I smile. She has a point. Big Ben and I are both Leaplings with The Gift, which means we were born on the 29th of February and have the ability to leap through time to any year, date or hour we want. Only a tiny percentage of Leaplings have The Gift. Those Leaplings and their families all swear the Oath of Secrecy to protect us from exploitation. If bad Annuals found out about our Gift, they might kidnap us and make us commit crimes that the normal police would never detect. We must be discreet when we leap and reserve our talent for when it’s absolutely necessary. Leaping takes it out of you.

Grandma pulls a transparent fruit carton out of the fridge.

‘White grapes,’ she pretends to read.

I smile at her joke. Grandma can’t read but she hopes I’ll eat them if it SAYS the grapes are white even though, strictly speaking, they’re green. Only Grandma can get away with that. I’m autistic and she knows wordplay’s one of my favourite things ever. I mainly eat white food, otherwise I get sensory overload from the sight, smell and taste of it. But over the past few months my sensory issues have been less severe and I’ve been a bit more confident trying new things, so I think maybe I’ll let her pack them today. I nod and she begins washing the grapes under the cold tap.

‘My Chronophone says 8:22,’ says Big Ben.

He’s autistic too and loves to time things. Thank goodness he said that – I almost forgot to pack my own phone. I turn from Grandma to run my hand under the sofa bed where I sleep and there it is, my silver Chronophone. It’s just like a mobile phone, but it can send messages across time. Holding it, I remember my leap-birthday celebration at this table last year when Big Ben and I were 3-leap, which is 12, and our friends MC2 and GMT were 4-leap, 16. That’s when MC2 gave me and Big Ben these special phones. They weren’t a birthday present. We helped break up a crime ring working under Le Temps, who took orders from the big bad boss, Millennia. Millennia’s old and well-spoken and looks respectable but she’s evil incarnate and threatened to DESTROY me. The Chronophones marked our status as Level 1 Infinites.

I LOVE being an Infinite. The Infinites are a youth group who fight crimes on the timeline for a better, greener future. We work for Infinity but no one’s ever seen her! Our symbol is the infinity sign: ∞. We each have a code name based on our real name. When you say Elle, it sounds exactly the same as my code name: L. This is all TOP SECRET. Promise you won’t tell anyone!