There’s no doubt about it: I am standing in a bedroom I don’t recognise at just after 9 a.m. on Christmas morning three whole years into the future.

I drop back down onto the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. The shock is so severe that I can’t really feel anything – my whole body is numb, and my thought process currently resembles a fish on dry land, unable to do much more than just flap pointlessly from side to side.

Is this it? Is this where I’ve finally washed up? Have I just sleepwalked through three whole years of my life and ended up here, with Alice?

I can hear her footsteps pounding back down the hallway. The bedroom door opens and she sweeps in, holding a glass of water and two small white pills.

‘God, you really don’t look good. How do you feel?’ She doesn’t bother to wait for an answer, which is probably for the best since I’m unable to give one. Instead, she presses the glass and the pills into my hands, and says, ‘Just take them, OK? I’m going to get breakfast started. They’re going to be here at half eleven.’ She snaps her fingers irritably in front of my face. ‘Ben? OK?’

‘Yeah, OK,’ I croak.

And with that, she sweeps back out of the room.

It’s still not fully light in the room, but even with the drawn curtains, I could tell how different she looks. Most obviously, her hair is much longer – the French Amélie bob she was still sporting at Marek’s wedding is long gone, and her dark blonde locks now hang down past her shoulders.

I stare at the glass of water and the pills. My head is throbbing, and I do now genuinely feel a bit sick, so I decide it’s probably a good idea to take them. As I chase them down with the lukewarm water, all that’s going through my mind is: where is Daphne? What the hell happened to land me here?

I stand up unsteadily and pull some clothes on, before venturing out into the corridor, and the not-too-distant future.

Chapter Forty-One

At first sight, 2023 doesn’t seem hugely different to 2020.

A quick glance through the upstairs window at the street below reveals a disappointing lack of hover cars, and there’s not a single jetpack to be seen either. Closer inspection of the unfamiliar phone by my bed has revealed it to be an iPhone 13 – which would be quite exciting if it wasn’t exactly the same as my old iPhone 8, albeit with a slightly shinier back.

Cars still can’t hover, people still can’t fly and Apple continues to massively rip us all off: clearly, three years is not sufficient time for the planet to undergo any genuinely seismic changes.