‘That’s a very smart suggestion,’ said Dr Wendover. ‘It was clever of you to make it and I hope you won’t be offended when I say that can’t be the explanation. In the first place, the change is far too sudden and extreme to be explained in that way. And in the second place, rates of illness and accident haven’t changed. It’s not as if everyone has suddenly got better. People who were terminally ill yesterday are still terminally ill. People all over the world were admitted to hospital after car crashes and other accidents, many with terrible injuries which would normally be fatal – but somehow nobody died.’

That made me feel a bit queasy. I hadn’t thought of that. All those people lying in intensive care who by rights should have been dead, hanging on to life when they maybe didn’t even want to. That hadn’t occurred to me when I made the wish.

‘Some have suggested that something miraculous has occurred,’ the newsreader was saying. ‘That a profound change has taken place and humans are no longer mortal. It sounds far-fetched, I know, but could there be any possibility . . .?’

‘Good question. You’re right to pose it. An event as bizarre as this naturally encourages us to seek bizarre explanations. But it is of course impossible that we could have become immortal, unless the laws of biology have all been cancelled.’

‘But suppose that had happened – would that be good news for the human race?’

Dr Wendover looked serious and sorrowful. ‘You might think so, and believe me I understand why you might think that. But if true, that would be an utter disaster.’

I leant forward a bit. What did he mean, an utter disaster?

‘You see, while death rates have stopped – at least temporarily – birth rates have not,’ Dr Wendover went on. ‘So the world’s population would rise very, very fast indeed. Soon there would be food shortages. Water shortages. Shortages of resources. But still no one would die. People who were starving would simply carry on starving. But not dying. And because illness has not stopped either, you’d have lots of people suffering from disease, but the disease would never kill them. They’d just carry on suffering for eternity. It would, in fact, be hell on Earth.’

He was so upset by this prospect that he burst into tears.

So did the newsreader.

And so did I.

I’d screwed up with that last wish. Big-time. I hadn’t meant to cause all these problems.

Problems.

Problems.

Problems were the problem, weren’t they?

A light bulb went on above my head.

What if there were no more problems?

Through my sobs, I said, ‘I wish there were no more problems in the world!’

And then everything went quiet.

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN