There was a sharp intake of breath as he said it, and he glared at Friday.

“Why are you going to kill me, Friday? Because I insulted your mum and sister?”

Friday took a deep breath and stood up to face Gavin.

“I don’t know. I have no real motive. But you can stop me. Take a random Tube ride. You can be anywhere on the planet in under six hours. If I can’t find you, it won’t happen.”

“As soon as my destiny papers arrived, my parents put me on the Deep Drop to Sydney,” said Gavin. “I checked in under a false name to a crappy motel near Dame Edna International. I even hid in the cupboard. My summarization papers hadn’t changed—you were still due to kill me. So I came home. If I was going to be murdered, I’d rather it happened near family and friends.”

“Friends?” said Shazza.

“Family then. Body repatriations are pricey these days, and they always seem to go astray.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Friday.

“You will,” said Gavin, “and what’s more I know for a fact you won’t get away with it.”

“It’s Tuesday night,” returned Friday, “and I’ve got sixty-six hours to figure out a way to bend the eventline.”

“Maybe the eventline did bend,” said Shazza thoughtfully. “It’s possible that once you were in the hotel cupboard, your Letter of Destiny changed to say you survived. You probably then wondered why you had flown all that way to hide in a cupboard, but as soon as you returned, so did your death.”

Everyone fell silent at this. Shazza was right. It was entirely possible that the eventline was vibrating like a rubber band and that what was written on the Letters of Destiny right now was not what had been on them even ten seconds ago.

“Okay, then,” said Friday, “I need to find a way of permanently changing our destinies. Right now things don’t look very good.”

There was silence after this, and Jimmy-G thought it a good time to call the meeting to an end and to meet again the same place next week, unless the smiting went ahead, in which case he’d let everyone know. The small party dispersed without much talk; the proceedings had been pretty joyless. Gavin glared at us both as he filed out, and as Jimmy-G walked up to speak to us, I noted Mr. Chowdry pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he turned to leave.

“That was seriously strange,” said Friday as we walked back to the car. Shazza was with us, as she and Friday were going to have a drink together to see if any of their future spark could be preignited, and Jimmy-G was with us because his car was parked next to ours.

“Time-travel stuff generally is.”

“No,” said Friday, “I mean murderously seriously strange.”

“In what way?”