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"This," said Kirsty, "is no ordinary shopping trolley."
"It's got Tesco written on it," Joh
"Obviously it's still switched on or something," Kirsty went on, ignoring him.
"And that's time travel, is it?" said Joh
Kasandra prodded a bag.
The air flickered and changed.
Kasandra looked around her. The garage hadn't changed in any way. Except
"Who repaired your bike?" she said.
Joh
"You see, I notice things," said Kasandra. "I am remarkably observant. We must have gone into the future, when you've mended it."
Joh
"Let's have a look round," said Kirsty. "Obviously where we go is controlled by some factor I haven't discovered yet. If we're in the fixture, the important thing is to find out which horses are going to win races, and so on.
"Why?"
"So we can bet money on them and become rich, of course."
"I don't know how to bet!"
"One problem at a time."
Joh
"Grandad has a racing paper," he said, feeling a bit lightheaded.
"Let's go, then."
"What? Into my house?"
"Of course."
"Supposing I meet me?"
"Well, you've always been good at making friends."
Reluctantly, Joh
There was a rectangle on the floor consisting of spiky brown hairs. He wiped his feet on it, and looked at the time measurement module on the wall. It said ten past three.
The future was amazingly like the present.
"Now we've got to find a newspaper," said Kirsty.
"It won't be a lot of help," said Joh
"Don't you even have a calendar?"
"Yes. There's one on my bedside clock. I just hope I'm at school, that's all."
According to the clock, it was the third of October.
"The day before yesterday," said Joh
"Yuk. You sleep in here?" said Kirsty, looking around with an expression like a vegetarian in a sausage factory.
"Yes. It's my room."
Kirsty ran her hand over his desk, which was fairly crowded at the moment.
"What're all these photocopies and photos and things?"
"That's the project I'm doing in History. We're doing the Second World War. So I'm doing Blackbury in the war."
He tried to get between her and the desk, but Kirsty was always interested in things people didn't want her to see.
"Hey, this is you, isn't it?" she said, grabbing a sepia photograph. "Since when did you wear a uniform and a pudding-basin haircut?"
Joh
"You're so local, aren't you," said Kirsty. "I can't imagine much happening here-"
"Something did happen," said Joh
"If she is ... from the past ... why does she wear an old rara skirt and trainers?" said Kirsty.
Joh
"Nineteen people got killed! In one night!" he said. "There wasn't any warning! The only bombs that fell on Blackbury in the whole of the war! The only survivors were two goldfish in a bowl! It got blown into a tree and still had water in it! All the people got killed!"
Kirsty picked up a felt-tipped pen, but it didn't write because it had dried up. Joh
She had this infuriating habit of appearing not to notice him when he was excited about something.
"You know you've still got Thomas the Tank Engine on your wallpaper?" she said.
"What? Have I? Gosh, I hadn't realized," said Joh
"It's okay to have Thomas the Tank Engine when you're seven, and it's quite cool to have it when you're nineteen, but it's not cool at thirteen. Honestly, if I wasn't here to help from time to time, you just wouldn't have a clue."
"Grandad put it up a couple of years ago," said Joh
Then there was the click of the front door opening.
"Your grandad?" hissed Kirsty.
"He always goes shopping in town on Thursdays!" whispered Joh
"Who else has got a key?"
"Only me!"
Someone started to climb the stairs.
"But I can't meet me!" said Joh
Kirsty picked up the bedside lamp, and glanced at the design on it.
"Good grief, the Mister Men, you've still got Mister-"
"Shutupshutupshutup. What're you going to do with it?"
"Don't worry, you won't feel a thing, I learned how to do this in self-defense classes-"
The door handle turned. The door opened a fraction.
Downstairs, the phone rang.
The handle clicked back. Footsteps went downstairs again.
Joh
Kirsty looked at Joh
"Wobbler phoned," said Joh
"Were you on the phone long?"
"Don't ... think so. And I went to get a sandwich afterwards."
"Where's your phone?"
"In the front room."
"Let's go, then!"
Kirsty opened the door and darted down the stairs, with Joh
His coat was on the coat rack. He was also wearing it. He stood and stared.
"Come on," hissed Kirsty.
She was almost at the bottom when the door started to open.
Joh
He desperately wanted not to meet himself: If the entire universe exploded, people would be bound to blame him afterwards ...
... and there was a flash in front of his eyes.
The black car slid surreptitiously out of a side road just before a sign indicating that it was about to enter BLACKBURY (twi
"Nearly there, Sir John."
"Good. What time are we in?"
"Er ... quarter past eleven, sir."
"That wasn't what I meant. If time was a pair of trousers, what leg would we be in?"
It occurred to Hickson the chauffeur that this might be quite a difficult million pounds to earn.