The air flickered.

And there were no lorries, or, rather, there were lorries, snorting and hissing and waiting at the lights. The lights ahead of Johnny were green.

The trolley rolled through, wheels screaming. Johnny looked up into the puzzled faces of the drivers.

Then he risked a look behind.

The black car had vanished.

There were no other turnings off the hill. Wherever it had gone, it hadn’t got there by any means known to normal cars.

He met Kirsty’s eyes.

‘Where did it go?’ she said. ‘And what happened with the lights? Did we travel in time again?’

‘You’re wearing your mac!’ said Johnny. ‘You were wearing your old coat but now you’re wearing your mac! Something’s changed!’

She looked down, and then back up at him.

Beside the crossroads was the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall. Johnny pointed to it.

‘We can make this go into the car park!’ he shouted.

The big black Bentley jerked to a halt at the side of the road.

‘They just vanished!’ said Hickson, staring over the top of the wheel. ‘That wasn’t … this time travel stuff was it? I mean, they just vanished!’

‘I think they went from one now to another now,’ said Sir John.

‘Is that … like … these trousers you were going on about, sir?’

‘I suppose you could say they went from one knee to the other. One 1996 to another 1996.’

Hickson turned around in his seat.

‘Are you serious, sir? I saw this scientist on TV … you know, the one in the wheelchair … and there was all this stuff about other universes all crammed in, and—’

‘He’d know the proper way of talking about it,’ said Sir John. ‘For the rest of us, it’s easier to think about trousers.’

‘What shall we do now, sir?’

‘Oh, I think we wait until they come back to our now.’

‘How long’s that going to be?’

‘About two seconds, I think …’

In the shopping mall, a joke was going wrong.

‘Make me … er,’ said Bigmac, ‘make me one with pickle and onion rings and fries.’

‘Make me one with extra salad and fries, please,’ said Yo-less.

Wobbler took a long look at the girl in the cardboard hat.

‘Make me one with everything,’ he said. ‘Because … I’m going to become a Muslim!’

Bigmac and Yo-less exchanged glances.

‘Buddhist,’ said Yo-less, patiently. ‘It’s Buddhist! Make me one with everything because I’m going to become a Buddhist! It’s Buddhists that want to be one with everything. Singing “om” and all that. You mucked it up! You were practising all the way down here and you still mucked it up!’

‘Buddhists wouldn’t have the burger,’ said the girl. ‘They’d have the Jumbo Beanburger. Or just fries and a salad.’

They stared at her.

‘Vegetarianism,’ said the girl. ‘I may have to wear a paper hat but I haven’t got a cardboard brain, thank you.’ She glared at Wobbler. ‘You want a bun with everything. You want fries with that?’