‘You’re wrong. They are here and they have got a vote,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve been working it out. In my head. It’s called tradition. And they outvote us twenty to one.’

Everyone went quiet. Nearly as quiet as the unseen audience in Screen K.

Then Mr Atterbury started to clap. Someone else joined in – Johnny saw it was the nurse from Sunshine Acres. Pretty soon everyone was clapping, in a polite yet firm way.

Mr Atterbury stood up again.

‘Mr Atterbury, sit down,’ said the chairman. ‘I am running this meeting, you know.’

‘I am afraid this does not appear to be the case,’ said Mr Atterbury. ‘I’m standing up and I’m going to speak. The boy is right. Too much has been taken away, I do know that. You dug up the High Street. It had a lot of small shops. People lived there. Now it’s all walkways and plastic signs and people are afraid of it at night. Afraid of the town where they live! I’d be ashamed of that, if I was you. And we had a coat of arms for the town, up on the Town Hall. Now we’ve got some kind of plastic logo thing. And you took the old allotments and built the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall and all the little shops went out of business. And they were beautiful, those allotments.’

‘They were a mess!’

‘Oh, yes. A beautiful mess. Home-made greenhouses made of old window frames nailed together. Old men sitting out in front of their sheds in old chairs. Vegetables and dogs and children all over the place. I don’t know where all those people went, do you? And then you knocked down a lot of houses and built the big tower block where no one wants to live and named it after a crook.’

‘I didn’t even live here in those days,’ said the chairman. ‘Besides, it’s generally agreed that the Joshua N’Clement block was a . . . misplaced idea.’

‘A bad idea, you mean.’

‘Yes, if you must put it like that.’

‘So mistakes can be made, can they?’

‘Nevertheless, the plain fact is that we have to build for the future—’

‘I’m very glad to hear you say that, madam chairman, because I’m sure you’ll agree that the most successful buildings have got very deep foundations.’

There was another round of applause. The people on the platform looked at one another.

‘I feel I have no alternative but to close the meeting,’ said the chairman stiffly. ‘This was supposed to be an informative occasion.’

‘I think it has been,’ said Mr Atterbury.

‘But you can’t close the meeting,’ said Johnny.

‘Indeed, I can!’

‘You can’t,’ said Johnny, ‘because this is a public hall, and we’re all public, and no one’s done anything wrong.’

‘Then we shall leave, and there will really be no point in the meeting!’ said the chairman. She swept up her papers and stalked across the platform, down the steps and across the hall. The rest of the platform party, with one or two helpless glances at the audience, followed her.