‘Enhanced,’ said Bigmac.

Wobbler’s lips moved as he tried these out. ‘I’d rather be fat,’ he said. ‘Can I finish up your onion rings?’

‘Anyway, there’s loads of people want jobs here,’ said Bigmac. ‘You have to have three A-levels.’

‘What, just to make burgers?’

‘No other jobs around,’ said Bigmac. ‘They’re shutting all the factories around here. Nothing to do. No one’s making anything any more.’

‘Someone’s making something,’ said Wobbler. ‘What about all the stuff in the shops?’

‘That’s all made in Taiwanaland or somewhere. Hah! What sort of future are we going to have, eh? That’s right, eh? Johnny?’

‘What?’

‘You’ve just been staring at nothing the whole time, you know that?’

‘Yeah, what’s happened?’ said Wobbler. ‘Some dead people come in for a takeaway?’

‘No,’ said Johnny.

‘What’re you thinking about, then?’

‘Thumbs,’ said Johnny, still staring at the wall.

‘What?’

‘What?’ said Johnny, waking up.

‘What about thumbs?’

‘Oh . . . nothing.’

‘My mother said last night that there’s a lot of people angry about the cemetery being sold,’ said Yo-less. ‘Everyone’s moaning about it. And Pastor William says anyone who builds on there will be cursed unto the seventh generation.’

‘Yes, but he always says that kind of thing,’ said Wobbler. ‘Anyway, United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings probably don’t worry about that sort of thing. They’ve probably got a Vice-President in Charge of Being Cursed.’

‘And he probably gets his secretary to deal with it,’ said Bigmac.

‘It won’t stop anything, anyway,’ said Yo-less. ‘There’s bulldozers just the other side of the fence.’

‘Anyone know what United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings do?’ said Wobbler.

‘It said in the paper that they’re a multinational information-retrieval and enhancement facility,’ said Yo-less. ‘It said on the news it’ll provide three hundred jobs.’

‘For all the people who used to work at the old rubber boot factory?’ said Bigmac.

Yo-less shrugged. ‘That’s how it goes,’ he said. ‘You all right, Johnny?’

‘What?’

‘You OK? You’re staring at the wall.’

‘What? Oh. Yeah. I’m OK.’

‘He’s upset about the dead soldiers,’ said Wobbler.

Yo-less leaned across the table.

‘Look . . . that’s all in the past, right? It’s just gone. It’s a shame they died but . . . well . . . they’d be dead anyway, wouldn’t they? It’s just history. It’s nothing to do with . . . well, with now.’

Mrs Ivy Witherslade was talking to her sister in the phone box on Cemetery Road when someone knocked impatiently on the glass, and that was odd, because there was no one there. But she felt very cold and suddenly uneasy, as though she was walking on someone’s grave. She stopped telling her sister about her legs and what the doctor said about them, and went home quickly.

If Johnny had been there, he would have heard what happened next. But he wasn’t, so everyone else would have just heard the wind, and perhaps, just perhaps, the faintest of arguments:

‘You should know, Mr Fletcher. YOU invented it.’