‘Only after you told me what it was,’ said Yo-less. ‘Before you told me what I was listening for, it just sounded like someone going ayip-ayeepmwerpayeep.’¹

‘They shouldn’t do that sort of thing on records,’ said Wobbler defensively. ‘Gettin’ at impressionable minds.’

‘The point I’m making,’ said Yo-less, ‘is that you’ve got to help your friends, right?’ He turned to Johnny. ‘Now, personally, I think you’re very nearly totally disturbed and suffering from psychosomatica and hearing voices and seeing delusions,’ he said, ‘and probably ought to be locked up in one of those white jackets with the stylish long sleeves. But that doesn’t matter, ’cos we’re friends.’

‘I’m touched,’ said Johnny. ‘Probably,’ said Wobbler, ‘but we don’t care, do we, guys?’

*

His mother was out, at her second job. Grandad was watching Video Whoopsy.

‘Grandad?’

‘Yes?’

‘How famous was William Stickers?’

‘Very famous. Very famous man,’ said the old man, without looking around.

‘I can’t find him in the encyclopedia.’

‘Very famous man, was William Stickers. Haha! Look, the man’s just fallen off his bicycle! Right into the bush!’

Johnny took down the volume L-MIN, and was silent for a few minutes. Grandad had a complete set of huge encyclopedias. No one really knew why. Somewhere in 1950 or something, Grandad had said to himself ‘get educated’, and had bought the massive books on hire purchase. He’d never opened them. He’d just built a bookcase for them. Grandad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, education leaked out, like radioactivity.

‘How about Mrs Sylvia Liberty?’

‘Who’s she?’

‘She was a suffragette, I think. Votes for women and things.’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘She’s not in here under “Liberty” or “Suffragette”.’

‘Never heard of her. Whoa, look here, the cat’s fallen in the pond—!’

‘All right . . . how about Mr Antonio Vicenti?’

‘What? Old Tony Vicenti? What’s he up to now?’

‘Was he famous for anything?’

For a moment, Grandad’s eyes left the TV screen and focused on the past instead.

‘He ran a joke shop in Alma Street where the multi-storey car park is now. You could buy stink bombs and itchy-powder. And he used to do conjuring tricks at kids’ parties when your mum was a girl.’

‘Was he a famous man?’

‘All the kids knew him. Only children’s entertainer in these parts, see. They all knew his tricks. They used to shout out: “It’s in your pocket!” And things like that. Alma Street. And Paradise Street, that was there, too. And Balaclava Terrace. That’s where I was born. Number Twelve, Balaclava Terrace. All under the car park now. Oh, dear . . . he’s going to fall off that building . . .’

‘So he wasn’t really famous. Not like really famous.’

‘All the kids knew him. Prisoner of war in Germany, he was. But he escaped. And he married . . . Ethel Plover, that’s right. Never had any kids. Used to do conjuring tricks and escaping from things. Always escaping from things, he was.’