‘I was an Ovalteenie when I was a little boy. That was during the war. The one against the Germans. Did I ever tell you? We used to sing along with the people on the wireless: “We are the Ov—” WHAT? Who was Countess Alice Radioni?’

‘Which war against the Germans?’

‘What? How many have we had?’

‘Two so far.’

‘Now, come ON! Radioni? It was Marconi who invented the radio!’

‘Hah! And do you know who he stole the idea from?’

‘Who cares who invented the wretched thing? Will you listen to what the living are doing?’

‘Plotting to steal our cemetery, that is what they are doing!’

‘Yes, but . . . I didn’t know that all this was going on, did you? All this music and . . . the things they were talking about! Who is Shakespeare’s Sister and why is she singing on the wireless? What is a Batman? And they said the last Prime Minister was a woman! That can’t be possible. Women can’t even vote.’

‘Yes, they can.’

‘Hurrah!’

‘Well, they couldn’t in MY time!’

‘There’s so much we don’t know!’

‘So why don’t we find out?’

The dead fell silent – or rather, more silent than usual.

‘How?’

‘The man on the wireless said you can ring the wireless station on the telephone to Discuss Problems That Affect Us All Today. A Phone-Ing Program, he said.’

‘Well?’

‘There’s a phone box out in the street.’

‘Yes, but . . . that’s . . . outside . . .’

‘Not far outside.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘The little boy stood in front of us and talked to us. And he was so frightened. And we can’t walk six feet?’

The speaker was Mr Vicenti. He looked through the crumbling railings to the street outside, with the eye of a man who’d spent much of his life escaping.

‘But this is our PLACE! This is where we BELONG!’

‘It‘s only a few steps . . .’

It wasn’t really much of a mall. But it was all there was to hang out in.

Johnny had seen films of American shopping malls. They must have different sorts of people in America, he’d thought. They all looked cool, all the girls were beautiful, and the place wasn’t crowded with little kamikaze grandmothers. Or mothers with seven children. Or Blackbury United football fans walking ten abreast singing the famous football song, ‘URRRurrrURRR-UH!’ (clapclapclap). You couldn’t hang out properly in a place like that. All you could do was hang on.

The four of them hung on in the burger bar. Yo-less carefully read the pamphlet about how no rainforests were chopped down to make beef-burgers. Bigmac had his favourite Megajumbo Fries with fifteen packets of relish.

‘Wonder if I could get a job here?’ said Wobbler.

‘No chance,’ said Bigmac. ‘The manager’d take one look at you and see where the profits would go.’

‘You saying I’m fat?’ said Wobbler.

‘Gravitationally challenged,’ said Yo-less, without looking up.