Black. As in, not red. Black. As in, this-door-has-never-been-black-it’s-always-been-burgundy-red-but-now-is-for-no-good-reason black. I run my hand over the surface, expecting to find fresh paint. But it’s blistered and peeled—old. I take a step back and look at the number: 7. Above the letterbox, tilted to the left. OK, so at least that’s normal. That hasn’t changed. The Hippie’s been promising to fix it for months. Once he went so far as bringing out his ancient toolbox. He set it on the step, gazed up at the number and came back indoors. He said he preferred it offset.

I look at the road sign, shivering, dripping in the rain. Underwood. I’m in the right place. Why wouldn’t I be? I know where I live, don’t I?

So what the hell’s going on?

A helicopter, or something like a helicopter, roars overhead. The sound of its blades chopping the air reverberates in my chest. Bea, it says inside me.

Bea. Bea. Bea. Bea. Bea. Bea.

BEA!

I’m hallucinating. It’ll pass. This is all a dream.

It doesn’t pass.

It isn’t a dream.

The door swings open and here is the Hippie.

Except…

Anomaly #3: The Hippie’s wearing a suit.

9

A suit. A three-piece, buttoned-up dove-grey suit. I say nothing, because I can’t speak. It’s not just what he’s wearing that’s wrong, there’s something else. Something off. His dreads. His dreads and his goatee and his earrings—they’re all gone. It’s so incongruous I feel like slapping him on the back and roaring with laughter. It’s actually getting funny. The Hippie’s in a suit! It’s a joke. Any second now Bea will leap out from behind the door and yell, Surprise!

But she doesn’t.

“You don’t like the grey?” the Hippie says, looking crestfallen, which makes no sense. He’s indefatigably upbeat. “You prefer the blue? Merde. Oui. The blue suit.”

The blue suit? He ushers me inside and I watch him shut the door behind us. I want to scream at him. I want to shout for help, I want to blurt out what’s happened. But I can’t. For no reason I can fathom—other than a deep, atavistic sense of something being terribly wrong—I say nothing.

What can I tell him? A creature came into the Tube and snatched Bea away right in front of me?

“Ça va?” the Hippie says. “You look a little…different.”

I shake my head. “I’m just…I got caught in the rain.” My heart’s pounding. I’m freezing. I feel like I’m about to be sick.

“Oui,” he says. “Of course. Where is your coat, your umbrella, chérie? You will catch your death. This cold rain every day…it is getting, how you say? Tiresome.”

Tiresome? It’s been blue skies and hot-as-hell all week.