“Then why is your finger on it?”

He looked down. There it was, his finger, resting on the big red button like it had no intention of ever moving. He frowned. He couldn’t remember putting it there and yet… yet it seemed there was no other possible place he could put it. His finger belonged on that button.

“I’m sorry,” Conor said. “I’m not feeling well.”

“Conor Delaney,” said the man, “take your finger off the button.”

And Conor almost did it. Without thinking, his finger rose a fraction before the weight of his obligation forced it back down again.

Obligation? What obligation? What the hell was going on?

“How did you do that?” he asked the man. “How did you make me do that?”

The man made a sound, like a dissatisfied grunt, and it was the girl who spoke. “How did you disobey? Did you take a name?”

“What?” said Conor. “What do you mean?”

“How did you disobey?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, do you understand? I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here.”

“They’re saying the world will end,” said the girl.

This stopped Conor for a moment. “What?”

“They’re saying the world will end,” the girl repeated. “Did you hear that?”

“Are you… are you talking about that Mayan thing? What about it? The Mayan calendar ends on the twenty-first of December. So what? It’s a calendar. They ran out of room, or they stopped calculating, or a new cycle begins again or something… I’m sorry, what does that have to do with anything? It’s nonsense.”

“Do you know what a Sensitive is, Conor?” the girl asked. “It’s a psychic. You believe in psychics?”

“No,” said Conor. “I don’t believe in astrology, either, or tarot cards, or palm reading.”

The girl nodded. “Palm reading is silly. So is astrology. Most tarot-card readers haven’t a clue what they’re doing. I met one once who assured me I had a happy life ahead of me – so she’s pretty obviously an idiot. But psychics have been predicting the end of the world, Conor, to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar.”

“So?”

“So we think the end of the world starts here,” said the man.

Conor frowned. “In Ireland? You think the end of the world starts here in this country?”

“Actually, I think it starts here in this kitchen.”

Conor blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I can be, but rarely am.”