I stand on my bed and throw myself forward on to the floor. That doesn’t hurt either (it wasn’t very far and I put my hands out to make it better without meaning to), but I hear Dad’s voice from downstairs saying, ‘Joseph? What are you up to in there?’ and that brings me back to myself.

Of course I’m alive. I’m here, at home, and my dad is downstairs. I’m a massive idiot.

‘I’m fine!’ I shout. Then I add, ‘Fell out of bed!’ to make him laugh, which he does, loudly.

The bedroom door opens and Gus is there, looking at me lying on the floor.

‘Fell out of bed?’ he says. ‘You massive idiot.’

‘I know!’ I stand up. ‘I’m a massive idiot because I take after my brother.’

It’s a lame thing to say, but I don’t care because I’m happy. I am so happy that I want to sing. I have my dad and my brother right here. I’m not quite sure where Mum is, but I know she’s alive, and she loves me. I am here and I’m alive.

‘Ready to go and play at Enzo’s house?’ says Gus.

Enzo. I had forgotten.

After school I find that, just as in my dream, there’s a girl sitting in the cupboard at Beachview. She’s right next to the pink blanket I keep there, but she doesn’t know it’s there because that blanket is probably in landfill in 2019.

She is from 2019. I am dead. It wasn’t a dream.

If I’m not dead then I’m very, very missing. I’ve been missing for twenty years, and that means that I’m dead.

I must be.

‘Are you Ariel?’ I say, remembering her name only as it comes out of my mouth. She nods. ‘From the future?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, and for a moment I’m pleased with myself. I remembered! I got it right.

But then – ‘I’m dead,’ I say, and it falls on me like an apartment block in an earthquake. It’s so enormous, so impossible that it crushes me, smothers me, stops me entirely. I’m dead. You don’t go anywhere from there. It’s final. It’s the last thing that happens.

And yet here I am.

‘We don’t know you’re dead,’ she says.

‘I thought it was a dream. I wanted it to be a dream.’

I pinch myself and again it doesn’t hurt. She shifts along so I can sit down, but when she puts out a hand it goes through me. I suppose we could sit right on top of one another because we’re ghosts in each other’s worlds, but that would be weird, and the last thing we need now is more weird.

‘What day is it for you?’ she says.