“Everett!” Laura hissed. But Everett was angry and tired of not being taken seriously. Whether it was Belgravia Police Station or the IT room of Bourne Green Community Academy, it was always always always the same. Mock the Geek. He hadn't asked for any of this. All he'd done was go to listen to a lecture with his dad. Everett knew better than to expect the world to be fair, but it might occasionally cut him a break.

“Do you know what the Many Worlds Theory is?” Everett said. He leaned forward across the table. Previous occupants had doodled stars and spirals and cubes and the names of football clubs on the peeling plastic. “Every time the smallest least tiniest thing happens, the universe branches. There's a universe where it happened, and a universe where it didn't. Every second, every microsecond every day, there are new universes splitting off from this one. For every possible event in history, there's a universe, out there somewhere, right beside this one.” Everett lifted a finger and drew a line through the air. “A billion universes, just there now. Every possible universe is out there somewhere. This isn't something someone made up, this is a proper physical theory. That's what physics means: real, solid, actual. Does that sound not so important to you? It sounds to me like the biggest thing there is.”

“That's very interesting, Everett.” Leah-Leanne-Leona's tea mug had a badly rendered picture of a fat tabby cat on its back waving its paws. I CAN HAZ TEE, said the fat cat.

“Everett, don't waste their time; they don't want to know,” Laura said. “It's not relevant.”

“Well, they had some reason for kidnapping him,” Everett said.

“This is what we're trying to establish, Everett,” Leah-Leanne-Leona said. “Did anyone else see this car and the three men?”

The power went out of Everett. The policewoman had found the valve to his anger, and it had all hissed out of him.

“No,” Everett Singh whispered.

“What was that, Everett?”

“That was a no.”

He should have asked the ICA staff, the people going in to the talk, the dog walkers and the bad weather joggers, Did you see that, did you? But you don't think of things like that when your dad is on his bike one minute and the next lifted off and thrown into the back of a big black Audi.

“I've got photographs on my phone,” Everett said. “Here, I can get them up.” A few swipes with his finger and he had them. Tippy tap, up they came one at a time. Crazy angles, tail-lights blurred. Unless you knew what you were looking for you wouldn't recognize them for snapshots of a kidnapping. The police looked unimpressed. Everett halted at one clear, steady shot where the inside of the black car was momentarily lit up by oncoming headlights.