We had dinner late. Even Friday was vaguely impressed by the three bullet holes in the table. They were so close they almost looked like one.

When he saw them, he said, “Nice grouping, Mum.”

“Firearms are no joking matter, young man.”

“That’s our Thursday,” said Landen with a smile. “When she shoots up our furniture, she does as little damage as possible.”

I looked at them all and laughed. It was an emotional release, and tears sprang to my eyes. I helped myself to more salad and regarded Friday. There was still the possibility of his replacement by the-Friday-that-could-have-been hanging over him. The thing was, I couldn’t do anything about it. There’s never anywhere to hide from the ChronoGuard. But the other Friday had told me I had forty-eight hours until they might attempt such a thing, and that wasn’t up until midmorning the day after tomorrow.

“Fri,” I said, “have you thought any more about the time industry?”

“Lots,” he said, “and the answer’s still no.”

Landen and I exchanged looks.

“Have you ever wondered,” remarked Friday in a languid monotone from behind a curtain of oily hair, “how nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?”

I smiled. Dopey witticisms at least showed he was trying to be clever, even if for the greater part of the day he was asleep.

“Yes,” I replied, “and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.”

“I’m serious,” he said, mildly annoyed.

“Sorry!” I replied. “It’s just difficult to know what you’re thinking when I can’t see your face. I might as well converse to the side of a yak.”

He parted his hair so I could see his eyes. He looked a lot like his father did at that age. Not that I knew him then, of course, but from photographs.

“Nostalgia used to have a minimum twenty years before it kicked in,” he said in all seriousness, “but now it’s getting shorter and shorter. By the late eighties, people were doing seventies stuff, but by the mid-nineties the eighties-revival thing was in full swing. It’s now 2002, and already people are talking about the nineties—soon nostalgia will catch up with the present and we won’t have any need for it.”

“Good thing, too, if you ask me,” I said. “I got rid of all my seventies rubbish as soon as I could and never regretted it for a second.”

There was an indignant plock from Pickwick.

“Present company excepted.”

“I think the seventies are underrated,” said Landen. “Admittedly, fashion wasn’t terrific, but there’s been no better decade for sitcoms.”

“Where’s Jenny?”

“I took her dinner up to her,” said Friday. “She said she needed to do her homework.”