‘Um. Sorry?’ Johnny hesitated, and then a few vague memories slid into place. ‘You mean like . . . Russia and stuff? When they shot the Tsar? There was something on television about that.’

‘Oh, I know that. That was just the start. What’s been happening since nineteen forty-nine? I expect the global revolution is well established, yes? No one tells us anything in here.’

‘Well . . . there’s been a lot of revolutions, I think,’ said Johnny. ‘All over the place . . .’

‘Capital!’

‘Um.’ It occurred to Johnny that people doing quite a lot of the revolutions recently had said they were overthrowing communist oppressors, but William Stickers looked so eager he didn’t quite know how to say this. ‘Tell you what . . . can you read a newspaper if I bring you one?’

‘Of course. But it’s hard to turn the pages.’

‘Um. Are there a lot of you in here?’

‘Hah! Most of them don’t bother. They just aren’t prepared to make the effort.’

‘Can you . . . you know . . . walk around? You could get into things for free.’

William Stickers looked slightly panicky.

‘It’s hard to go far,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s not really allowed.’

‘I read in a book once that ghosts can’t move much,’ said Johnny.

‘Ghost? I’m just . . . dead.’ He waved a transparent finger in the air. ‘Hah! But they’re not getting me that way,’ he snapped. ‘Just because it turns out that I’m still . . . here after I’m dead, doesn’t mean I’m prepared to believe in the whole stupid nonsense, you know. Oh, no. Logical, rational thought, boy. And don’t forget the newspaper.’

William Stickers faded away a bit at a time. The last thing to go was the finger, still demonstrating its total disbelief in life after death.

Johnny waited around a bit, but no other dead people seemed to be ready to make an appearance.

He felt he was being watched in some way that had nothing to do with eyes. It wasn’t exactly creepy, but it was uncomfortable. You didn’t dare scratch your bottom or pick your nose.

For the first time he really began to notice the cemetery. It had a leftover look, really.

Behind it there was the canal, which wasn’t used any more, except as a rubbish dump; old prams and busted televisions and erupting settees lined its banks like monsters from the Garbage Age. Then on one side there was the crematorium and its Garden of Remembrance, which was all right in a gravel-pathed, keep-off-the-grass sort of way. In front was Cemetery Road, which had once had houses on the other side of it; now there was the back wall of the Bonanza Carpet (Save £££££!!) Warehouse. There was still an old phone box and a letter box, which suggested that once upon a time this had been a place that people thought of as home. But now it was just a road you cut through to get to the bypass from the industrial estate.