‘Check the Germans,’ Harry says knowingly. ‘Was that the mess back there, was it?’

‘Mess?’ Roland asks meekly.

‘Are you hungry too?’ Safa asks Harry.

‘Aye.’

‘Can we get some food and come back?’ Safa asks.

‘Come back?’ Roland asks, then seems to snap back to life. ‘Yes, yes of course. You must be famished. Er . . . you are all staying remarkably calm.’

‘No point in panicking, sir,’ Harry says.

‘Quite,’ Roland says. That hopeful look once more creeping back on his face. ‘I say, shall we continue our conversation for a little bit more and then break for food? Would that be okay?’

‘Sir,’ Harry says with an air of disappointment.

‘So fifty years from twenty sixty-one. So that’s what . . . er . . . twenty-one . . . one one?’ Safa says.

‘That’s correct,’ Roland says.

‘Twenty-one eleven?’ Ben asks, working it out.

‘Yes,’ Roland nods.

‘I just said that,’ Safa says.

‘You said twenty-one one one.’

‘Which is the same as twenty-one eleven,’ Safa says.

‘Mine was cooler.’

‘Two thousand one hundred and eleven,’ she says. ‘No’ – she thinks for a second – ‘twenty-one hundred and eleven . . .’

‘Mine was still cooler.’

‘Two triple one!’ she states. ‘That’s cooler than twenty-one eleven.’

‘Nah, twenty-one eleven.’

‘What do you call it?’ Safa asks, looking at a stunned Roland.

‘Er, twenty-one eleven,’ he says meekly. ‘But two triple one is just as good.’

‘Patronising,’ Safa says with a huff.

‘No, gosh no . . . not patronising but, er . . . I like them both,’ Roland says.

‘Harry?’ Ben asks, leaning forward to look past Safa. ‘Twenty-one eleven or two triple one?’

‘Was that fruit back there, sir?’ Harry asks.

‘Yes . . . but could we please carry on?’ Roland asks, shaking his head for a second before continuing. ‘We—’

‘So when does it happen?’ Safa asks.

‘Pardon?’

‘When does the world end?’

‘He just said,’ Ben says to her. ‘Twenty-one eleven.’

‘No, he said they found the world was over in twenty-one eleven, not that the world ended in twenty-one eleven.’

‘Good point,’ Ben concedes, his mind whirling so fast he was missing some of the obvious connections.

‘So when does it happen?’ she asks again.

‘We, er . . .’ Roland starts to say in a voice much too slow for Safa.

‘What you do,’ Safa says, edging forward on her seat again, ‘is go back to twenty-one ten and check the world. If it’s all blown up then keep going back a year until you find when it isn’t all blown up and you’ve narrowed down the year . . . then what you do is—’

‘Safa,’ Ben cuts through when she finally draws breath. ‘Maybe we should just listen?’

‘We did listen,’ she says. ‘He said the world blows up in two triple one and—’

‘Twenty-one eleven . . .’

‘Whatever,’ she tuts. ‘So what I’m saying is they should go back a year at a time until they find out when the bad guys do the bad thing and phone it in.’

‘Germans,’ Harry adds with a nod at Roland.