The High Street was what Blackbury District Council called a Pedestrian Precinct and Amenity Area, although no one was quite sure what the amenities were, or even what an amenity was. Perhaps it was the benches, cunningly designed so that people wouldn’t sit on them for too long and make the place untidy. Or maybe it was the flowerbeds, which sprouted a regular crop of the hardy perennial Crisp Packet. It couldn’t have been the ornamental trees. They’d looked quite big and leafy on the original drawings a few years ago, but what with cutbacks and one thing and another, no one had actually got around to planting any.

The sodium lights made the night cold as ice.

The newspaper blew on again, and wrapped itself around a yellow litter bin in the shape of a fat dog with its mouth open.

Something landed in an alleyway and groaned.

‘Tick tick tick! Tickety Boo! Ow! National … Health … Service …’

The interesting thing about worrying about things, thought Johnny Maxwell, was the way there was always something new to worry about.

His friend Kirsty said it was because he was a natural worrier, but that was because she didn’t worry about anything. She got angry instead, and did things about it, whatever it was. He really envied the way she decided what it was and knew exactly what to do about it almost instantly. Currently she was saving the planet most evenings, and foxes at weekends.

Johnny just worried. Usually they were the same old worries – school, money, whether you could get AIDS from watching television, and so on. But occasionally one would come out of nowhere like a Christmas Number One and knock all the others down a whole division.

Right now, it was his mind.

‘It’s not exactly the same as being ill,’ said Yo-less, who’d read all the way through his mother’s medical encyclopedia.

‘It’s not being ill at all. If lots of bad things have happened to you it’s healthy to be depressed,’ said Johnny. ‘That’s sense, isn’t it? What with the business going down the drain, and Dad pushing off, and Mum just sitting around smoking all the time and everything. I mean, going around smiling and saying, “Oh, it’s not so bad” – that would be mental.’

‘That’s right,’ said Yo-less, who’d read a bit about psychology as well.

‘My gran went mental,’ said Bigmac. ‘She— ow!’

‘Sorry,’ said Yo-less. ‘I wasn’t looking where I put my foot but, fair’s fair, you weren’t either.’

‘It’s just dreams,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s nothing mad.’

Although, he had to admit, it was dreams during the day, too. Dreams so real that they filled his eyes and ears.

The planes …

The bombs …

And the fossil fly. Why that? There’d be these nightmares, and in the middle of it, there’d be the fly. It was a tiny one, in a piece of amber. He’d saved up for it and done a science project on it. But it wasn’t even scary-looking. It was just a fly from millions of years ago. Why was that in a nightmare?