He bunked the afternoon’s lessons and got the bus straight over. It’s not the first time this has happened, of course. And she’s always made it home again, even if she is invariably set back from where she was before.

The door to the room next to Nain’s opens and a woman in a blue top with a white band at the neck steps out, followed by an elderly man. She clutches a bible in one hand and holds his shoulder with the other. The stooped old guy thanks her and makes the sign of the cross on his chest.

‘Be lovely to believe in something, wouldn’t it?’ Will’s mum says quietly.

‘S’pose.’

‘Times like these. Must make things so much … easier. Nicer.’

The chaplain smiles at each of them in turn as she walks away.

‘Maybe,’ Will mumbles.

He’d been planning to go round to Nain’s tonight. Extra shifts at Smugglers have kept him away all week, but he needs to talk to her.

The next morning, there had seemed something almost unreal about the day the library burned. Will found it somehow necessary to take a walk there and survey the damage. He was faced with mounds of bricks and hunks of timber blackened like coal. The sour stench of water-logged carbon could be smelt for several streets. The scene gave Will two things: the chance to take the post-apocalyptic photos he’d missed out on the day before, and confirmation he hadn’t completely lost the plot.

He got to thinking about an article he’d come across some time ago about déjà vu. Scientists, Will had read, are unable to agree on what causes it, but a popular theory is that the brain gets its wiring muddled up for a split second and sends information to the wrong place – the part of the brain where memory is stored, instead of the place where current situations are processed. In an instant, the wiring error is corrected, but already a memory has been formed that is identical to what is being processed as the now, hence that spooky certainty that an exact experience has happened before.

Is that what happened? Will began to wonder. Did I really have that conversation with Nain? Or have I built some embellished memory that’s mixed up with things that have happened since?

As he walked back from the ruins of the library, he knew who he had to ask. It was mid-afternoon before Danny’s bedroom door was propped open. Will invited himself in. The room smelt of sex – cheap fragrances evaporated from hot skin, with an underlying hint of something salty. Barely five minutes earlier, a girl had left. Not April – Will was sure of that, having peeked under the door to check during the small hours.

‘You know when Nain came round the other day?’ Will asked. His voice was nervous. ‘My birthday, you know?’