It had taken her an hour and a half to crawl in from Stokie and an hour grumbling about the parking and the congestion charge and having to leave Victory-Rose with Mrs. Singh. That old crow Ajeet always put bad ideas into the girl's head. And this place stank of paint. She found Everett sitting on a bench thumbing through Facebook on his smartphone and eating a Twix from the vending machine. The desk sergeant had bought him a coffee. As Everett had expected, it was bad and weak. Laura Singh sat down beside him and talked very low and fast because she would be ashamed if the desk sergeant overheard. She wanted Everett to know she didn't blame him. At all. Typical of his father. Typical to land Everett in trouble and not be there.

“Mum…”

“Mrs. Singh?”

“Braiden.” When had she started calling herself that? Family Liaison Officer Leah-Leanne-Leona introduced herself and led them down the corridors that looked as if they had been painted with sweat to the reeking interview room.

“We go to talks at the ICA,” Everett said, looking Leah-Leanne-Leona in the eye. His palms were flat on the table. “Experimental economics, the coming singularity, nanotechnology. Big ideas. They have Nobel Prize winners.”

Leah-Leanne-Leona's eyes glazed, but Everett saw that Moustache Milligan had spelled nanotechnology correctly in his notes.

“Okay, Everett. It's good you still have something you can share with your dad. Guy-stuff is good. So, your dad would meet you outside the ICA after work.”

“He was coming over from Imperial College.”

“He's a scientist,” Everett's mum said. Every answer she jumped in ahead of Everett, as if a wrong or careless response from him would be all the evidence the police needed to call social services and take Everett and little sister Victory-Rose into care.

“He's a theoretical physicist,” Everett said. Moustache Milligan raised an eyebrow. Everett had always wished he could do that.

“What kind of physics?” Moustache Milligan asked. Leah-Leanne-Leona flared her nostrils. She did the talking here.

“Quantum theory. The Everett Many Worlds Theory. Hugh Everett, he developed it. I'm named after him: Everett Singh. The multiverse, parallel universes, all that, you know?” Everett Singh saw that Moustache Milligan had written Non-nuke on his notepad beside the word physicist? “What does that mean?” Everett asked. “Non-nuke.”

Moustache Milligan looked embarrassed.

“You know what the current security situation's like. If your dad had been a nuclear physicist, that could be an issue.”

“You mean, if he could build atom bombs.”

“We have to consider all kinds of threats.”

“But if he doesn't build atom bombs, if he's just a quantum physicist, then he's not a threat. He's not so important.”