Malcolm thrusts a key into the door with the red light over the top of it and leads them in. A large square room again styled in that homely fashion of bare concrete walls, floor and ceiling. The only difference is there are two free-standing, long metal poles with solid-looking weight plates at the bottom giving them stability. Two sleek black boxes like music speakers are attached to each pole. The three stare at the poles. No wires anywhere. No weird contraptions or flashing lights. Just two poles with speakers. Ben looks for the magical doorway or portal but doesn’t see anything and feels the hope rising that this really is all bullshit.

‘Where is it?’ Safa asks.

‘Quite underwhelming, isn’t it?’ Roland says, walking past them to the poles.

‘That?’ Safa asks, pointing at the poles then looking at Konrad and Malcolm like she’s about to start hitting them. Ben hopes she does. He’ll even help. Not that she needs his help, mind.

‘Let them set up, Miss Patel,’ Roland says as Malcolm pulls a tablet computer from a pocket and starts thumbing the screen to life while Konrad moves apart the poles, which slide on castors to roughly the width of a doorway. He then loosens the holding bolt on one of the speakers and slides it up the pole, pauses, looks at Harry, then pushes it higher before stopping and tightening the bolt. He does the same thing on the other side until two sets of the speakers are opposite each other at the top and bottom, forming a square.

‘Activating,’ Malcolm says, looking up as a blue square of iridescent light comes to life formed between the four corners made by the positions of the speakers. It’s beautiful, with shimmering hues of faint colours rippling across the surface.

‘Fuck me,’ Ben murmurs at the mesmerising sight. A solid wall of light of such a shade of blue but with every colour in the spectrum of light rippling through it. Perfectly blended too, and just that alone is a sight to see, but the way it bathes the room in colour instantly makes him think back to the light he saw in the tunnel at Holborn.

Konrad stares at it for a second then turns to them. ‘You go through that and you’re there,’ he says simply.

‘Are you being serious?’ Safa asks them both. ‘That is a time machine?’ She points in disbelief while Harry folds his arms and starts gently frowning.

‘Yes, Miss Patel,’ Malcolm says, dropping his eyes back to the tablet.

‘That is it,’ Roland says. ‘Simple, isn’t it? But you wanted proof.’

‘We go through that and we can travel in time?’ Ben asks, waiting for Safa to start punching people.

‘Yes, Mr Ryder.’

‘Okay.’ Ben shrugs and steps forward, ready to prove him wrong, but also with an awful sinking sensation that this is about to get a whole lot worse. ‘Go on then.’