He’d quite liked Ms Partridge. She was nasty. The two social workers he’d had before had made out that he was wet, whereas Ms Partridge made it clear that if she had her way Bigmac would have been strangled at birth. You could respect someone like that. They didn’t make you feel like some kind of a useless nerd.

Something prodded at his memory.

‘When is this?’ he said, rubbing his head.

‘You can start by telling me where you live—’

The policeman leaned closer. There was something about Bigmac that bothered him.

‘What do you mean, when is this?’ he said.

‘What year?’

The policeman had fairly fixed ideas about what should happen to car thieves, but they usually knew what year it was.

‘It’s 1941,’ he said, and straightened up. His eyes narrowed. ‘Who’s the captain of the England cricket team?’ he said.

Bigmac blinked.

‘What? How should I know?’

‘Who won the Boat Race last year?’

‘What boat race?’

The policeman looked again.

‘And what’s that on your belt?’

Bigmac blinked again, and looked down.

‘I didn’t nick it,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s only a transistor, anyway.’

‘What’s that wire going into your ear?’

‘Don’t be daft. It’s only the earphone—’

The policeman’s hand landed on his shoulder with the kind of thud that suggested it wasn’t going to let go in a hurry.

‘You come along with me, Fritz,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

Bigmac’s brain drifted into focus. He looked at the uniform, and at the crowd behind it, and it began to dawn on him that he was all alone and a long, long way from home.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday, either,’ he said. ‘Does that help?’

Johnny, Kirsty and Yo-less sat in a little garden. As far as Johnny could tell, it was where part of the ring road and a traffic island were going to be one day. Now it contained a bench and some geraniums.

‘They’ll blow up Paradise Street tonight,’ said Johnny.

‘Where’s that?’ said Yo-less.

‘Here. It’s where the sports centre was … will be, I mean.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Yes. I did say. It got blown up. And you know the funny thing about it?’

‘There’s something funny about it?’ said Kirsty.

‘It was by accident! The Germans had meant to bomb the big goods yard at Slate! But they got a bit lost and the weather turned bad and they saw the railway yards here and dropped all their bombs and went home. Everyone was in bed because the air raid sirens didn’t go off in time!’

‘All right, all right, I know, you’ve told me before, and all about Adolf and Stalin. It’s very sad but you shouldn’t get worked up about it,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’s history. That sort of thing happens in history.’

‘Aren’t you listening? It hasn’t happened yet. This is now. It’s going to happen tonight.’

They stared at the geraniums.

‘Why haven’t we gone back yet?’ said Kirsty. ‘We’ve been here ages.’