I don’t like the idea of all those futures. Too much to get my head round and the thought that ANYTHING could happen. Maybe that’s why they keep changing the timetable here, why they can’t predict the weather. Maybe someone will do something the next second in 2020 and there’ll be an earthwave or a heatquake here. Or maybe we won’t exist at all. I don’t want to think about it. But GMT does.

‘Think about it. Everything you do now affects the ever after.’

‘But NOW is the 1st of March 2048, 3 p.m. How can that affect things if it hasn’t happened yet?’

‘We’re bissextiles. For us, time’s not linear, it’s all over the joint. We can change things any place, any time. It’s a Gift from God.’

I’m not sure Grandma would agree. She tells me to keep quiet about my birthday, pretend I was born on the 1st of March. But I think she’s secretly proud of my Gift. She knows I can use it to do something good. Maybe the good thing is telling the group about SOS L. If Kwesi sent it, we could help him. He may be hiding here in the grounds and will send the text in two days’ time. Or maybe he already sent it in another version of the future and I received it and it won’t happen again. Either way, I have to tell the others. Not here. Not now. But soon.

I’m thinking this whilst GMT’s talking. Telling me how she got too obsessed with the two watches, spent her whole time checking the time rather than seizing the day. Carpe diem. Where have I heard that before? Right now, it’s the 1st of March 2048, 3:01 p.m. I’m alive. Breathing fresh air, smelling the grass, the mushrooms, GMT’s petunia oil. And she’s still talking like a song lyric.

‘Tomorrow never happens, man. Don’t live for tomorrow, live for now. Whenever now is.’

Big Ben, GMT, Ama and I are in the Common Room before dinner, talking about the hat. Big Ben and I are on the sofa, Ama’s crouched in a chocolate-brown beanbag and GMT’s lying on a rug. Ama thinks Kwesi dropped it deliberately. As a clue.

‘He didn’t have time to graffiti his tag, so he left that instead.’

‘Not logical,’ says Big Ben. ‘He didn’t know we’d see it.’

‘Big Ben’s right. It doesn’t make sense.’ My tummy feels like I have a clenched fist in it. I’ve been thinking all day about SOS L, ever since I saw the writing in the hat. ‘Maybe he sent a message to someone.’

Ama gives me the bull’s-eye. She has a way of staring, that girl, like a teacher about to exclude you.

‘Elle. Sorry I shouted this morning,’ she says.