‘Thunderstorm,’ she said. ‘They always start up there.’

There was a growl in the distance.

Blackbury was a lot smaller once they were in the hills. A lot of it wasn’t there at all.

‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell everyone what they’re going to do wrong,’ said Johnny, when they paused for breath.

‘No one’d listen,’ said Yo-less. ‘Supposing someone turned up in 1996 and said they were from 2040 and started telling everyone what to do? They’d get arrested, wouldn’t they?’

Johnny looked ahead of them. The sunset sky lurked behind bars of angry cloud.

‘The listeners’ll be up at the Tumps,’ said Kirsty. ‘There’s an old windmill up there. It was some kind of look-out post during the war. Is, I mean.’

‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ said Johnny.

‘It’s different when it’s now.’

The Tumps were five mounds on top of the down. They grew heather and wortleberries. It was said that dead kings were buried there in the days when your enemy was at arm’s length rather than ten thousand feet above your head.

The clouds were getting lower. It was going to be one of those Blackbury storms, a sort of angry fog that hugged the hills.

‘You know what I’m thinking?’ said Kirsty.

‘Telephone lines,’ said Johnny. ‘They go out in thunderstorms.’

‘Right.’

‘But the policeman said there was a motorbike,’ said Yo-less.

‘Starts first time, does it?’ said Johnny. ‘I remember my grandad said that before you were qualified to ride a Blackbury Phantom you had to learn to push it fifty metres, cursing all the way. He said they were great bikes when they got started.’

‘How long is it till … you know … the bombs?’

‘About an hour.’

Which means they’re already on the way, Johnny thought. Men have walked out onto airfields and loaded bombs onto planes with names like Dorniers and Heinkels. And other men have sat round in front of a big map of England, only it’d be in German, and there’d be crayon marks around Slate. Blackbury probably wasn’t even on the map. And then they’d get up and walk out and get into the planes and take off. And men on the planes would get out their maps and draw lines on them; lines which crossed at Slate. Your mission for tonight: bomb the goods yard at Slate.

And then the roar filled his ears. The drone of the engines came up through his legs. He could taste the oil and the sweat and the stale rubber smell of the oxygen mask. His body shook with the throb of the engines and also with the thump of distant explosions. One was very close and the whole aircraft seemed to slide sideways. And he knew what the mission for tonight was. Your mission for tonight is to get home safely. It always was.

Another explosion shook the plane, and someone grabbed him.

‘What?’

‘It’s weird when you do that!’ shouted Kirsty, above the thunder. ‘Come on! It’s dangerous out here! Haven’t you got enough sense to get out of the rain?’