rabbit night light.

‘Not the camp bed,’ I say, ‘something inside it. It sounded like feathers. There must be a bird stuck in there.’

Down on the bottom bunk, Rose snorts. ‘We were in the attic all afternoon. I think we’d have noticed a bird flying around.’

‘But it’s not flying around, is it? It’s in the bed.’

‘Maybe, or maybe you’re scared of the camp bed. I mean, you’re scared of lots of things, Arthur: scarecrows, crows, frogs –’

‘Says the girl who has to sleep with a night light.’

Rose ignores me and carries on – ‘mushrooms, supply teachers, starting at Langton Academy, heights, Mum’s black pointy shoes, fire, raisins with stalks –’

‘I don’t like raisins with stalks, but I’m not scared of them, or any of those other things. When my class made a scarecrow I sewed on its button eyes and it didn’t bother me at all.’ It did. A bit. ‘Plus I was scared of Mum’s shoes when I was, like, two, not now. In fact,’ I declare boldly, ‘right now I can’t think of a single thing I’m scared of.’

‘Oh really?’ Then everything goes quiet on the bottom bunk. A bit too quiet. When Rose speaks her voice is as scratchy as a nail being dragged down a wall, ‘What about ME, Arthur Trout? Are you scared of ME?’ I might not have heard her Crowky voice for a long time, but I’d recognise it anywhere. It actually makes me need a wee. That’s how good it is.

‘Rose, I thought you said you couldn’t remember Roar? Because that’s where Crowky came from.’

Silence. Then the scratchy voice says, ‘Rose isn’t here any more, Arthur. It’s just you and me. Now will you admit that you’re just a teeny bit scared of me?’

And that’s when I think of a brilliant way to get back at Rose, for the voice, for messaging Mazen, for calling me a loser, for everything.

‘I am a bit,’ I say, ‘but not as scared as you are of . . . THE DARK.’ I lean over the side of the bunk bed, grab Rose’s rabbit night light and switch it off. Rose’s response is creative, fast and totally unexpected. She jumps out of bed, climbs the ladder and throws a cup of water in my face.

‘Rose!’ I shout.

‘HA!’ she screams back.

Outside in the garden, Grandad yodels.

Next morning, I eat my Crunchy Nut cornflakes sitting on the sofa in the garden. It was the last thing we dragged out of the attic and now it’s wedged between the patio and the plum tree and covered in ash from Grandad’s bonfire.

The sky is blue and the sun is shining. A blackbird hops around in the bushes. It seems like a totally normal day, but I don’t feel normal. I drink the sugary milk from the bottom of the bowl. I feel jittery and uneasy and I can’t stop looking up at the attic window.

Grandad wanders out of the house and blinks into the sunshine. He’s wearing a cardigan, an old T-shirt – the one that says ‘NO PROB-LLAMA!’ – and his painting shorts. ‘Hello, mate,’ he says. ‘Where’s your sister?’

I nod towards the neighbour’s garden. Rose’s head appears above the wall, then disappears. There’s a squeak of trampoline springs, then her head pops back up, her hair flying out straight and long.

‘Rose, you’re not doing it right!’ cries Mazen. ‘You look like there’s something wrong with you!’

‘Not got anything to do?’ says Grandad. ‘Rose doesn’t fancy going to the beach?’

‘No. All Rose wants to do is jump and look at her phone.’ I think back to the damp night’s sleep I’ve just had. ‘Right now Rose hates me and I hate her.’

‘You hate each other?’ Grandad chuckles. ‘You two have always got along fine.’

He’s wrong. We used to get along fine until Rose changed into that stranger I can see on the trampoline. But I don’t bother telling Grandad this. Instead I say, ‘Last night we had a fight.’

‘That’s normal. I remember your mum and Jack fighting like mad when they were little. They used to draw blood.’

‘Jack was a cat, Grandad.’

‘I know, but the point is they’d be cuddling on the sofa by bedtime.’

‘I’m fairly certain me and Rose won’t be doing any cuddling ever again.’

He laughs and ruffles my hair. ‘Come on. While you’re waiting for Rose to stop hating you, we can get the camp bed down from the attic.’

I get up, glance once more at the attic window, then with a heavy and slightly scared heart I follow Grandad back inside the house.

It’s amazing what a positive effect sunlight can have on a room. If I ignore Prosecco glaring at me from the corner, there is almost nothing spooky about the attic right now.

Grandad grabs hold of the camp bed and starts to heave. ‘I got this thing up here, so presumably I can get it down again. Do you think we should chuck it out of the window?’

‘Better not. It might kill Rose.’

He laughs. ‘See? I knew you didn’t hate her! Now get over here and give me a hand.’

But I don’t move. Instead I just stand in the doorway, staring at the rubbish old camp bed, which was the start of the best game I ever played, a game that until yesterday I’d almost forgotten.

‘Unless . . .’ says Grandad, ‘you think we should leave the bed up here?’

Yes, I want to say, leave it up here and let’s bring the swords and dressing-up clothes back up too. But what would be the point? Rose is never going to play Roar or any other game with me. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s time to chuck it out.’ Then I grab the other side of the bed and start pushing.

We’ve only moved it a couple of metres before Grandad has to stop to catch his breath. We rest against the camp bed while he has a puff on his inhaler. ‘Arthur,’ he says, ‘do you remember when you had a funny turn up here?’

I think for a moment. ‘When I was crawling through the camp bed?’

‘That’s it! I came in and found you curled up on the floor. You had two teeth marks on your wrist.’ He points just below my hand at the pale scar I’ve had for as long as I can remember. ‘Rose said a dragon had bitten you, but I’m guessing she was the dragon?’ Grandad watches me, waiting for an answer.

It must have been Rose who bit me that day . . . so when I look at my wrist why do I remember my fingers touching rough scales, then hearing a warning-growl followed by a flash of movement and then the shock of sharp teeth grazing my skin?

With a start, I realise that this is what my memories of Roar are like. When I think about Win and Mitch, I don’t see me and Rose running around the attic talking to invisible mermaids and pretend ninja-wizards. I see a real girl swimming below the surface of clear water, her thick tail flicking from side to side, and a real boy sitting by a fire. The boy has wonky teeth and he’s grinning at me from under a wizard’s hat.

I take a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t Rose who bit me . . .’

Grandad turns to look at me. ‘Who was it then?’

I rub the pale scar, trying to decide whether to carry on talking or shut up. But I can’t keep quiet. Everything that has happened since we arrived at Grandad’s is too strange. I have to tell someone.

‘I was standing by a dragon.’ My voice is loud in the silence of the attic. ‘The dragon had scales and chipped claws and smoke pouring out of its nose, and even though Rose told me not to, I brushed my fingers along its belly, and then . . .’ I look at Grandad, ‘it bit me.’

Grandad has an unusual expression on his face – one that I’ve hardly ever seen before. He looks serious.

‘Grandad, why aren’t you laughing and telling me I’m talking rubbish?’

He smiles and shrugs. ‘Because I believe you.’

Everything has gone quiet, the birds outside, even Rose and Mazen on the trampoline. The sun shines down on my legs and something warm, like magic, creeps through me. ‘What do you mean?’

He laughs. ‘Just what I said, Arthur: I believe you!’

Grandad is winding me up. He loves playing tricks on us – he loves playing full stop – and this is just another of his games. And yet . . . I know I saw a shadow at the window and heard the wings fluttering in the bed.

Just thinking about the wings makes my heart speed up. I jump up and look at the bed.

‘What’s wrong, Arthur?’ Grandad clambers to his feet.

‘Yesterday I heard something coming from in there.’ I can’t take my eyes off the bed. ‘It made me think of someone in Roar.’

‘A bad person?’

I nod. ‘A very bad person.’

‘And you think this person might be in the bed?’ Again I nod. Grandad puts his arm round me and pulls me close. His cardigan feels soft against my face. It smells of coffee and his shed. ‘Well, there’s one way to find out, Arthur. You need to crawl into the bed.’

I stare at the sagging mattress, then back at Grandad.

‘What? You think I should just crawl in there?’

Grandad nods. ‘And visit Roar.’ He says this like he’s suggesting a trip to the pier.

‘But Grandad, Roar was a game. Remembering a dragon biting me is my mind playing tricks on me.’

‘But what if it’s not, Arthur? What if you and Rose made Roar with your imaginations, then crawled through the camp bed and somehow found your way there?’

I smile and shake my head. ‘If I crawl into that mattress, I’ll come straight out the other side and you’ll be standing there laughing at me!’

‘Well, if that happens, at least you know you imagined the funny sound and being bitten by a dragon, and can get on with turning this attic into a den.’

‘And if I do end up in Roar?’

I can’t believe these words have just come out of my mouth.

Grandad’s eyes go wide. ‘Now wouldn’t that be something?’ And then he actually holds the mattress open for me and says, ‘In you go!’

‘I don’t know.’ I glance out of the window to make sure Rose is still on the trampoline. There aren’t many things in the world she’d find more hilarious than the sight of me crawling through the camp bed trying to get to Roar. There she is, jumping up and down and trying to touch her toes. ‘I’m sure I imagined it,’ I say. ‘It was probably a bird in the chimney or –’

A scuffle makes me turn round and I see that Grandad’s head and shoulders are stuck inside the mattress. What is he doing? He must think that if he goes in first, I’ll follow. He pushes in his arms and then starts wriggling from side to side, trying to get his bum in too. Then I hear a faint cry of ‘Hear me roar!’

The sight of a seventy-two-year-old man attempting to squeeze his body into a folded camp bed is like a slap in the face. What am I doing? Rose is right. I’m way too old for this. I should be learning to surf, or skating, or fighting stuff on the computer. Anything would be better than playing in the attic with my grandad!

When Grandad comes out the other side of the bed I’ll tell him I want to take the camp bed to the tip. It’s time for me to grow up, or I really will be eaten alive at secondary school.

‘Hear me ROOOOOAAAAR !’ Grandad cries, then with a final lurch he gets his bum and legs into the bed too. Then he just sits there, a big bulge in the middle of the mattress. It reminds me of the time I saw a nature documentary about a snake that had swallowed a pig. It’s pretty funny actually.

‘All right, Grandad. You can come out now.’ I try to give the bed a shake but it weighs a ton with him in there.

Grandad’s hand pops out and waves around.

‘Are you stuck?’ I grab hold of his hand and his fingers wrap round my wrist and I start to pull. But he won’t budge, and now I’m laughing because Grandad has got me to play, just like he wanted to. ‘Come on. I might have done a wee in there, remember?’

Suddenly Grandad’s fingers tighten round mine. ‘Ow!’ I say, still laughing. Then I sit down on the floor, put my feet against the bed and pull as hard as I can. But Grandad doesn’t budge and his big hand squeezes even tighter round mine. In fact, his fingers are going white from the pressure and my hand starts to hurt. ‘Grandad, stop it!’ Panic rises up in me as the pressure increases. It feels like the bones in my fingers might break!

I pull harder than ever, but I’m not trying to get Grandad out: I’m trying to free my hand. ‘Grandad, you’re hurting me!’

Suddenly he lets go and I tumble backwards. Then, with amazing speed, his hand shoots inside the mattress. What? I cradle my squashed hand to my chest and stare at the bed. The lump has gone!

‘Grandad?’ I jump to my feet and circle the bed, patting the springs. ‘Grandad? Where are you?’

Silence. My heart thuds against my ribcage. I grab the headboard, ready to pull the bed open . . . but something stops me. It’s the memory of Rose saying, Never open the camp bed, Arthur, or everything in Roar will disappear.

I let go of the headboard. Rose was talking rubbish, I tell myself. There is no Roar; there can’t be any Roar. But I still can’t bring myself to open the bed. The attic feels unbearably hot and I’m shaky with panic. I brush a tear off my cheek. ‘Come on, Grandad . . . It’s a good joke, but you can come out now.’

I know I’m talking to myself. I know he isn’t in there.

In a daze I check every corner of the attic, even under the bed, but except for Prosecco, the attic is empty. I tell myself that Grandad has to be in the bed and I kneel down, take a deep breath, and push my hand into the mattress.

It’s horrible. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle as I feel around, desperately hoping that my fingers will touch some bit of Grandad, but my hand just keeps going further and further into the mattress until, finally, I do touch something. But it’s not Grandad’s trainers or hair. It’s a load of spiky, prickly stuff. I grab it and pull it out.

When I uncurl my fingers I have to squeeze my mouth shut to stop myself from being sick. I’m holding a pile of yellow straw and greasy black feathers. I chuck the whole lot on the floor, then reach forward and pick up the largest feather. It’s inky-black and the quill is sharp and warm, as if moments ago it was attached to a living thing.

A living thing with wings and stuffed full of straw.

I jump to my feet. I have to tell Rose!

As I walk across the garden – my heart still thudding in my chest and my hands trembling – I wonder how I’m going to do this. I can hear Mazen’s voice, shrieking at Rose and bossing her around. If I just say what happened, they’re going to collapse with laughter. Mazen is going to think I’m sad or crazy, or both. I pull myself on to the wheelie bin. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. What matters is that Grandad is missing. I’ve just got to tell Rose and then she will help me find him.

I look over the wall. Mazen is standing with her hands on her hips, watching Rose. She senses my presence and her head swivels round like a velociraptor. She gives me a long, hard look, then turns back to Rose. ‘It’s your brother,’ she says.

Rose lands on her bum, then bounces back to her feet. ‘What do you want, Arthur?’

I cling to the top of the wall. ‘I need to speak to you.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Not here.’ My eyes flick to Mazen. ‘On our own.’

Rose rolls her eyes. ‘Just tell me, Arthur.’

‘Grandad’s disappeared!’ I say in a rush.

‘Grandad’s what ?’

‘He’s disappeared. One second he was in the attic, and the next he was gone. Please stop bouncing, Rose. Grandad’s gone and you’ve got to help me find him!’

With a sigh she comes to a stop.

Mazen stretches, then says, ‘He’s probably lost in all the mess he keeps up there.’

‘All his “mess” is in the garden. There’s nowhere to get lost in the attic now!’

Mazen shrugs. ‘Just saying. He’s a messy person.’

‘He’s not messy. He’s . . . a collector!’

‘He’s messy, Arthur,’ snaps Rose, hands on her hips. ‘Now hurry up and tell me what happened.’

‘Grandad crawled through the camp bed –’

‘What? Why would he do that?’

‘It doesn’t matter why he did it; what matters is that he crawled into the middle of the mattress then disappeared!’

Rose doesn’t look worried or shocked; in fact, she bursts out laughing. ‘Arthur, he’s playing a trick on you!’

Anger rises up inside me. Every second I stand here talking to Rose is another second that Grandad is missing. ‘He’s not. I was holding his hand. I felt him being pulled into the bed. I saw his hand shoot inside!’

‘Then he must still be there.’

‘He isn’t. I checked!’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Well, check again.’

I reach into my pocket and feel the feathers and straw that I picked up before I ran out of the attic. ‘There’s something else . . .’ I lean over the wall and open my hand. ‘I found this inside the bed seconds after Grandad disappeared.’

Rose takes a step closer and alarm flashes across her face. ‘Crowky . . .’ she whispers, but then she shakes her head. ‘It’s Grandad. He must have put them there.’

‘Really? Because I’ve never told Grandad about Crowky. Have you?’

‘What are you two talking about?’ interrupts Mazen.

‘It’s nothing,’ says Rose. ‘Just Arthur trying to get me to play with him.’

I’m so angry I throw the feathers and straw in her face, and Mazen screams, ‘Get that gross stuff off my trampoline!’

Rose gathers it up and chucks it back at me. ‘Leave me alone, Arthur! Why can’t you accept that I don’t want to hang out with you?’

My foot slips out from under me. ‘Do you honestly think I’ve made all this up so that you’ll spend time with me?’

‘Yes,’ she says, making Mazen laugh.

‘Well, guess what, Rose? I don’t even like you much these days, and I’m only talking to you right now because Grandad has vanished and I think Crowky has got him!’

Now both of them are laughing.

‘Fine,’ I say, my cheeks burning. ‘If you won’t help me, I’ll just have to find him on my own.’ I jump off the wheelie bin, slip on a rotten crab apple, scramble to my feet, then stride towards the back door.

‘When you get to Roar, say “hi” to Mitch!’ Rose shouts.

I turn round. Rose is watching me with a sarcastic smile on her face.

‘You’ve changed so much Mitch wouldn’t even recognise you,’ I say. Then I walk into the house and let the door slam shut behind me.

Back in the attic, I stare at the camp bed.

I’ve looked for Grandad everywhere. Even though I know he couldn’t have got out of the bed, I’ve still checked every room in the house, the cellar, the shed and even the garage, and opening the bed isn’t an option. Some truly weird stuff has happened in the past hour and I’m not about to do anything that might permanently erase my grandad.

He disappeared inside the mattress so that’s where I’ve got to go too.

Trying to ignore the feathers and scraps of straw, I get down on my hands and knees, then push my head inside the bed. I want to pull it straight back out, but I keep my eyes squeezed shut and wriggle further in. ‘Hear me roar,’ I blurt, pulling my legs up behind me. The bed wobbles, then becomes still.

I’m crouched in the middle of the mattress, surrounded by darkness. It feels damp and lumpy and it smells like the PE cupboard at school. The springs from the mattress dig into my skin and I can’t find enough air to breathe. All I want to do is get out, but I force myself to stay where I am while I wait for something to happen.

When Rose and I played Roar I’m sure this was when the game began. I don’t know how it worked, but when we came out the other side we’d be in Roar. I crouch there, the mattress pressing into my face, until I can’t stand it any longer. I crawl forward, my head bursts out into bright light and I gulp fresh air.

I see dusty floorboards and straw and feathers. Outside, the sun is shining and I can hear Mazen Bailey laughing. I pull myself all the way out of the bed, feeling relieved and scared and stupid, all at the same time, then I walk back round to the other side of the bed.

Grandad is still missing and I’m going to keep crawling through this mattress until I find him.

And for the next ten minutes that’s exactly what I do.

Soon my eyes are itchy, I’m sweaty and my hair is massive and crackling with static.

I’m wriggling on to the attic floor for the thirty-second time when I see Rose standing in the doorway, sucking a blue ice pop and watching me.

‘I’ve looked for him everywhere,’ I say. ‘This is the only thing left to do.’

She does a long hard suck on the lolly, then says, ‘I’ll admit it’s strange that he’s vanished.’

I’m so relieved to hear her say this that I jump to my feet and rush over. ‘I told you: Grandad’s vanished inside the bed and somehow we’ve got to go there, go to Roar, and get him back!’

She sighs. ‘Arthur, we never actually went to Roar. You know that, right? The whole time we were playing up here in the attic, pretending.’

‘But when we played Roar, it didn’t feel like we were in the attic. It felt real.’

All the time I’ve been talking Rose has been sucking hard on her ice pop, draining all the blue out of it. ‘I suppose it felt different to other games,’ she admits. ‘But do you remember when I said I could fly? I got you all to come and watch, and it turned out it was just me jumping down the stairs flapping my arms.’ She shrugs. ‘Kids have got big imaginations.’

‘That’s exactly what I thought, before I felt Grandad being pulled into the bed!’ I show her the marks on my hand where Grandad’s nails dug in. ‘And there’s another thing . . . Just before he disappeared Grandad basically said he believed that Roar was real.’

Rose laughs. ‘Arthur, this whole thing is a massive practical joke! I bet Grandad’s had this planned for ages.’

‘Grandad would never scare me like this.’

She raises one eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

‘No, he wouldn’t!’

Rose shrugs like she couldn’t care less what I think. ‘Suit yourself. I’m going to town. Mazen says there’s three-for-two on at Claire’s. Before I went I thought I should check you hadn’t vanished too.’

And that’s when I realise it’s hopeless. If Rose is more bothered about hairbands and earrings than she is about Grandad, I don’t want her to come with me. ‘Fine.’ I walk back to the camp bed, crouch down and roll up my sleeves. ‘Hear me roar,’ I mutter, as I stick my head back into the mattress.

‘Hah!’ says Rose.

I pull my head out and turn to look at her, eyes narrowed. I am in no mood to hear Rose’s sarcastic hahs. ‘What?’

‘Nothing . . . Only I never said, “Hear me roar” because even when I was five I thought it was stupid. When I got into the middle of the mattress I just shut my eyes and imagined Roar, then when I came out the other side I was there.’ She takes a last long suck on her ice pop, then turns to the door. ‘See you later, loser.’

I pull my legs in behind me and I crouch in the middle of the bed, just like before.

Only this time I don’t bother with any magic words. Instead I use Rose’s technique: I close my eyes and I imagine Roar.

It’s hard to begin with. Roar is buried at the back of my mind. Some details like Win’s hat and Crowky’s voice are crystal clear, but most of it is hazy and muddled, like my memories of Nani and the first house we ever lived in.

But then something comes back to me. The feeling of holding a soft creature in my hands. This thing has got wings and they’re batting against my fingers. Furry. I’m holding a furry. I’m not sure exactly what a furry is, but suddenly I know there were loads of them in Roar.

Then my mind is full of furries – I see them hovering like dragonflies and sunbathing on stones, and Roar comes rushing back to me as fast as the furries’ beating wings.

I see me and Win standing on a ship – the Raven – and I feel the spray from the Bottomless Ocean stinging my eyes. I hear a shout to my left – ‘Get back! Before he burns your hair off !’ and I turn to see Rose tossing bits of doughnut to a hovering dragon.

Crowky lands with a thump on the deck of the Raven. His black wings billow around him like a cloud as he grips hold of my arm and hisses, ‘I’ve got you now, Arthur Trout! ’

Keeping my eyes squeezed shut and my mind stuffed full of Roar, I start to crawl further into the mattress. Left hand, right hand. I see Mitch – her blue hair trailing behind her, tangled and encrusted with shells. Left hand, right hand. I smell the bonfire and popcorn smell of Wininja’s cave. Left hand, right hand. Somewhere at the back of my brain I register that I should have fallen on to the attic floor by now, and that this is taking far too long, but I push the thought away and picture Roar’s night sky crammed so full of stars it looked like a bag of glitter had been thrown across black velvet.

There were millions of stars in Roar – blue, green, pink, purple – and their light was as warm as the sun. Those stars used to shine down on me and Rose when we were floating in Mitch’s lagoon. They made patterns on our skin.

I freeze, snapping back to where I am. But something has changed. My hands aren’t pressing into a soft and spongy mattress any more. They’re touching something cold and hard. Holding my breath, I feel around. The mattress has gone. I’m kneeling on stone!

Icy fear rushes through me. This is what I wanted to happen, wasn’t it? I wanted to crawl into the camp bed and for something magical to happen, but now rock is digging into my hands and knees, I’m so scared my whole body is shaking.

I force myself to open my eyes. Thick blackness surrounds me, but far ahead I can just make out a tiny pinprick of green light. And the air isn’t dusty any more. It’s cool and damp, and I can hear rushing water.

I start to crawl towards the green light. My head scrapes against the roof of the tunnel and rocks graze my hands, but I don’t stop until I reach the very end and the green light has become a curtain of leaves with light shining through it. Before I can change my mind I push my head through the leaves and crawl out into dazzling sunshine.

I blink and rub my eyes. I’m on a narrow ledge. I lean forward and see that the ledge is set into a cliff and far below me is a deep round pool. Trying to ignore the terrifying drop, I look straight ahead. I’m staring across a valley with a river winding through it. The river passes forests and mountains and glittering lakes. One side of the valley is bright and alive and bursting with leaves and colour, while the other half is shadowy and barren. The river has a shifting, swirling rainbow shine on its surface and it leads to a wild sea. Far, far away, beyond the sea, are snow-topped mountains.

Gazing at this unbelievable sight, I should feel lost and scared. But I don’t . . . because this is Roar.

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