Will exhales noisily. ‘Do you think that we …’ The words seem absurd before he’s even uttered them. But Ms Calloway’s unfazed air keeps him talking. ‘Hypothetically speaking … do you think there’s some way we could know things are going to happen? Like, before they actually happen?’

‘Sure,’ she says, like it’s nothing. ‘It’s a well-documented fact.’

‘Really?’

‘You mean like premonitions?’

‘I mean more like somebody, something …’

‘Go on.’

‘Like, do you think there could be something trying to get messages to us? To warn us about stuff?’

‘Certainly.’ An expression flashes on her face. Satisfaction, self-congratulation almost. And in a split second it’s gone, her look of pensive concern wiping it away. ‘And – hypothetically speaking – these messages they pass on, would they always prove to be accurate?’

He skims through the times it’s happened: watching the library burn from the Martello tower; riding with Alfie and running from the police; saving Danny from being stabbed at the bowling alley; heading off whatever was going down in the bedroom at that party.

‘Yeah, always right, I think. Hypothetically.’

‘Of course.’

‘We really don’t need to talk about this.’

‘I suppose the main thing to consider in such a scenario would be what they might want from the person they’re communicating with.’

‘You keep saying they.’

‘Do I? Yes, I suppose I do.’

‘You assume it would be a person?’

‘I don’t assume anything. Who knows?’

‘You don’t seem to find this weird. Surely what I’m asking is pretty out there?’

‘I’ve heard much stranger things in my time, Will.’

‘So you think it’s possible?’

‘Sure.’ Ms Calloway closes her eyes and thinks for a moment. ‘Not only do I think it possible, I think it probably happens all the time, and always has.’

As she speaks Will feels like his brain is being ventilated. ‘But how, though?’ he says.

‘There’s a massive question! The thing is, Will, what is time? Nobody really knows. The best anyone can guess is that it doesn’t exist outside of us.’ She holds out her arms as if to indicate everybody in the world. ‘Without people to experience things happening, things changing, there is no time. So, to understand time and how it works, you’d have to understand the nature of consciousness, of what it really means when we say we exist.’

‘Cool!’ Will says, grinning. ‘So you reckon time is something we’ve just made up?’

‘Thousands of eminent scientists think along those lines, yes. Not made up exactly, but that the concept of time is all in our own heads.’

‘Surely that’s the same thing.’

‘Not at all.’ She delves through her stuffed bag, books and pens dropping to the floor. With no explanation, she pulls a claw hammer from the depths. ‘Now, if I were to smash this down on your hand, Will Parks, would it hurt?’

‘Very much so.’