‘We are,’ he says. ‘Straight to business! I like it. Yes. I call it glitching. My theory is that it’s because time and space are entirely different from everything they tell you at school, and nothing is real. I think the world is computer-generated, or someone’s plaything. Whatever it is, there’s something wrong with the program and one day it’ll be fixed. Or it might be to do with the upcoming millennium. The numbers changing. Everything going wrong before that happens. Though the numbers are artificial, aren’t they? Just a form of order that humans have attempted to impose on time. Which lends credibility to the simulation theory. So, what’s with you, Joe?’

I tell him my story as briefly as I can, but when I get to Ariel he nearly falls out of the tree.

‘Say that again,’ he says, pointing at me.

‘I meet a girl from 2019 every day. She’s trying to solve what happens to me. She’s met my family in her world. My brother and his family. My dad.’

‘Is this true, Joe?’ he says, looking at me in a condescending way. ‘Or do you think you’ve concocted it to comfort yourself?’

‘It’s true!’ I’m annoyed by that. ‘I can tell you what 2019 is like.’

‘Yeah, but you could say anything because I can’t check.’ Leo looks at me suspiciously. ‘I’ve never known anyone meet someone from the future. If this is real could you bring her here? If.’

‘Dunno. If she wants to we could try. It would have to be a Saturday because she has school. It’s Saturday for her tomorrow, but she’s going to London to look up the guy who we think might have killed me.’

We stay in the tree for a while, but I soon realize that just because someone is a ghost like you, you don’t have to become instant friends. Leo is spiky and seems put out by the fact that I have more to tell him than he has to tell me. I don’t bond with him like I did with Lara. His glitch theory is just that: a very thin theory. We swap last-day stories: he assumes that he’s going to die on a train or be pushed under one, but his day fades out just before he reaches the station.

‘Want me to get Ariel to look you up?’ I say because it seems only polite. ‘She did it for Lara and found her granddaughter.’