‘They all signed it,‘ he said, quietly. ‘He must have got a copy from the paper, and they all signed it.’

‘What was that, dear?’

‘This photo.’

‘Oh, yes. He showed it to me once. That was him in the war, you know.’

Johnny turned it over again and found Atkins, T. He looked a bit like Bigmac, with jughandle ears and a second-hand haircut. He was grinning. They all were. All the same kind of grin.

‘He used to talk about them a lot,’ said the nurse.

‘Yes.’

‘His funeral’s on Monday. At the crem. One of us always goes, you know. Well, you have to, don’t you? It’s only right.’

He dreamed, on Saturday night . . .

He dreamed of Rod Serling walking along Blackbury High Street, but as he was trying to speak impressively to the camera, Bigmac, Yo-less and Wobbler started to peer over his shoulder and say things like, ‘What’s this book about, then?’ and ‘Turn over the page, I’ve read this bit’ . . .

He dreamed of thumbs . . .

And woke up, and stared at the ceiling. He still hadn’t replaced the bits of cotton that held up the plastic model of the Space Shuttle. It was forever doing a nosedive.

He was pretty sure other kids didn’t have lives like this. It just kept on happening. Just when he thought he’d got a grip on the world, and saw how it all worked, it sprang something new on him, and what he thought was the whole thing, ticking away nicely, turned out to be just some kind of joke.

His grandad had mumbled a very odd message when Johnny had arrived home. As far as he could understand, Wobbler or someone had been making odd phone calls. His grandad had also muttered something about conjuring tricks.

He looked at his clock radio. It said 2.45. There was no chance of going back to sleep. He tried Radio Blackbury.

‘—yowsahyowsahyowsah! And the next caller on Uncle Mad Jim’s bodaaaacious Problem Corner iiiissss—’

Johnny froze. He had a feeling . . .

‘William Stickers, Mad Jim.’

‘Hi, Bill. You sound a bit depressed, to me.’

‘It’s worse than that. I’m dead, Jim.’

‘Wow! I can see that could be a real downer, Bill. Care to tell us about it?’

‘You sound very understanding, comrade. Well . . .’

Of course he’s understanding, thought Johnny as he struggled into his dressing gown. Everyone phones up Mad Jim in the middle of the night. Last week he talked for twenty minutes to a lady who thought she was a roll of wallpaper. You sound totally sane compared to most of them.

He snatched up his Walkman and switched on its radio so that he could go on listening as he ran down the stairs and out into the night.

‘—and now I just heard there isn’t even ANY Soviet Union any more. What happened? ’

‘Seems to me you haven’t been keeping up with current events, Bill.’