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there in the cage with
them, bawling those four words with eye-popping fury. Hannah turned and found herself staring up at Armitage Shank. His moustache was still waxed, but other than that he was now in his off-stage
outfit: a pink velour tracksuit and lime-green flip-flops. It isn’t easy to look scary in a pink velour tracksuit and lime-green flip-flops, but Armitage managed it.
    Hannah looked back at Billy, whose mouth was opening and closing with no sound coming out.
    ‘WELL?’ Armitage demanded.
    ‘Healing,’ said Billy, quickly. ‘I said Narcissus’s paw is
healing
.’
    ‘Hmmmm,’ said Armitage, turning his attention to Hannah, eyeing her up and down as if she was a corn on the cob and he was pondering which end to gobble first Who’s
this?’ he sneered. A new
friend
?’
    You may have noticed that dog walkers usually carry small plastic bags. You may also have noticed the rather unusual way that dog walkers carry these bags when they are full, using only the tips
of their fingers, as if they don’t really want to be holding them. This is the way Armitage pronounced the word
friend
.

    Billy didn’t reply. He shuffled further back into the corner of the cage. Hannah felt herself doing the same thing.
    Armitage looked at Hannah and spoke again, quietly now, but his quiet voice was somehow even scarier than his loud one. ‘Because you ought to know that we don’t have
friends
here. You people aren’t our
friends
. You’re our audience.’
    Hannah cleared her throat. Her voice felt wobbly and thin, but she tried to speak as confidently as she could. ‘Mr Shank,’ she said, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but
I’m afraid you’re mistaken, because Billy is my friend and I’m his.’
    Armitage blinked at Hannah, appearing surprised that a creature so insignificant was even capable of speech, let alone of contradicting him.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked, in a tone of voice that used politeness in the way chefs use a cleaver.
    ‘Pffffffffp,’ said Narcissus. And not with his mouth.
    An extraordinary smell filled the cage, a cross between tear gas, sewage, curdled milk, egg sandwich and pickled herring. Hannah’s eyes began to run, her nose streamed and her throat
constricted. Armitage coughed, his stomach jerking as if he was struggling not to vomit. Billy didn’t move, apart from a faint twitch of one nostril. Over the years, he had developed an
immunity – almost a fondness – for Narcissus’s gastric releases.
    ‘And we’ve got some important things to do,’ Hannah continued, encouraged by the camel’s contribution to her argument. ‘So if you’ll excuse us, I’m
afraid we have to go.’
    Hannah reached out and grabbed Billy’s hand. It felt cold and stiff, but she gripped hard and pulled, yanking him onto his feet and hauling him out of the cage.
    Armitage spun on his heel and sprinted after them, but within seconds a dog leapt out from under a caravan and grabbed him by the leg of his tracksuit, toppling him into a patch of
mud. 19
    ‘My tracksuit!’ he yelped. ‘MY TRACKSUIT! MY TRACKSUIT!’
    If there was one thing Armitage hated even more than being contradicted by children, gassed by camels and outwitted by civilians, it was getting his clothes dirty.
    Hannah and Billy darted across the park, running as fast as they could, out of sight and into the trees. They didn’t stop until they reached Hannah’s secret hideaway high up in the
oak.

    From far away, they could hear the distant sound of a tiny voice shouting very loudly.
    ‘MY TRACKSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUI I I I I I I I I I I I I IT!!!’
    ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ said Billy, when he eventually got his breath back.
    ‘Neither can I,’ said Hannah.
    ‘I’ve never seen anyone stand up to him before.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Never,’ he said solemnly.
    ‘What do you think he’ll do?’
    ‘What can he do? He doesn’t even know who you are.’
    Hannah looked down, her eye drawn by the casual, loping