Season laughs. ‘Not that I know of. Some of them make you nauseous but most of them won’t kill you.’ She holds out her bag and we throw in some pink mushrooms with black stems that Season calls Velvet Shanks. They look poisonous but they’re not.

‘Do any of them make you throw up?’ I say.

‘The bolete might but they’re too bitter to . . .’ She frowns at me as if she only just realised what I said. I find my mouth speaking before my brain tells me to stop.

‘Is that why you threw up this morning?’

She shakes her head like I’m talking nonsense. ‘That wasn’t mushrooms, that was too much rich food. I’m usually careful but once every four years . . .’ She shrugs her shoulders.

We’re walking the same route Big Ben and I took yesterday until we get to the steep path on the left. There’s a cordon across it, yellow-and-black-striped, like crime tape. Jake starts to fiddle with it and Season goes still as a statue.

‘We can’t go that way. It’s too dangerous.’

‘Did someone get killed?’

‘No. Something to do with the path. Le Temps is dealing with it.’

As we continue down the path, I drop back with Big Ben, Ama and GMT. We told GMT about Kwesi after lunch as she’s in our group and older than us so she might know something. She went very quiet.

‘Weird vibes happen. But Leap 2100?’ she shook her head. ‘Thought ’68 was far out. Some years are clean outta synch.’

‘What’s that in English?’ Ama finds GMT difficult to understand. I only understand one word out of three but I love her speaking like song lyrics. Better than talking in tongues in our church.

‘Leap years that ain’t leap, dudes disappear. Like a Black Hole.’

‘Black Hole, black magic. Why is everything spooky always BLACK? You think Kwesi’s in another universe?’ Ama gave her the bull’s-eye stare.

‘No idea. Just, 2100’s spooked. In space–time. You leap, end up some year else. Your luggage lost en route, your Chrono gets a glitch, texts flip to the wrong time.’

That might explain why I got the text. Maybe it wasn’t a Predictive but a text that went to the wrong time and place. But I didn’t say anything. The hat brought my voice back but I hadn’t found the right time to tell them about SOS L.

‘Did you ever meet my brother?’ Ama said.

‘Meet him? I KNOW him. Free spirit. Speaks with his hands. But I never heard him talk about Leap 2100. I’ll ask MC. He’s omniscient.’

‘What?’

‘Knows everything, everyone, everyplace. If he don’t know, I’ll eat my hat.’

I hope her hat isn’t covered in mud and twigs!

Now, the four of us stop at the junction.

‘That’s the path we took yesterday. Where we found the hat.’