David Clarke

Excelsior

Chapter One

Everything was smoke and chaos, as it always was.

"There's another enemy ship behind us!" someone shouted. "Bearing one-seven-five, about seven hundred yards."

"Navy or privateer?" asked a woman's voice.

"Does it make any difference?" asked the first speaker.

"We might be able to reach an accommodation with a privateer. Which is it?"

"Wait… it's navy. I can see the eagle."

"Too bad," said the woman. "Very well, let's try to deal with the one in front…"

"Congreves!" shouted the first voice. "The second ship has Congreves!"

"Man the deflectors," said the woman, calmly. "Helm, full speed, hard to port and down twenty degrees."

I felt the floor move beneath me, and then there was a distant bang, light flared around me and I started to fall…

***

I woke up, sweating. I'd started having this recurring dream about six months ago, and just lately it had been happening more and more frequently – this was the third time this week. When I woke up I could never remember what happened before the appearance of the second enemy ship, and I still didn't know exactly where I was or who was fighting whom, but the dream always ended with me falling, although I always woke up before I hit the water.

A couple of months previously I'd mentioned the dreams to the doctor when Auntie Megan had taken me for my annual check-up, but he had just said that vivid or recurring dreams were common enough, especially when a boy was going through puberty, and that I shouldn't worry about it. Dreams, he assured me, don't actually mean anything – perhaps I was worried about failing an exam, or something.

It was good to hear that that sort of dream was common, and that it didn't have a particular meaning. But whatever else I was worried about, it wasn't failing exams. I never failed exams. True, I hadn't yet reached the important ones: the GCSEs were still nearly two years away, and the A levels were four years away, and when you're young four years feels like forever. Auntie Megan says that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass… anyway, I never worried about exams.

There were other things that I might have worried about, though: being only a hundred and fifty-six centimetres tall – or call it just under five feet two, in old money – at the age of fourteen and a half isn't a lot of fun. Dr Daruwala assures me that it's nothing to worry about: after all, I am growing, and apparently plenty of other boys of my age are no taller than I am. It's just that I've never met any of them: all the other boys at school – and most of the girls, come to that – are at least two inches taller than I am. My friends call me Miniman, or just MM, and everyone else calls me Short-arse or something even worse, which I don't like at all. But if I told them I didn't like it they'd just do it all the more, so I keep quiet and make out that I don't care.

Dr Daruwala talked about growth spurts, telling me I'd probably shoot up by fifteen centimetres or so inside six months once mine started. All I can say is, it can't come too soon.

I got out of bed, went for a pee and looked out of the window. The weather looked okay – it had been a real mixed bag this July and August, with short periods of high temperatures but also lots of heavy rain. I thought about going back to bed because it was only about half past seven, and a Sunday at that, but in the end I decided that since I was awake I might as well go and do something useful, so I got dressed, turned the computer on and opened Facebook.

Yes, all right, maybe my definition of 'useful' isn't everyone's. Auntie Megan certainly doesn't think spending ages on social media is useful: she has her own Facebook page, but she only goes into it now and again and only keeps it open for short periods. But I like to have some idea of what is going on, and today there was a lot of chat about the previous evening's riots. Tottenham isn't that far from here and I wanted to see what people were saying about it.

I jumped about between Facebook and a few other sites until Auntie Megan called me downstairs for breakfast, and after breakfast I decided the weather was too good to hang around indoors, so I texted my friend Alex to meet me in the park, grabbed my football and went to do some practice.

Probably the fact that I'm not bad at football is what keeps me from being classified as a loser at school. In all other respects I belong with the losers: I get good marks for most subjects, I play chess, and of course physically… right. But because I was in the Year Nine school team last season and have already been told I'm in the Year Ten team from September the other boys seem to reckon they can ignore the geeky stuff and just treat me as normal. Even one of two of the girls have dropped hints that they might be interested, though Alex reckons they just want to mother me, and I think he might be right. There's no danger of me finding out, though – I have no intention of going out with any of them.

I have asked Dr Daruwala how long it's likely to be before I start growing where it matters, and he said it's already started. I said "You could have fooled me," and he gave me a lot of stuff about my balls growing and there being a bit of hair down there as well, and there is, though you need a magnifying glass to see it… In any case, any girl who saw me naked would fall about laughing.

If I'm completely honest I don't feel like going out with girls anyway. It's not just the lack of confidence that comes from being small for my age: I just don't want to get into the whole relationship thing. From what I've seen, it causes more trouble than good. Oh, sure, it's great while you're going out together, but after you break up it often seems to turn nasty – ex-couples posting evil stuff on each other's Facebook pages or dissing each other by Tweet and stuff. I don't want to get into that at all (I can just imagine what an angry girl might post about my genitals) and I reckon if you wait until you're older, probably you can be more mature about breaking up.

Alex says he feels the same way. He's a lot better-looking than me, as well as being four inches [10 cm] taller and a lot more muscular, and he has curly black hair and blue eyes, a combination that I think looks really good (I've got boring straight light brown hair and dull brown eyes), and I know that some of the girls are interested in him from the comments that get made. He knows how to chat to them enough to keep them happy without it actually leading anywhere, but he's told me he finds them boring and reckons that going out with any of them would be a waste of time and money. I asked if he's saving himself until he meets the perfect girl, and he laughed and said that there was no such thing.

He was waiting for me when I got to the park – he lives just outside the park gates. Because this was still the beginning of August they hadn't put the goalposts up again yet, but there are plenty of places around the edge of the park where you can use the perimeter fence as a goal, so we found a suitable place and practised placing free kicks for a bit. Alex is a defender, so he doesn't really have to be able to do this in matches, but he reckons working on his accuracy will improve his passing skills, too. I said that I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him actually pass at all – whenever he gets the ball he usually just boots it upfield as hard as he can. So he grabbed me, tripped me up and then sat on my chest and rapped his knuckles on my forehead until I apologised.

"It's true, though," I persisted, once he let me up. "And you don't need to, because you've just proved you can pass decently. So why don't you?"

He shrugged. "I don't want to balls it up, I suppose. Yeah, hoofing it upfield isn't clever, but it's safe. If I passed it straight to their number nine I'd get torn to shreds."

"Yes, but you wouldn't," I insisted. "Well… not every week, anyway."

He threatened to come after me again, but instead suggested that we go round to his to get something to drink. While we were there we turned on one of the 24 hour news channels and watched coverage of the previous evening's rioting in Tottenham. There was film of a big carpet shop on fire, and then of people breaking into shops in Wood Green, which is only about two miles [3 km] away from here, and looting them. Then back to Tottenham and more fires, including a double-decker bus.

"Now that's scary," commented Alex. "I'm glad I don't live on a main road."

"Me, too," I said. "Sometimes not being too close to the shops is a good thing."

I got shooed out of the house shortly after that: Alex's parents believe in having a proper sit-down Sunday lunch where people actually share a meal at a dining table and talk to each other. We do that sometimes when Uncle Jim is at home, but he's a long-distance lorry driver and he's often away at weekends, and when he's not with us Auntie Megan and I usually just eat off trays in the living room, especially if there's something worth watching on TV. Actually I like the idea of a more formal meal, but I wouldn't want to eat like that at Alex's house too often because he's got a nine-year-old sister and she just can't stop talking, even with her mouth full – at least, that's what Alex says.

A couple of hours later he texted me to suggest going swimming, so I met him at the bus stop on the main road and we caught the bus up to the pool in Southgate. I thought it might be busy, but there seemed to be very few people about when we got to the changing room, and so once I was in the cubicle I took my time about getting changed, folding my clothes up before putting them in my bag. Alex obviously hadn't done anything of the sort, because a couple of minutes after I'd closed the door it popped open again – those locks are useless because they can be opened from the outside using a coin or something – and Alex stuck his head in, catching me butt-naked.

"Aren't you ready yet?" he asked, grinning at me.

"No," I said, over my shoulder – at least I'd had my back to the door when he opened it. "Now go and wait outside."

"Nice buns!" he observed, grinning even more.

"Get lost," I replied, scrabbling for my swim shorts. I try to avoid swearing, but sometimes Alex makes that extremely difficult.

We swam for about an hour and a half, which was as long as we were allowed: the pool limits the time you can stay in, at least in the school holidays. We went back to the changing room and got dressed – and this time I made sure I was standing right against the door to stop it opening, just in case Alex tried bursting in on me again. I mean, he's my best friend, but that doesn't mean I want him taking the Mickey out of my body. It's bad enough with him making comments about my height without him going on about the size of my penis, too.

We caught the bus back down to Palmer's Green, and about two minutes after we got off the bus we ran into Danny Carmody and his sidekick Joe Silver. They're in the same class as us at school. Joe's okay, but Danny is one of those kids you'd prefer to be in someone else's class. He's not a bully as such – at least, not physically – but he has got a very loud mouth.

"Look, Joe," he said. "It's Bubble and Pipsqueak!"

It had taken me a while to learn about Cockney rhyming slang when I first moved here about three years ago. Most of it isn't really used any more except by writers of EastEnders scripts, but the word 'Bubble' is still common enough, especially in this area. It's short for 'Bubble and Squeak' which is rhyming slang for 'Greek'. Alex is Greek, but then so is a lot of the local population, and probably at least a quarter of the kids in our class have Greek parents – which is probably why Danny wouldn't risk using the word at school. Okay, calling someone a Bubble is probably less offensive than some racist words, but I don't think Alex liked it much.

As for calling me 'Pipsqueak', well, obviously I didn't like that either, but there's not a lot I could have done about it. Besides, it's true that I'm short and that my voice hasn't broken yet, just as it's true that Alex's parents come from the Greek half of Cyprus, so perhaps it was best just to let it go.

"You see the news?" Danny went on. "Man, I wish I'd been down Wood Green last night. The Feds was so busy in Tottenham there was nobody in Wood Green. People was just walking away with laptops, home cinemas, all that stuff. So tonight we're all going up Enfield – there's gonna be some good stuff just begging to be picked up! I'm gonna get an iPad, and then my pet Jew is gonna sniff me out some diamonds and a Rolex – aren't you, Joey?" And he slapped Joe on the back hard.

I really don't know why Joe puts up with it. I suppose he's scared that Danny will give him a kicking if he doesn't, but I don't think I'd put up with all the casual racism and slapping about that he goes through. Maybe he's just one of those people who has bad luck all the time – after all, if his house was fifty yards further up the road he's be in another catchment area and would go to school in Southgate instead, where probably a majority of the kids are Jewish, and then he wouldn't get picked on. And if he had been born better-looking, maybe he'd have more friends – but instead the poor bastard is just plain ugly, and having a bad haircut is just the icing on the cake. He's probably pathetically grateful that Danny talks to him at all.

Anyway, Joe just made some non-committal noise, the way he usually does when Danny insults him.

"So – what about it, Alex?" persisted Danny. "Come with us, man – you've been saying for ages you need new trainers."

"That's true," said Alex. "You really reckon it would be that easy?"

"Sure! There's people on Facebook saying there's gonna be hundreds there, so even if the Feds do show it'll still be easy. Besides, word is they're gonna hit the big superstores first, so that should draw all the filth out of the town centre. Come on, man, it'll be a laugh!"

"Where are you meeting?" asked Alex.

"Class! We're gonna get the train from here to the Chase and then walk down. Be at the station at about five-thirty. What about you, Short-arse – you coming?"

"Yeah, why not?" I said.

"Cool – see you tonight, then. And bring some empty bags!"

They walked off, and Alex and I headed back for the park.

"You're not really going, are you?" I asked.

"Well… I dunno," said Alex. "What about you?"

"God, no! I'm not completely insane! Besides, it's just wrong."

"So why did you say yes back there?"

"Because if I hadn't Carmody would have called me a pussy and started making the usual cracks about it being past my bedtime, and stuff like that. You know what he's like. And when we got back to school he'd go on and on about what a pathetic little baby I am. So I said yes, and if he asks me tomorrow why I didn't show I'll tell him Auntie Megan caught me sneaking out and grounded me for the next week or so. Look, Alex, this is just stupid – okay, the police got taken by surprise last night, but it won't happen again. And even if it does, you can't just go about stealing stuff – if everyone did that it would be chaos! Even privateers have a code of honour – this is just anarchy!"

"What's a privateer?"

I stopped. "I don't know," I said. "That just popped into my head. I really don't know… anyway, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that we need to stay at home this evening. Please, Alex – I'm serious!"

"Okay, then," he said. "I guess you're right."

***

That evening I stayed at home. I sat with Auntie Megan and we watched Men in Black 2 on Channel Five, and then we put the rolling news on and found out that there really had been rioting going on in Enfield that evening and that the police had been expecting trouble and were there in numbers. I didn't much like Danny Carmody, but I found myself hoping for his sake that he'd changed his mind when he saw the police and had slipped off home instead.

Next morning Alex texted me to meet him in the park, so I took my ball and went straight there, only to find that Alex wasn't interested in playing football.

"I went to Enfield last night," he started.

I stared at him. "Are you okay?" I asked. "On the telly it looked as if there were riot cops everywhere."

He nodded. "You were right," he said. "It was stupid to go. Most of the people there early on were older than us, and at first there weren't any cops around, so it started out okay. But then they started smashing their way into shops, and that was really scary. I mean, they didn't just break through the door – I could have understood that – but once they got inside they just trashed everything. And then after we'd broken into this sports shop the police arrived, loads of them, and I really thought we were done for. Joe Silver actually pissed himself, and I thought Carmody was going to, too – he looked like he was going to faint any moment. But then one of the older guys got a fire door open at the back and we all just legged it.

"I don't know what happened to the others after that, but I'd had enough, so I just started walking, and I kept going until I got home. But I'm never going to do that again."

"Good," I said. "And… did you take anything?"

He hesitated, but then nodded, though he wasn't looking at me. "I took a pair of trainers," he said. "But I really wish I hadn't. I just feel like shit about the whole thing. And it's not like I can even wear them, because if my parents see them, or my sis, they'll want to know where I got them. I suppose I could tell them they're a cheap knock-off I got down Walthamstow Market or something, but if you look at them closely it's pretty obvious they're genuine. I suppose I'm lucky I didn't get picked up."

"I suppose so… you did wear your hoodie last night, didn't you? Or at least your cap?"

"Well… no. At least, I wore my cap, but I wore it backwards like I usually do. Why?"

"Please tell me the older kids took care of the CCTV cameras first," I said.

He went pale. "I don't think so."

"And the ones in the shop?"

"You… you think there were cameras inside?"

"Inside a sports shop? I'd be amazed if there weren't."

"But… they'd have turned them off when they closed the shop… wouldn't they?"

"You'd better hope so. But if the police knew there was going to be trouble, maybe the shopkeepers did, too, and then they would have left their cameras on."

"Oh, fuck," he said, quietly. "Shit, MM, I'm fucked, aren't I?"

"Not necessarily. According to the news it went on for ages, and there were supposed to have been hundreds of people involved. As long as you weren't wearing anything really obvious, like a football shirt with your own name on the back, you'd just look like another boy. And it's not like you actually live in Enfield, is it? So how would they know to come looking round here, even if there is a CCTV picture of you?"

"Yeah, but… suppose they do?"

"Then you just say you were at home all evening. But you'll have to get rid of the trainers – and don't just drop them in your bin! Put them in an old supermarket bag, take a bus to some industrial estate at least two miles [3 km] away, and then just chuck them in a skip when nobody's looking. Or you could probably just leave them sitting on a wall somewhere – I bet some tramp grabs them before they've been there five minutes. Of course, if they're not looking for you that would be a bit drastic, but still… Or if you really feel bad about it you could take them back to the shop and apologise, but that probably isn't a very good idea."

"I'm sure as fuck not going to do that – they'd be sure to call the police. Maybe I should just wait and see what happens, then."

"Maybe. But… God, you really are a dick sometimes."

"I know. I should have listened to you."

"Say it again!"

"I said, I should have listened to you," he repeated.

"Dead right. And you can bet I'll remind you that you said that pretty much every day from now on, especially if you look like doing something else brainless. Come on, let's have a kick-about."

So we played some football, and by the time he went home to lunch he was looking a little bit better.

***

That night the riots spread all over London: someone burnt down a massive furniture store in Croydon, and even posh places like Ealing got smashed up. Police were having to be brought into London from all over. Then the rioting spread to other cities, and by Thursday morning, when it was starting to look as if things were becoming calm again, Alex said that he was sure the police would never have the time or manpower to try to find everyone who had been involved.

"I still wish I'd stayed at home, though," he admitted. "Every time the doorbell has rung this week I've been crapping myself. If I ever suggest doing something like that again, I want you to kick me in the nuts. "

"It'll be a pleasure," I assured him.

That afternoon he actually phoned me up, which was unheard of – he never seemed to have any credit on his phone for actual calls and relied purely on his free texts to communicate. He told me to meet him in the park right away, and from the tone of his voice it was obvious that something had gone wrong. I more or less ran to the park, and when I got there I found Joe Silver with him. Both of them looked like death.

"Danny's been arrested," Joe told me. "The stupid bastard lost his baseball cap on Sunday night, and it had his name in it. He thought he'd left it on the train, only apparently he didn't and someone found it. He was arrested early this morning, and he'll grass us up, I just know he will. He'd feed his own granny to a bear if he thought it would help him. His mum says the copper who arrested him told her that nobody who gets done for rioting will get bail, so he'll be going to prison – well, Young Offenders' – and he's bound to give them our names if he thinks it'll keep him out of Feltham. So we're screwed. Shit, guys, I don't want to end up in prison… what are we going to do?"

I thought about it, but I couldn't see any way out – at least, not in the long term.

"Will your parents give you an alibi?" I asked Joe.

"Well… I don't know. Maybe not – I think they'd want me to face up to…" He broke off, trying not to cry.

"Alex?" I asked.

"They might, but if you were right about the CCTV it won't do any good, will it?" he asked. "If they've actually got a photo of me in the shop it won't matter what my parents say – or will it?"

I shook my head. "I don't think it will, no," I said. "And even if you didn't take anything, just being inside a shop that has been broken into is sure to make you guilty of something. Sorry, guys."

"Okay," said Alex. "Then I'm off. I'm not just going to sit here and wait to get nicked. I'll just take my tent and sleeping bag, get a train as far out of London as my money will take me and then just camp out in the woods somewhere until…"

"Until what?" I said. "Alex, they're not going to forget about you just because you're not at home the first time they call. They'll just keep coming back until you come home. Hell, you'll have to come back in September anyway when school starts again."

"No, I won't. If my parents tell them I went to Cyprus they'll stop looking."

"They'll check the flight lists and see you're not listed on any plane, or the Eurostar either."

"Well, maybe I caught a ferry to France as a foot passenger, then. You saw the news – there are thousands of people involved, all over the country. They won't have time to keep after me for months on end."

"Even if that's true – and I really don't think it is – what are you going to do for the next umpteen weeks, then?"

"I don't know… but it'll be better than being locked up in Feltham!"

I sighed. "Okay, then," I said. "What do you need?"

"Huh?"

'We're friends, Stupid. How can I help? I've got some cash… or maybe…"

"What?"

"If you're absolutely determined to do this, maybe I should come with you, at least to start with. Except I am going to be here for the start of term, whether you decide to come back or not, okay?"

"But… why would you want to do that? They're not after you."

"Because sticking with your friends is part of the Code."

"What code?"

I thought that was a very good question. What on earth was I talking about? Once again, something had just popped into my head and I'd spoken without thinking about it.

"I don't know what code," I admitted, "but it's still true. You should stick by your friends. If you're going off into the middle of nowhere you'll need someone with you to keep you out of trouble – even more trouble, I should say. So, okay, we're going camping. Let me see… okay, well, we were going to go next week anyway, but we can tell everyone that because of the stuff that's going on at the moment we thought it would be better to get out of London as soon as possible, which is why we're leaving tomorrow instead. We're heading for the south coast – at least, that's what you'll tell your parents, but actually we'll go somewhere else – East Anglia, perhaps… anyway, we can sort that out later. We'll stay on a proper campsite, though – we'll need to be able to recharge my laptop, so I can keep in touch with Auntie Megan and find out what's going on."

"Can't we use our phones for that?"

"You can be traced using your phone, so we don't take them at all, or if we do we keep the battery disconnected and only use it for a real emergency. We can move about a bit from one site to another. Then we'll just wait and see what happens. What do you think?"

"You're really offering to come with me?"

"I must be mad, but… yes. Unless you snore, in which case I'll be catching the first train home."

"I don't snore."

"Good. And if it turns out that I do, tough."

"I won't say a word. What about you, Joe – do you want to come too?"

That surprised me – I'd thought that Alex didn't have a lot of time for Joe.

"Would you let me?" asked Joe, who had just about got himself back under control.

"Why not? There'd be one condition, though."

"I don't snore, either," said Joe.

"No, not that. You'd have to swear to stay away from that dickhead Carmody in future. You can hang with us instead if you want – I'm better-looking than Carmody and MM has a much bigger brain."

"I don't understand why you put up with him in the first place," I said. "He treats you like dirt – why don't you tell him to eff off?"

"It's not that simple," he said. "I was going to try ditching him anyway after this, but… well, there's things you don't know. But anyway, about coming with you… no, thanks. I'm going to talk to my parents and then I'll do whatever they tell me to. I'd sooner get it over with than have it hanging over me. But it's really kind of you to ask me… I didn't think anyone… anyway, thanks. And if you're going to take your laptop with you, I'll keep in touch and let you know what's happening… well, for as long as I can, anyway."

"Thanks, Joe," I said. "That'd be really useful. We'll try to be online about nine every evening, then."

He nodded. "And if they do come for me…" He swallowed. "I'll try to keep your name out of it, Alex – like if Danny's grassed you up and they ask me, I'll say I didn't see you and I don't reckon you were there. Of course if they've got CCTV of you… I'll try saying it looks a bit like you but isn't. It might confuse things a bit."

Then Alex surprised me again, because he stepped forward and hugged Joe firmly.

"If you do that I'll owe you, big time," he said. "Thanks, man."

Joe looked at him, and something unspoken seemed to pass between them, although I might have been imagining that. In any case it only lasted a moment, and then they broke the hug and Joe nodded to us and walked away.

"Tell you what," said Alex, "he's braver than me. So – what do I need to bring, apart from the tent and a sleeping bag, obviously?"

"Not much. If we're going to be staying on a proper campsite there'll probably be a laundrette on site, so you won't need too many changes of clothes. Washing kit, towel… that's probably about it. And bring something to do – cards or your chess set, or something, because unless we do find a place where we can recharge the laptop quickly and often we won't be able to play games on it. We'll need to keep it for email and chat and stuff. What are you going to tell your parents?"

"Well, we were supposed to be going camping next week anyway, so I'll just say we're going a bit early."

"Yes, but we were only going a few miles, and just for a couple of nights. You'll have to tell them something more than that."

"I'll think of something," he said. "What about you? Will you be allowed to just get up and go?"

"I think so. Auntie Megan trusts me – and I trust her, come to that, so I might tell her the truth, or something close to it."

He looked unsure, but then he shrugged. "I suppose you know her best," he said. "Look… do you think I could crash at yours tonight? Joe said they came for Danny at six in the morning, and if I sleep at home tonight… well…"

"Okay, as long as you don't mind sleeping on the floor. You've seen my bed – there's barely room for me in it, and we don't have a spare. We can tell Auntie Megan we want to get away early tomorrow morning, and that'll be easier if we're in the same place to begin with. Come round any time after supper."

I went home, got my bank book and walked up to the bank on Green Lanes, where I withdrew most of my savings. Then I went home again and told Auntie Megan that I needed to speak to her.

"You know Alex and I were supposed to be going camping next week?" I said. "Well, we thought we'd go tomorrow instead. And instead of going up to Waltham Abbey like we were originally going to, we thought we'd go somewhere a bit further away instead."

"Oh. Where?"

"We're not sure yet. Maybe the south coast, maybe East Anglia. And maybe… well, I thought maybe we could go to Wiltshire."

"Oh! Why Wiltshire, darling? It's been three years – surely you realise you're not going to find anything now? Remember how we spent the whole of the half-term holiday there the October after you came to us? We didn't find anything then, so why do you think you will now?"

"I don't, not really," I said. "But I'd like to try. It's not that I'm not happy here – I am, you know that. I'd just like to know, that's all. And even if I do find out anything, I'm not going to do anything without talking to you first."

"Good. Jim and I would hate to lose you… but obviously if you do find anything… well, you know we'll support you whatever you decide. And we'll always be here for you."

"I know. Thanks, Auntie Megan. Anyway, we might not even go that way. I think Alex would prefer to go to the sea somewhere. We're going to talk about it this evening, and we'll tell you what we're doing tomorrow before we go."

"So why the big rush?" she asked. "Why not wait until next week?"

I could have just said that we were bored hanging around here all the time, or that the weather was good at the moment and we wanted to go before it turned nasty, or even the cover story about wanting to get out of London because we were scared of what was happening in the riots. But I didn't like telling lies, especially to Auntie Megan, so I got as close to the truth as I could.

"One of my friends is in trouble," I said. "It'll help him if we leave this week."

"How?"

That was a good question, of course: I could think of no logical reason why Alex and I leaving London could possibly help anyone else.

"Well… alright, it's Alex who's in trouble," I said. "He needs to get away from London for a bit. He was going to go on his own, but I said I'll go with him. It'll be safer with two of us, rather than having him off on his own somewhere, not knowing what he's doing. He's my best friend – I have to do this."

Most parents would have argued. Auntie Megan didn't, and I loved her for that.

"You've always been grown-up for your age," she told me. "You're old enough to make your own choices, and I've never yet known you do anything dishonest or dishonourable, so… go, if you think it will help your friend. But I want you to stay in touch, and if you need us, call, understand?"

"I will. Thanks, Auntie Megan." I went and gave her a hug, and then went up to my room to do some planning.

By the time Alex came round after supper I had a plan of sorts, and I'd even found us a campsite. I couldn't actually book it because obviously I haven't got a credit card and I didn't want to use Auntie Megan's, but the owner assured me he had spaces available.

"Tomorrow morning we're heading for Wiltshire," I told him. "I know I talked about the south coast and East Anglia earlier, but that was because Joe was there. If he does let anything slip…"

"He won't," Alex assured me. "Joe isn't Carmody – he'll say nothing."

"Well, okay, but we're covered anyway. And we're going to lay a false trail that way too, just in case. Then we'll head west."

"Yes, but why Wiltshire?"

"If we're going to be stuck somewhere for a few days I'd like to do something useful. I mean, you know how come I live with Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim, don't you?"

"Because they adopted you?"

"Yes, and I was really lucky that they did, because most people who want to adopt are looking for much younger kids. I was eleven, which is usually too old. Of course, I was small for eleven, and I looked cute back then, according to Auntie Megan…"

"You still look small and cute," said Alex, smirking at me.

I gave him the finger and carried on.

"The other problem was that nobody knew where I came from. This farmer found me asleep in his barn. I'd got a cut on my head, two cracked ribs and had bruises all over, and I couldn't remember anything at all about who I was or where I came from. They tried really hard to trace my parents: they took samples and searched through the DNA database, they checked my footprint and fingerprints, they searched through dental records, but they didn't find anything. I could still read and write and add up and stuff, but I couldn't remember anything personal. My clothes were badly ripped up, but they didn't have any labels in, so that was no good to them, either. They reckoned I'd been in a serious car crash to get like that, but there was no record of one within thirty miles [50 km] of where they found me. And in the end they gave up and parked me in a children's home, and that's where Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim found me.

"Later that year they took me back to Winterbourne Stoke in Wiltshire – that's where the barn was – and we drove about for four or five days, hoping something would jog my memory, but nothing did. But I thought if I can walk around the area a bit, maybe I'll see something I'd have missed in the car, and so that's what I want to do this week – if you're okay with that, of course."

"Sure. Listen, I'm happy to do whatever you think will help. It must be weird to have no memories before you were eleven years old."

"Ten," I corrected. "I was adopted at eleven, but I was found when I was ten. They know how old I was because the only thing I was carrying when they found me was this."

I dug my pocket-watch out of a drawer and handed it to Alex, and he took it, admired the engraving of the leaping lion on the cover, and then opened it and read the inscription on the inside.

"On your tenth birthday, January 7th 2007," he read.

He examined the watch closely. "Strange that there's no name," he observed. "Normally it would say something like 'To Alex, for his tenth birthday,' or something."

"I know, and of course I can't even be a hundred per cent sure that it's mine," I agreed. "But the doctors who examined me agreed that it would be consistent with my apparent age, so I think it probably is mine. It feels like mine, somehow."

"So how did you find out what your name was?"

"I didn't. I have no idea what my name really is. They just called me 'John Smith' at the children's home, and when Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim adopted me I asked them to choose a name for me, so I'm Keith, after Auntie Megan's father, and Lambert, which is their surname. I don't mind being Keith Lambert, but I know it's not my real name. Maybe this week I'll see something or find something that'll help me remember."

We played video games for a bit, went downstairs to watch the news (and apparently the police were saying they expected to make over three thousand arrests in connection with the riots, which didn't cheer Alex up much) and then went upstairs to get ready for bed. Alex dug his sleeping bag and a small inflatable pillow out of his rucksack and put them on the carpet beside the bed, and while he was doing that I got changed into the old pair of shorts I wear in bed when the weather is warm. And when I took my boxers off Alex made another sarcastic comment about my 'cute little bum'.

"If you keep making remarks about my arse I'm going to start thinking you fancy me," I replied, keeping my back to him and pulling my shorts on as fast as I could.

"Fancy you? How desperate do you think I am?"

"I could answer that, but you wouldn't like it. When's the last time you went out with a girl anyway?"

"Jasmine Ball wanted to go out with me at the end of term."

"Jasmine Ball would go out with anyone who has a penis."

"That excludes you, then!"

There was a short, sharp fight, which I lost.

"You didn't actually go out with her, though, did you?" I asked when he let me get up again.

"No. You're right, she's so easy she'd probably go out with Joe Silver if he asked her, and I've got a bit more taste than that. I hope I never get that desperate."

"I'm sure you won't. If the girls in our class had a 'boy I most want to go out with' contest I reckon you'd win by a mile. I'd probably come last… well, okay, I might do better than Joe, but that's all."

"Do you care?"

"Frankly, no," I admitted. "If you ask me again in a year or two I might have changed my mind, but right now I can get by quite nicely without wasting time and money going out with any of them."

"Good. Then I'll be able to keep you all for myself!" He gave me a big grin.

"Oh, joy," I muttered, scowling at him

I got into bed, waited until Alex was in his sleeping bag and turned the light out. Sometimes, I thought, my best friend could be very strange…

Chapter Two

Everything was smoke and chaos, as it always was, but this time I could actually see what was going on, rather than just hearing it.

I was in a room, maybe seven or eight metres long by about four or five wide. There were a number of cabinets set about with dials and gauges, but the most obvious piece of equipment was the large wooden ship's wheel, which looked as if it belonged on a Napoleonic ship-of-the-line, rather than in this enclosed space. I'd always thought that ship's wheels – at least, ones that looked like this one – belonged on deck, not in a room little bigger than Auntie Megan's living room. The man holding the wheel belonged on a deck somewhere, too: he was wearing something that might have been a naval uniform of sorts, and he had a pair of enormous grizzled side-whiskers that would have made him perfect for the part of the bo'sun in any Victorian tale of derring-do.

"There's another enemy ship behind us!"

The speaker was a tall man wearing a black frock coat which made him look like a Victorian politician, a shirt with lots of ruffles that made him look like a Regency fop and a pair of shiny black boots that made him look like a Nazi storm-trooper. He also had receding hair and a short black beard that had been neatly trimmed to a point. He turned and looked out of the window behind him once more, opening an instrument that appeared to be a compass with delusions of grandeur and holding it up to his eye.

"Bearing one-seven-five, about seven hundred yards," he continued.

"Navy or privateer?"

This was a slim woman who was standing at the other end of the room. She was wearing a short black jacket decorated with lots of black and red braid and a pair of jodhpurs, and she also had a sword attached to her belt, all of which made her look like a nineteenth-century cavalryman. Her hair would never have passed muster, though: it was long and wavy and dark blond, cascading down over her shoulders. And the little round black hat she wore tilted over to one side wasn't standard military issue, either.

"Does it make any difference?" asked the man with the beard.

"We might be able to reach an accommodation with a privateer. Which is it?"

The man put down his compass-thing and opened a naval telescope.

"Wait… it's navy," he said. "I can see the eagle."

At that point someone nudged me and, turning, I saw a young boy of about my own height standing beside me and offering me a small telescope. I took it, hearing the woman utter the usual line about the ship in front as I did so. The boy pointed and I raised the telescope to my eye, and at the same time the bearded man yelled his warning about Congreves. By chance I got the direction exactly right, because when I looked through the telescope all I could see was a huge black eagle with two heads, but distorted somehow, as though it were painted on something that was dome-shaped rather than flat. And then out of the corner of my eye I saw a smoke trail heading straight for us.

The bang, the flash and the falling all followed as usual, though this time I was aware that I was falling out of a large hole that had just appeared in the wall. The other boy grabbed me and managed to hold on for a second, but then gravity prevailed and I started to fall again…

***

I woke up and found Alex kneeling beside the bed with a concerned look on his face – there was enough light filtering through the curtains for me to be able to see him. He was also, I realised a moment later, holding my hand and squeezing it.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yes, thanks," I said. "It was just a bad dream. Actually I should say it was the bad dream, because I've been having it a lot recently. And you can give me my hand back now if you like."

"Huh? Oh. Sorry – but you were thrashing about a bit, and I thought it might help. I thought maybe I could get into your dream and help, or something."

I could still see the face of the other boy from the dream, but he looked nothing like Alex: he had straight red hair and a narrower face, and he was probably three or four years younger than Alex, too.

"Oh. Thanks for trying, then… what time is it?"

He peered at his watch. "Just after six-fifteen," he said.

"Then let's try to get a bit more sleep," I suggested.

I settled down again and Alex did the same.

"Hey, Alex?"

"What?"

"Thanks again."

"Any time."

***

I got through the next hour and a bit without any dreams – or at least without any that I could remember when I woke up. I got out of bed and woke Alex and he peered at me blearily.

"Morning," he said. "Again. You okay?"

"Yes, thanks."

"Good. So what's this dream about, then?"

"I'll tell you later. Do you want first use of the bathroom? That'll give me a chance to make the bed and finish packing."

"Okay." He climbed out of his sleeping bag, dug his washing kit out of his bag and left the room, and I made the bed, got my own back-pack out of the wardrobe and shoved my sleeping bag to the bottom of it and then added my black shoes, a pair of trousers, three random shirts and a handful of underwear and socks.. Then I went out to the airing cupboard and found a couple of towels, and I was just packing those when Alex came back.

I went and got washed, packed my sponge bag with everything I thought I might need and then went back to the bedroom, chucked it into the top of my bag and closed it. By now Alex was sitting on the end of the bed looking ostentatiously at his watch.

"Yes, okay, you're ready," I said, glaring at him. "Do you want to go and see if breakfast is ready?"

"It's okay, I'll wait for you," he said, grinning at me.

That led to me having to take off the shorts and put on a clean pair of boxers while keeping my back to him. And if he makes another crack about my rear end, I thought, I'll push him under a train. But he didn't, though I was sure he was looking at it: I could almost hear him smirking.

After breakfast I added a few last-minute items to my bag – my laptop, a couple of books, my pocket chess set (even though Alex told me he'd also brought his – at least now we'd have spare pieces if any got lost) and my sleeping shorts. I also took my pocket-watch: I thought that maybe if we showed it to people it might ring a bell with someone. Then we said goodbye to Auntie Megan – and I was really impressed that she managed not to fuss over me, even though I could tell she was worried about us – and set off for the station.

"So tell me about the dream," he said again once we were on a train.

I shrugged. "I can only remember the last bit," I told him. "I'm on a ship of some sort, and we're fighting someone – apparently the other lot's flag is a black eagle with two heads. And they start attacking us with rockets. One of them hits right next to where I'm standing and I start to fall overboard, and that's when I wake up."

"Rockets? Like cruise missiles, or something?"

"No, nothing like that. It's something called a Congreve – I remembered the word and looked it up after I woke up one time. It's more like a really big firework rocket than a modern missile – they were used early in the nineteenth century. Apparently they were pretty inaccurate, but if one did hit the target it could do a fair bit of damage. Anyway, that's all there is, except that this morning I actually remember seeing some of the other people there: there was a man with big side-whiskers – he was the helmsman – and another man with a beard, and a woman – I think she was the captain… at least, she seemed to be in charge. And there was another boy there too, a kid with red hair. There were some other people there, but I can't remember anything about them."

"That sounds a bit odd," said Alex. "Old-fashioned weapons and a woman in charge – I don't think those things could actually happen at the same time. Have you tried looking to see who uses a black eagle? I mean, I know the Nazis did, but I'm pretty sure theirs didn't have two heads."

I shook my head. "I'd never seen the eagle until today," I told him, "so I haven't had a chance to look for it yet. Perhaps I'll try later today. And if I have the dream again while we're away I'll try to tell you everything I can remember the moment I wake up. That way maybe one of us will remember it long-term."

The train rolled on.

"Did you get rid of the trainers?" I asked.

"Yeah. I wasn't going to at first – I thought maybe if I brought them with us it would be safe to wear them while we're away, and by the time we get back they'd be broken in a bit and wouldn't look brand new."

"Sounds reasonable."

"Yeah, but… it still felt wrong. I was going to throw them in a skip, like you said, but then even that felt wrong. Obviously I've been spending too much time hanging with you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you know – you never seem to do anything wrong."

"So… are you saying I'm a little goody-goody, or something?"

"No, it's nothing like that. If you came across as one of those holier-than-thou tossers I'd just tell you to fuck off. You've never preached at me, have you? But… I dunno, somehow you're different. It's like you've been taught different standards to the rest of us. I suppose that's down to your aunt and uncle."

I shrugged. "I suppose they've set a good example, but I don't think they're really any different from your parents. Perhaps it's down to wherever I lived before."

"It must have been a bit special, then. Perhaps you were training to be a priest or something."

I burst out laughing. "Yeah, and perhaps you're going to be king of Greece one day. Come on, Alex – I'm not even sure that I believe in God. What sort of a priest would that make me?"

"Honestly? I reckon you'd make a good one. But then I think you'd be good at a lot of things."

"Yeah, playing pantomime dwarfs, wriggling up chimneys to clean them or exploring rabbit-holes. Anyway, let's get back to your trainers. If you didn't chuck them in a skip, what did you do with them?"

"I wrapped them up, printed a label on my printer, took it to the post office and posted them back to the shop."

I gaped at him. "Aren't you afraid they'll trace it back to you?" I asked. "I mean, most post offices have CCTV."

"I wore my cap – the right way round. And I didn't use the local one – I went up to the main branch in Southgate. There are so many customers go through there the clerks will never remember me. I wiped the box before I wrapped it up, and I wore gloves after I wrapped it, and if by any chance they do manage to trace me I'll say some kid I met in the street gave me a couple of quid to post his package for him. Look, MM, I had to, okay? It's been like having a bomb hidden in the wardrobe. I know you think it was stupid of me and that it would have been much safer to just dump them, but…"

"No," I interrupted. "I mean, yeah, it was sort of dim, but at the same time I reckon you did the right thing. It must have taken some doing, though – I don't know that I could have done that."

"You wouldn't have nicked them in the first place."

"I dunno – I can imagine that it must be hard to say no if someone offers you something for nothing."

"Yeah, but I shouldn't even have been there, should I?"

"Well, since you ask – no," I said. "Like I said before… anyway, at least you can forget about it now. And if they do go looking for you while you're away, at least they're not going to find any stolen goods in your bedroom."

The train reached the terminus at Moorgate and we walked the short distance round to Liverpool Street, the main line station for trains to East Anglia. And as we stepped inside the station we were intercepted by a couple of policemen.

"This is a routine stop and search under Section 60 of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act," the first one said. "We're looking for material that might have been illegally removed from premises in London over the past week. Where are you going with those big bags, then?"

"We're going camping for a few days," I said.

"I see. Got any ID?"

They checked who we were and went through our bags. I'd heard that quite often police doing a stop and search could be thoroughly nasty and intimidating about it, but these two were polite enough, and once they'd satisfied themselves that we weren't carrying anything we shouldn't have been they let us go. We walked on into the station, and once we were out of their sight Alex leaned against a wall and took a deep breath.

"Like I said, you did the right thing," I said. "And I reckon that proves it. You okay?"

"Just about. Shit, MM, if I'd kept them they'd have nicked you too, probably." He took another deep breath. "Now where do we go?"

"Now we take the batteries out of our phones," I said, pulling mine from my pocket and dismantling it. I put the battery in one pocket of my bag and the rest of the phone into a different one. When he had done likewise I led him to the tube station and we took a Circle Line train round to Victoria.

"Now if the worst happens and they try to trace us they'll be looking in the wrong direction," I said. "Actually, running into those cops was quite useful, because they'll confirm we were at Liverpool Street. But we can't put the batteries back into the phones until we're sure they're not looking for us, okay?"

He nodded. "What about your laptop?" he asked. "If we go online won't they be able to trace the IP address and find out where we are?"

"I run everything through a proxy," I told him. "Okay, it's a free one, so it's probably not too sophisticated, but it should stop them finding out where we are without a bit of effort."

We got out at Victoria, but instead of going into the railway station I led him onto Buckingham Palace Road.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"The coach station. Train tickets cost the earth, especially if you don't buy them about a month in advance. Coach tickets don't."

We got lucky, in that the first coach to Salisbury wasn't fully booked, so we bought two tickets for a fraction of what train tickets would have cost, paying in cash. But the clerk said he still needed our names to put on the reservation sheet, so I just made up two on the spot. He gave us our tickets and we went and found somewhere to sit until it was time to get on board.

"So you think I look like 'Danny Fielding', do you?" Alex asked me. "And since when have you called yourself 'Lee Jordan'?"

"Well, I had to call us something," I pointed out. "Those names are fairly ordinary without being as obviously fake as 'Smith and Jones'."

"Yeah, but why 'Danny'? I really don't want to share a name with that arsehole Carmody."

"Sorry. I didn't want to give you an obviously Greek name, and 'Danny' was the first name that sprang to mind. But it's only for this journey: once we're off the coach you can pick your own name for the rest of the time we're away. Actually I might change mine, too: 'Lee Jordan' sounds a bit chavvy."

That kept us entertained for the rest of the time we were waiting and the first part of the coach journey, as we came up with ever-more elaborate and ridiculous names for each other: I went from 'Fred Bloggs' to 'The Honourable Algernon Montgomery Fotheringay-Fortescue-ffinch Of That Ilk', while he did the rounds of European aristocracy, ending up as 'Archduke Karl-Friedrich-Sigismund von Brandenburg-Bayreuth'. (Later that evening we discovered that there really was once a house of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, so I suppose I must have seen the name in a history book somewhere). Then we got serious and chose a sensible name each. In the end we decided to stick with Jordan and Fielding, but I changed my first name to Paul, and he changed his to Marco.

"I'm supposed to be half-Italian," he told me when I queried this. "That explains the curly black hair, and the fact that I'm amazingly fit and handsome, and brilliant at football."

"You wish. And what about the fact that you can't speak a single word of Italian?"

"A minor problem," he said, airily. "I was born in England and have never actually been to Italy. Anyway, I can swear in Italian. Tony taught me."

Tony was an Italian boy we played football with from time to time. In fact one of the benefits of living in a multicultural city like London was that you could learn to swear in several languages, and although I tried not to swear at all, at least if things got too much for me I could swear in a language that not too many people would understand.

The coach reached Salisbury in mid-afternoon, and after a short wait which we used to get some provisions and maps, we caught a local bus to the camp-site I had chosen, which was about five miles [8 km] north of Winterbourne Stoke. I'd chosen it because it was small (and so might be overlooked by anyone looking for us), because it had excellent facilities including wi-fi and because it was one of the closest sites to Winterbourne Stoke. We booked in as Paul Jordan and Marco Fielding and then went and set the tent up not too close to anyone else. Alex's tent was officially a three-person one. I thought it would be a bit of a squash with three, but there was plenty of room for two.

"So what's the plan for tomorrow?" he asked me, once we were safely inside the tent with the door zipped closed.

"We take the bus to Winterbourne Stoke, find the barn where they first found me – I know roughly where that is – and then we walk. Of course I don't know how far I walked before I fell asleep in the barn, but they said I couldn't have come that far, not with two cracked ribs and a bang on the head. I'd guess two or three miles [3-5 km], tops. So we'll want to check everything within a two or three mile radius of the barn. That'll probably take three or four days if we do it really thoroughly."

"And what if after all that we don't find anything?"

"Then I give up and we can go somewhere else – on the south coast, or wherever you fancy."

"Okay. So what are we going to do this evening?"

"We'll try chatting to Joe at nine, and I can chat to Auntie Megan, but apart from that we can do whatever you like."

"Right, then shall we start by looking for your eagle? I'd like to know if it actually means anything."

So I got the laptop out of my bag and turned it on, logging in and using the code the campsite owner had given me to connect to his wi-fi network. Then I passed the laptop to Alex, who tapped away for a moment and then swung it round to face me once more.

"First of all, did it look like this?" he asked;

I was looking at a picture of a black eagle on a yellow background. The eagle's necks were quite long, and there was a sort of crown above its two heads.

"No," I said. "It was black all over, not just in the outline, and the heads were closer together. And this one's wings are wrong – they're wider at the bottom than the top. Why, what's this?"

"If you'd said it was this one I'd have had to kill you," said Alex, grinning at me. "This is the flag of the Greek Orthodox Church, and if you were fighting against it, you were fighting against God and it would be my duty to murder you. Okay, if it wasn't that one, let's see if we can find a country that has a double-headed eagle…"

He tapped away some more.

"Well, there seem to be only four countries that have a double-headed eagle on their standards," he reported. "Armenia and Serbia are both landlocked, so they wouldn't have a navy – and their eagles aren't black, anyway; Montenegro's eagle isn't black either, so…apparently you were fighting against the Albanians."

"What?" Somehow I couldn't imagine Albania putting out large fighting ships – if I'd been asked to describe the Albanian navy I'd have guessed at a couple of speedboats patrolling the Adriatic coast.

I looked at the picture Alex had found. This was certainly closer to what I had seen through the telescope: it was a solid black, and the necks were shorter than on the Greek eagle, and that seemed better, but somehow it still wasn't quite right.

"I don't think so," I said. "Got any more?"

"Nope. At least, not unless you were in a time machine – these are the only ones in use today. Of course, if you're dreaming about a war you fought in some previous incarnation, there are a few: the Austro-Hungarian Empire used a black two-headed eagle, and so did the Tsar of Russia, and so did the German Confederation, though theirs reverted to one head once they became an Empire. Or if this is a really old incarnation I suppose you could have been fighting against the Holy Roman Empire. Or Byzantium."

"Or maybe I'm making the whole thing up," I said. "Alright, let's forget the stupid dream. Shall we go and see if there are any shops in the village?"

So we went and explored the village, finding that it had a small post office and village store, a pub we probably wouldn't be allowed into and a petrol station whose shop would probably be open even if the post office was closed.

When we'd finished exploring we went back to the tent, ate the collection of sandwiches and snacks Alex had bought for our supper and then sat and played chess until it started to get dark. Then we turned the computer on again and I logged into WLM. I'd added Joe Silver to my list of contacts the previous evening, and at the same time I'd blocked everyone else except for Auntie Megan: I didn't want to have to lie to all my friends about where I was and what I was doing. Then we sat and waited for Joe to log in.

Nine o'clock; nine-fifteen; nine thirty. No Joe.

"He might just have forgotten," I said.

"Yeah, right," said Alex, gloomily. "More likely they kicked his door in first thing this morning and dragged him off to share a cell with Carmody. And they probably kicked mine in, too. I hope my parents are okay."

"I'll ask Auntie Megan to go round and check," I promised, and as soon as she logged in, shortly before ten, I did so, switching to audio so that we could talk more easily. She hadn't heard anything about anyone being arrested locally, but Joe lived quite a distance from us on the far side of Green Lanes, and I doubted if word of an arrest there would have carried to our house. She was glad to hear that we had arrived safely – and it was interesting, and gratifying too, that she didn't ask where we were. I took it to mean that she trusted me enough to let me keep secrets if I thought it best. I thought that if she was prepared to trust me that much I should trust her too.

"We're in Wiltshire, not far from Winterbourne Stoke," I told her. "I'll let you know if I find anything."

"Okay. I'll go round to Alex's in a minute, and I'll send you an email when I get back."

We closed with a flurry of 'love you's that made me feel kind of homesick. I turned the computer off so as not to waste the battery, though I hoped that the site owner, who had seemed very friendly when we checked in, might let me use one of the unused caravan electric points to recharge it if I asked nicely (and next morning he said that would be no problem – in fact he even lent us an extension lead so that we could connect to the nearest spare electric point from inside our tent), and we played another couple of games of chess to give Auntie Megan time to go round the corner to Alex's house and back. We didn't play very well – it was obvious that Alex was worried about his parents, and it was sort of catching, so after the second game we just put the set away.

At half past ten I turned the computer on again, and there was a mail from Auntie Megan saying that the police hadn't been near Alex's house and that his parents were fine.

"That's really good, isn't it?" I said, switching off once more. "I mean, I hope for his sake Joe hasn't been arrested, but if he has and he tells them you weren't there, like he promised, maybe the police will decide Carmody was lying about you."

"Maybe. I hope Joe's okay, though. I don't think he could handle being locked up. Oh, shit, MM, why were we so stupid?"

"I think probably Joe couldn't have said no to Carmody – after all, they live right next to each other, and they spend a lot of time together from what I've seen. And Carmody's definitely boss of the relationship."

"I suppose so…there's no excuse for me, though. I'm just a dick."

Usually I'd have taken that as an opening to agree with him enthusiastically, but even though it was pretty dark in the tent now that I'd turned the computer off I could tell he was feeling really bad, too bad for jokes.

"No, you're not," I said. "Everybody messes up from time to time, but just because you make one mistake it doesn't make you a dick. I wouldn't hang with you if I thought you were that much of a knob, would I?"

"Maybe you just fancy me," he said, and I could imagine the grin even if I couldn't see it.

"In your dreams," I replied. "And talking of which… let's get some sleep."

I turned my flashlight on for as long as it took to fish my shorts out of my bag and then we both stripped to our boxers. I switched the torch off… and waited. Surprise, surprise, five seconds later Alex's torch came on.

"Looking for something?" I enquired, grinning at him.

"No, just tidying up," he said, with a look that was presumably supposed to be injured innocence. "Unlike some people, I don't like to leave my clothes strewn about all over the place."

He made a big production out of folding his clothes up and stacking them neatly at the foot of the tent. Then he got into his sleeping bag, but he didn't turn the torch off.

"Don't you want to tidy your stuff up?" he asked.

I gathered up my clothes and chucked them down to the bottom of the tent.

"Satisfied?" I asked.

"Some people have no self-respect," he observed, switching off the torch.

I waited for about ten seconds and then, when the torch stayed off, wriggled out of my boxers and into my shorts, chucking the boxers down to the end of the tent with the rest of my clothes. I got into my sleeping bag, settled down and went to sleep.

***

I slept surprisingly well, considering that I hadn't been camping since the previous summer and so wasn't used to sleeping on the ground. As far as I was aware I got through the night without any dreams, and when I woke up the following morning I felt refreshed and ready for the day ahead. Alex was still asleep, so I opened the sleeping bag and got dressed, thinking that for once I could stare at him while he was trying to get changed – let's see how he likes it, I thought. But once he woke up he simply pulled his jeans on over the boxers he'd been sleeping in. I could probably have made some sort of comment about that, but I decided not to bother.

We tidied the tent and walked into the village to buy some milk, and after breakfast we caught the bus to Winterbourne Stoke. In the course of that day we covered the area south and west of the barn, which I found without difficulty. I was surprised that the area was so hilly: you hear the words 'Salisbury Plain' and you get a mental picture of a large flat area, but it isn't anything like that: we seemed to spend an awful lot of time going uphill, and precious little coming down again. I kept my eyes open, but despite covering quite a bit of ground nothing leaped to my eye. Of course I hadn't really expected it to on the first day: my luck doesn't work like that.

Eventually we gave up for the day, returning to the main road and following it until we reached the village of Shrewton, a short distance north of Winterbourne Stoke. This was quite a large place, and I'd hoped they might have a chip shop, but instead it had a pub that served food, and since there was a separate dining area we were able to eat there. The food was good and not too expensive, and I was thinking that this was a perfect way to end our first day, right up to the point where I discovered we'd missed the last bus back to the camp site. I'd thought that it didn't leave here until a quarter past eight, but then I realised that the timetable actually said 1815.

"You knob!" commented Alex, with some justification, I thought. "Can't you read the twenty-four hour clock?"

"Usually," I said. "Just not today. Sorry."

"I don't suppose you're going to carry me back to the site, are you?"

"You don't suppose right. I suppose we could get a taxi."

"Yes, if you don't mind waiting a couple of hours for one to get here from Salisbury, because I bet there aren't any closer than that. You are such a dickhead… how far is it back to the site?"

"About three miles [5 km], I think."

"Then it'll definitely be quicker to walk than to wait for a taxi. I suppose we could try thumbing it, but nobody's going to stop for an ugly midget like you."

"They'd be more likely to stop for a midget like me than for a great ox like you."

That was unfair – there was nothing remotely ox-like about Alex, and he wasn't that much bigger than me. Still, that crack about ugly midgets had got to me.

We started walking. Predictably, nobody stopped to offer us a lift. It took us about an hour to get back to the campsite, and when we got there I was ready to drop – I'd probably walked between twelve and fifteen miles [18-23 km] in the course of the day, and I really wasn't used to that sort of distance. When we got into the tent I just more or less collapsed.

"You look knackered," said Alex.

"I am knackered," I told him.

"I can probably help you there. I'll go and fill up the water bottles; you get changed into your shorts."

I stuck my head out of the tent after he left, expecting him to be lurking outside, but no, he really was heading for the washroom, carrying our water-bottles. So I got undressed and put my shorts on, folding up my clothes neatly this time.

"Okay," he said, zipping the tent closed. "Now lie on your front."

Mystified, I did as he said, and he came and knelt astride me, put his hands on my shoulders and began to rub slowly.

I'd never had a massage in my life, so I had nothing to compare this with, but I can say that this felt good. He concentrated on my shoulders, neck and upper back to start with and then moved down to my lower back, and it was definitely very relaxing. Then he shifted position and started on my legs, first working on the calves and then moving up to the thighs, and I could almost feel the day's miles melting away. He came and knelt astride me again, only this time facing my feet, and he worked some more on my lower back, and then…

Then he slid his hands under the waistband of my shorts and started kneading my buttocks.

"Whoa!" I cried. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Chill," he said. "There are some major muscles here. Trust me."

"Yes, but… that's my arse!"

"Oh, really? And there I was, thinking it was your brain. Just shut up and relax."

I managed to shut up, but the relaxing wasn't so easy: this felt seriously weird. Nobody had ever touched me there – at least, not that I knew about. But gradually the soothing feeling took over and I did manage to relax.

"That's it," he said suddenly, moving away. "How do you feel?"

"Honestly? Better. A lot better, in fact – although you might have warned me before grabbing my arse."

"If I'd warned you, you'd just have shoved me away, and then you wouldn't have got the benefit. Seriously, was it any good?"

"Definitely. When did you learn to do that?"

"Well, to be honest, I've never done it before – or not properly, anyway. See, a few months ago my sister did something to her shoulder. I'd seen people using massage on TV, so just for a laugh I said I'd massage it for her, and even though I didn't really know what I was doing she said it helped. So since then I've been trying to learn how to do it properly, and tonight was the first chance I've had to try it for real. So I'm well glad it actually worked… anyway, if we're going to be doing a lot of walking I don't mind doing that again. It's supposed to help you relax, so maybe you'll sleep properly tonight and not get woken up by an Albanian firework."

"Maybe. Thanks, Alex – although I wouldn't mind having the dream some more. I might learn something from it."

"Try eating a lump of cheese just before you go to sleep, then," he advised. "That's supposed to give you bad dreams. Or just have a look at yourself in a mirror – that really will give you nightmares!"

I gave him the finger and got into my sleeping bag.

"Going to sleep already?" he asked. "Aren't we going to speak to your Auntie this evening?"

"I don't think we need to. I doubt if anything much has changed since last night. Anyway, I'm really tired."

"Me, too," he admitted. "Okay, then, let's have an early night. And it's Sunday tomorrow, so we can have a lie-in, too."

"Good plan," I said sleepily, rolling over onto my side. That massage really had felt good – even, I admitted, when he'd been squeezing my buttocks. In fact, especially when he'd been squeezing my buttocks. Should that have felt good? Did the fact that it had felt good mean that there was something wrong with me? But then I gave a sort of mental shrug and settled down. Oh, well, I told myself, there's no point in worrying about it…

***

I don't know if it was because of the massage or not, but I got through the night untroubled by Albanians and woke up feeling more or less fully recovered from the previous day's endeavours. Of course we wouldn't be doing a lot of exercise today: the bus didn't run on Sundays, and so we would probably spend most of the day lazing around.

Alex was still asleep, so once again I took the opportunity to get dressed in peace. I know I'd agreed to his suggestion of a lie-in, but I'd slept really well and now I just wanted to get up and do something, so I grabbed my washing kit and towel and headed over to the washroom. The sky was a bit grey – I thought we'd be lucky if it didn't rain – but if it had to rain it was better that it should happen today and not while we were out waking miles from the nearest shelter.

I washed, walked back to the tent and dumped my towel and washing kit. Alex was awake but not showing much sign of getting up.

"I'm going to the shop for some milk," I told him. "Mind you're up by the time I get back."

"Yes, Mum," he said, grumpily. "Is the shop even open today?"

"Nine till twelve. I checked. See you in fifteen minutes."

But when I got back with the milk and some stuff for lunch he had apparently gone back to sleep, so I sat and ate a bowl of cereal and then, when he still didn't show any signs of life, I kicked the sleeping bag until he sat up and glared at me.

"If I don't get my beauty sleep I'll turn into an ugly git like you," he complained. "And that really wouldn't be fair on anyone."

"You'd have to sleep for a thousand years before you were as good-looking as me," I retorted. "Are you getting up, or what?"

"What, I should think," he said, lying down again. "If I do get up, what are we going to do?"

"I dunno. I expect we'll think of something."

"Great. What's the weather like?"

"Dull, like you."

"I might have to beat you up for that."

"You might have to try."

Eventually he sat up and ate some cereal, and by the time he'd eaten it he was sufficiently awake to get up properly, and once he had been for a wash he was more or less his usual self.

There were three or four other tents on the site and quite a few caravans and motorhomes, and we spent most of the morning kicking a football about with a couple of German boys and a pair of brothers from Yorkshire (and watching the Germans trying to communicate with the Barnsley kids was most entertaining: they were all speaking English, but you would never have realised it if you didn't know).

But after lunch the Germans went off in their motorhome to visit Stonehenge, which was only a few miles away, and the Yorkshire boys went off with their family to visit Salisbury, and that left us on our own. And then it began to rain. We retreated to the tent and zipped it closed.

"Should have brought the Xbox," commented Alex.

"If I'd known we were going to have access to mains electricity I would have done," I told him.

"Are there any games on that?" he asked, indicating the computer.

"Just the usual – Solitaire, stuff like that. We can always play chess."

"Boring. Lucky I bought my cards."

We spent the next couple of hours playing gin rummy, knock-out whist, beat your neighbour and blackjack, and it was actually a lot more fun than I had expected. Probably I should have seen what was coming next, but I didn't.

"Okay," said Alex, having just been roundly thrashed at rummy. "I want revenge! Let's play strip poker."

"Get lost!" I replied. "No way are you taking the Mickey out of my physique."

"Chicken! Chick-chick-chick-chicken!"

"Alex, I'm not eight years old," I pointed out. "You can't get me to do something I don't want just by going 'chicken!' at me."

"How about 'scaredy-cat'?"

"Nor that either."

"Look," he said, "we're going to be in this tent with each other for ages yet. I have no intention of wearing the same pair of boxers night and day for the next fortnight…"

"I'm glad to hear it!" I interrupted.

"…and I don't suppose you want to have to go through contortions changing into your shorts without making a spectacle of yourself every night, either. So why don't we just get it over with?"

"Well, if you want to wave your bits about in the air, feel free."

"It wouldn't bother me too much. And… look, I'm not going to laugh at you, okay?"

I stared at him.

"Seriously," he went on, and he did sound serious. "I know you're probably smaller than me, but I don't care, and I'm not going to take the piss. Don't you trust me?"

"Oh, come on – that's right up there with 'chick-chick-chicken'! You know perfectly well that I trust you – you're my best friend. But there's a difference between trusting you and handing you ammo for next time we have an insult contest. I trust you not to talk to anyone else about it, but I don't trust you not to use it against me."

"I won't, I swear… well, not very often. Cut for deal."

He put the cards down between us and cut. I'd have carried on arguing, but it occurred to me that I'd quite like to see what he looked like in the raw – after all, there was an equal chance that he was going to lose. And so I took a deep breath, reached out and cut myself up a two, which was hardly a good omen. He showed me the ten he had cut himself, picked up the pack, shuffled and started to deal.

Apparently that two wasn't a bad omen after all, because although I lost the first hand I won the next five, and that was enough to reduce Alex to his boxers.

"I bet you wish you'd never suggested this now," I commented.

"Hey, don't get too cocky – you haven't won yet!"

'Yet' was the operative word, because two hands later he lost again.

"Hah!" I said. "Come on, then – or are you the one who's chicken?"

"Well, if you insist on me making you jealous…"

He wriggled out of his boxers and knelt up facing me. Actually I was almost relieved: for some reason I was expecting him to be hung like a porn star, possibly because one of the other Greek kids in our class actually was that big: he'd flashed us all in the Games changing room once or twice. But Alex was absolutely normal for a boy who had just turned fourteen, at least if my internet research was anything to go by. He had quite a lot of black curly hair, but his organs were just… well, normal-looking. But then he started to get an erection, and at that point he got quite a bit bigger – I'd guess that by the time it was at full size it would have been around five inches [12 cm] or so.

"You want to explain why you're pointing at me?" I asked.

"It just happens," he said, making no attempt to hide it. "If you ever reach puberty you'll find out for yourself. It's called an 'Eer – reck – shun'." And just to annoy me further he did the little inverted comma thing with his fingers, which he knows I hate.

"I reckon it shows you fancy me," I retorted.

"You so wish."

I looked at him for a few more seconds, wondering why I liked seeing him this way but thinking that he definitely looked good. Eventually I snapped out of it.

"Okay, you can get dressed," I told him.

"Good. Okay, your deal."

"What makes you think I'm going to play any more?"

"Oh, come on, you have to give me a chance of revenge."

"No, I don't. But since you're my mate… okay, but if you lose again you have to swear to leave the tent and let me get dressed in peace every morning from now on."

"Well… okay, you're on."

I should have quit while I was ahead, because I lost the second game easily. I sighed, put down the cards and took hold of the elastic of my boxers.

"If you laugh we're through," I warned him. "I mean it, Alex."

I slipped my boxers off and knelt up the way he had. I didn't have an erection, but I almost wished I had, because at least then it would have looked bigger. But Alex didn't laugh at all.

"You look fine," he said. "What were you worrying about?"

"It's pathetic," I said.

"No, it isn't: you're normal for your height. Your balls are growing and they hang down properly, and you're getting some hair, and pretty soon your cock will start growing too. By this time next year you'll look just like everyone else."

"Do you really think so?"

"Sure. Seriously, M… Keith. Once your hair starts to appear everything else follows pretty quickly. Okay, you've only got a few and they're still almost colourless, but they've started, and that's what counts. By next summer you'll look like I do now."

"You can call me MM," I said. "Somehow you calling me 'Keith' sounds really weird. Anyway, can I get dressed now?"

"Of course. But from now on you don't need to play all coy when you're getting changed, okay?"

"Okay," I agreed, pulling my underwear back on. "And thanks for not taking the piss."

"Hey, you're my mate. And there's nothing wrong with you anyway."

I wasn't entirely convinced, but that did make me feel a bit better about myself.

***

That evening we turned on the computer to talk to Auntie Megan, but to our surprise Joe came online first.

"What happened?" I asked, turning on the microphone. "We thought you'd been nicked. Did they give you bail?"

"No, they haven't been near me," he replied. "Sorry, guys – I suppose I should have warned you that I don't use the computer on Friday nights. It's Shabbat after sunset. You probably think it's a bit silly, but typing counts as work, so no computers on Friday night or Saturday before sunset."

"Yes, you should have warned us," said Alex. "Shit, man, I was really worried about you."

"Seriously? Then I really am sorry. Anyway, you'll know for next week. But where were you last night? I waited for about an hour."

"My turn to say sorry," I said. "We were really tired and went to bed early. But we thought you'd been arrested, so we didn't expect you to be on last night."

"What are you going to do?" Alex broke in. "Are you going to hand yourself in?"

"No," said Joe. "We talked about that, but my parents say it's best just to wait and see what happens. After all, they might decide not to try to trace everyone who was there, and Danny might not have grassed us up…"

"I wish I could believe that," said Alex.

"Me, too," admitted Joe, gloomily.

We spoke for a bit longer, and when Auntie Megan came online I chatted to her for a while too, but she didn't have anything new to tell us.

We turned the computer off and I got changed into my sleeping shorts without bothering to hide what I was doing.

"See?" said Alex, removing all his clothes and getting into his sleeping bag naked. "Isn't that easier?"

I supposed it was, though I just before I fell asleep I did find myself wondering why I found the thought of Alex sleeping naked so interesting…

Chapter Three

Everything was smoke and chaos… except that this time I didn't wake up when the red-haired boy lost his grip on my jacket and I started to fall out of the hole in the wall again. But before I could fall free my jacket caught on a jagged piece of wood at the side of the hole, and it snagged me up for long enough for one of the crew to reach me and grab my arm. He dragged me back inside and away from the hole.

"Still in one piece?" he asked me, and I managed to nod.

"Good. Then I suggest you and Wolfie go over there in the corner and hang on to something."

The red-head – Wolfie, presumably – pulled me over into the corner the man had indicated and we sat on the floor, wedging ourselves against a couple of cabinets. The crewman stood up, examining the hole in the wall, and then he looked through it and gave a yell.

"There's another ship out there," he cried.

The bearded man produced his telescope and looked in the direction indicated.

"It's the Gouvion-Saint-Cyr," he announced. "Trust the damned Frogs to turn up when it's too late." He took out the other instrument. "Range about a thousand yards, at two-five-five degrees and down ten."

"Helm, port," ordered the woman. "New course two-five-five, and continue at down twenty. Maybe he can cover us. Guns, fire on that Eagle as soon as we have a bearing."

"We'll be damned lucky to hit at this range," said someone at one of the machines on the far side of the room.

"I know that," said the woman. "But we're due a bit of luck, and it might make them think twice about coming after us."

I wanted to ask the redhead where we were and what the hell was going on, but before I got a chance one of the crew yelled, "More Congreves, starboard bow!"

"Helm…"

But before the woman could complete the order there was a loud bang from somewhere above us. The ship lurched and tilted.

"Direct hit on sections two and three," called someone. "We have a fire in section two. Venting now."

"Can we compensate?" asked the woman.

"No. There's too large a hole in section three. Even if the fire doesn't spread to four we're going down."

"Predicted speed of impact?"

"Too damned fast, even if we don't stop another rocket."

"Pass the word to abandon ship," said the woman. "Bridge crew, too."

"Captain, that's going to be a problem," said the man who had rescued me. "That rocket took out the port storage lockers. We've lost all our jumpshades."

I wondered what the hell a jumpshade was, but when I stood up and looked out of the nearest window I realised that there was no water in sight. And that had to mean…

***

"Parachutes!" I gasped, waking up with a jerk.

"Huh?" said Alex, blearily.

"It's not a ship – it's an aircraft of some sort. In the dream, I mean. I got a bit further this time – I didn't fall out of the hole after all, and then a French ship appeared – I got the impression it was on our side. It was called… I'm not sure – the Goovio Sincere, or something like that. But before it could help us we got hit again, and this time they said the ship was going down – literally, because when I looked out of the window we were in mid-air. And we didn't have any parachutes."

"This dream is like one of those really old serials that always ended on a cliff-hanger," Alex observed. "'Don't miss next week's exciting episode! Can our hero survive this latest deadly threat?' I wouldn't worry too much, MM – the hero always survived the latest deadly threat. And you're here now, aren't you? So you must have survived – unless this is a dream from a previous incarnation, like I said before. In that case maybe you go down with the ship and die spectacularly."

"I don't think it can be," I said. "Can you think of any war when Britain and France fought together against Albania using… I dunno, balloons, or airships, or whatever these ships are? Because I sure as hell can't."

"If it's a past incarnation it doesn't have to be Albania," he reminded me. "Of course, generally Britain has fought against France, not with them, at least until the middle of the nineteenth century. But it could be the Crimea – Britain and France against Tsarist Russia. Or more likely against Austria-Hungary in the First World War – I know the Germans used airships in that, so the Austrians could have done, too."

"I'm pretty sure the British didn't, though. Besides, if it was as recent as that, why those obsolete rockets? And how come a woman was in charge – that certainly wouldn't have happened in 1916. No, I reckon it's just a load of old rubbish floating about in my head and coming together to make some sort of story that doesn't really mean anything."

"I suppose so. Pity – I'd like to know how you escape from the crashing ship."

"Well, if I have another 'exciting episode' I'll be sure to tell you. What time is it?"

"About quarter past seven."

"Shall we get up, then? It doesn't sound as if it's raining, so we might as well get on with it. I want to try to cover the arc from west to north today."

Alex undid his sleeping bag, crawled to the door, unzipped it and stuck his head outside.

"It's a bit cloudy, but it isn't raining," he said. "So I suppose we might as well get on with it, seeing that you've already woken us up."

He crawled down to the other end of the tent and started rummaging in his bag for a clean pair of boxers, apparently not caring in the slightest that he was completely naked. I didn't mind at all: the more I saw him naked, the better I thought he looked. I just wished I had a similar physique.

I got out of my sleeping bag, found a clean pair of boxers and changed out of my shorts and into the clean underwear. I didn't try to hide, but I didn't spend any longer than I needed to with my bits in the fresh air, either: whatever Alex said, I still didn't think they were exactly my best feature.

Once we were both dressed we went for a wash, nipped into the village for some milk and ate breakfast, and then it was back on the road once more. This time we got off the bus at the stop before Winterbourne Stoke and started exploring the arc from west to north of the barn. We followed every possible path and walked around the sides of any number of fields, but although we kept at it for most of the day, just taking a short break at lunch time to eat a couple of sandwiches, I didn't see anything that looked familiar. By this stage I was beginning to think we were on a fool's errand: after all, it had been around four years since I had been found in the barn, and since I couldn't remember how I had got there at the time, it seemed improbable that I'd have a sudden flash of memory now.

On the other hand, the weather wasn't too bad, we were away from London and everything that was going on there, and I was with my best friend, who was good company even when he was teasing me. I was in no hurry to pack up and go home.

That evening we got Alex's little single-ring gas burner out. Neither of us was much good at cooking, so we'd bought a couple of ready meals in the village shop, meals of the type that you can heat up just by putting the packet in hot water for a few minutes. It occurred to me just after we'd put them into the billy-can of water that we could have gone and asked the Germans if we could use their microwave for a couple of minutes – I'm sure a motorhome as gleaming as theirs would have had every modern device imaginable. As it was we were still waiting for them to heat through when the German boys wandered over to see what we were eating.

"It's a curry," I told them.

"A curry? Does it taste good?"

"Probably not," I admitted. "Or, at least, it won't taste like one from a proper Indian restaurant. But it's the best we're going to get around here."

"I do not think so. There is an Indian restaurant in a village close to Stonehenge. We saw it yesterday, and my father would want to try it. Perhaps if I ask him you could come with us – I think that we will go there tomorrow."

Alex and I looked at each other. A proper sit-down meal, and in a real curry-house, too?

"Yes, please," we said, together.

"Thanks, Lukas," I added. "We'd really appreciate it. Camping's fun, but the food is a bit basic. A good hot meal now and again makes a big difference."

"Then we will ask him now," said Lukas, and they trotted off to their motorhome, returning a couple of minutes later to tell us that we would be welcome to join them.

In fairness the packet curry wasn't that bad, but there wasn't that much of it. The idea of a proper three-course meal with side dishes was extremely attractive, even though it would be likely to make a bit of a dent in our wallets.

After we'd eaten and cleaned up we zipped the tent up and settled down to a game of chess, and that kept us busy until nine o'clock. Tonight neither Joe nor Auntie Megan had anything new to tell us, though Joe was understandably happy that his situation hadn't changed. He'd spoken to Carmody's mother, but she had only been able to say that Carmody had been remanded in custody and that he was supposed to be in court the following week.

"Probably it's when he gets to court that you and I will be for it," he went on. "If it's anything like all those American TV programs he'll offer to name names in return for a shorter sentence."

"Then let's just hope it doesn't work like that here," said Alex. And after we'd said goodnight and turned the computer off he looked at me.

"Do you think that is how it works?" he asked.

"I've no idea, but it sounds like the people who have been sentenced already are getting dealt with pretty severely. I suppose we couldn't blame Carmody if he didn't want to spend the next year in Feltham."

"I bloody well could! After all, he got me and Joe into it in the first place. The least he can do now is to keep quiet about it. I don't suppose he will, though… oh, well, I suppose there's no point in worrying about it. If Joe suddenly goes off the air next week we'll know the worst, and then at least I can go on the run – I brought my passport in case."

I stared at him. "Where would you go?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Nowhere, probably," he admitted. "After all, I haven't got enough money to get to Cyprus – I've barely got enough for the ferry to France. I suppose I could try hitching from there, but you know my French is crap, so that wouldn't work unless I could find an English lorry driver… or a Greek one, of course. Fat chance of that."

"Can you really speak Greek well enough?"

"Just about. That's why I have to go to Greek school most Saturdays in term time… anyway, I'm probably not going to risk it. With my luck I'd accept a lift from some total psycho and end up in a French ditch somewhere. No, I suppose that if Joe gets picked up I'll probably just go back and face it – after all, if he can find the guts to do that I suppose I can, too. You'll come and visit me inside, won't you?"

"I'll even bring you a cake with a file hidden inside. Cheer up, you idiot, it hasn't happened yet. And if they do nick you I reckon posting the trainers back ought to count for something."

"Not really – that just proves I actually took something in the first place, which is more than poor old Joe did. Mind you, he'll probably get done for leaving a nasty puddle on the shop's carpet. At least I didn't do that. Anyway, you're right: there's no point in worrying about it. So… do you want a massage tonight?"

"Yes, okay," I said. "I don't feel quite as bad as I did on Saturday, but it'll probably help me sleep. Just warn me before you start squeezing my arse this time."

"Okay. Get undressed, then."

I stripped down to my boxers and then stopped while I fetched my shorts from my bag.

"Don't bother with those," said Alex. "They'll just get in the way. Take your pants off and lie down."

I hesitated briefly but then shrugged, slipped my boxers off and lay down on my front. Alex came and knelt astride me facing my head and started to work on my shoulders, and almost straight away it began to feel good.

"So why do you wear those shorts in bed?" he asked. "It feels much nicer sleeping naked."

"Two reasons," I said. "First, if there's a fire and the fire crew break into my room to rescue me in the middle of the night, at least they won't carry me out into the street in the altogether."

"I suppose that's a good reason, if a bit pessimistic," Alex conceded. "What are the chances of a fire starting but you not waking up?'

"It could happen."

"Maybe. What's the other reason?"

"Oh. Well… I've started having wet dreams. Not the recurring one, of course, but… you know. Others. And if I don't wear the shorts… I'd be really embarrassed if Auntie Megan found stains on the sheets. Okay, there isn't very much yet, but even so…"

"Good for you," he said, moving to the small of my back. "See? I told you you were growing up. I bet you couldn't shoot six months ago."

"No, I couldn't. But I bet you could – so… don't you have wet dreams?"

"Sometimes. But I keep a box of tissues beside the bed and I normally manage to clean it up fairly well. I hate wearing anything in bed except when it's really cold."

He was working his way downwards, and after working on my lower back for a while he said "Okay, prepare to be grabbed!" and started to work on my buttocks. This time I was ready for it, and so it just felt great from the start.

He carried on working on my thighs and then my calves, and then he started to work his way up again. By the time he got back to my shoulders I was feeling really relaxed… and then he asked me to turn over.

"Huh?"

"I said turn over," he repeated. "You've got muscles on your chest, too."

"Are you sure? Skin and ribs, yes; muscles, I don't think so."

"You'd be surprised. Let me give it a try, anyway."

I felt a bit strange: okay, he'd already seen everything I have, but even so the idea of lying there completely naked while he worked on my virtually non-existent chest muscles seemed distinctly weird. But there was no denying that having my back massaged was very relaxing, and so in the end I rolled over.

"You might want to close your eyes," he suggested. "If you do, perhaps you can tell yourself that it's Karen Lester doing it instead of me."

"Karen Lester? Is she your idea of the perfect girl, then?"

He laughed. "I've already told you, there's no such thing," he said. "But she seems to be the one that most of the boys in our class want to get off with, so maybe you'd prefer to think of her giving you a massage rather than… what was it you called me? Oh, yes – a great ox like me."

"You know I didn't mean that," I said. "And I bet you only want me to think about her because you hope it'll give me an erection, and then you'll really be able to take the Mick."

"Would I?" he said, trying to look innocent and failing miserably.

"I won't bother answering that. Just get on with it," I said.

There were certainly muscles on my shoulders and upper arms, even if they weren't particularly big, and so he had something to work with at the beginning, but since I'm lacking the sort of pecs or abs that would qualify me to appear in one of those pretentious ads for male perfumes (you know – the sort that are shot in moody black and white and feature some hunky Italian stud getting out of the sea and smouldering at the camera) he didn't linger over my chest. Instead he went back to working on my legs, and that definitely felt good.

Of course he was now kneeling astride my ankles, and although he was working mostly on my thighs, he had an uninterrupted view of my genitals. He didn't make any nasty remarks – in fact he didn't say anything at all – but I was only too aware that he was looking, and of course once I started thinking about it my body began to react.

"Can we stop now?" I asked, starting to feel very embarrassed indeed.

"No, I haven't finished yet. Just relax – well, relax the rest of you, anyway." He grinned at me and kept working on my thighs. "Of course I always knew you fancied me."

"No, I don't! It's like you said yesterday – it just happens!"

"Sure."

"It's nothing to do with me, I swear!"

"Sure."

He worked away at my thighs for another thirty seconds or so.

"You know, that looks uncomfortable, the way it keeps twitching. Maybe I should do something about it." And before I could react he reached out and took hold of me.

"Alex! What the hell… do you think… you're… ach, Teufel!"

He led go sharply and stared at me.

"Nein, mach's noch weiter!" I said. "Das war mir aber prima!"

"Since when do you speak German?" he asked, staring at me some more.

I gaped back at him. Somehow when he had touched me it had opened up one of the blocked memory circuits in my head, and I'd had a fleeting glimpse of someone else holding me like that, someone who spoke German and who had been teaching me his language – among other things…

"Do that again, Alex!" I invited him.

He obviously couldn't understand what was happening, but that didn't stop him from obeying me with alacrity. His hand closed around me once more, and I closed my eyes …

We were in one of the old servant rooms on the third floor, a place where we often came to play when we wanted to be out of the way of the grown-ups. Mostly we'd played harmless games up there, hunting each other round the attics and down into some of the disused servant quarters… it must have been raining that day, because I usually preferred playing outside in the grounds of the house, exploring the maze or running wild over the Long Meadow, through the Chase beyond and down to the river where our boat was kept. But that day we'd been playing more daring games indoors, going out onto the roof in our underwear or sneaking down the back stairs and mooning towards the smoking-room where the adults would be talking endlessly about the war.

And then, back in our headquarters on the third floor, my companion had said he had something to show me. He'd persuaded me to undress and lie on the bed, and then he'd taken hold of me and sort of squeezed and stroked at the same time, and it had felt so amazing, so absolutely different from anything we had done before, that now I couldn't for the life of me understand how I'd ever managed to forget it.

Alex was still holding me and stroking gently.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes, thanks. I just got some of my memory back – see, someone did that to me before, and when you touched me it sort of unlocked the door and I started remembering things."

"Oh. So who was it?"

"Well… I don't know. It's weird – I can remember so much, about the house and grounds and about the games we played, but I can't remember his face at all."

"He can't have made that much of an impression on you, then."

"Hey, Alex, are you jealous?" I asked, grinning at him.

"Maybe," he admitted. "It feels odd thinking that you had a whole life – and even a sex life, apparently – before I even met you."

"Well, you've got your hands on me now," I pointed out. "Literally. So you said something about doing something with what you're holding. What did you have in mind?"

He looked at me again. "Are you sure that's what you want?" he asked. "I shouldn't really have grabbed you like that, and I don't want to do anything you're going to feel bad about later. I don't want to mess up us being friends."

"If you understood German you'd know there's no risk of that," I said. "I told you not to stop, and that it felt really great. And it did – still does, in fact. So is there anything else you want to show me?"

"Well, if you absolutely insist," he said, and he began to rub it properly.

It felt really, really good. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the first time this had happened, lying on the bed in the little third-floor bedroom while my friend did this to me, and I sort of could, but I still couldn't see my companion's face. And so I decided to forget about the past and concentrate on the here and now.

"Can you move a little closer?" I asked.

Alex came and sat right beside me and then continued to rub me, and I put my arm around his waist and held him. He looked at me, a little startled; I smiled at him, and at that he smiled back and got on with it.

"Nicht so schnell… I mean, slow down a little," I said, floating in a sort of haze of contentment and not wanting it to finish too quickly. Obligingly he slowed a little, and that really did feel wonderful…

Eventually I felt things building up, and so I asked him to speed up again. And when arching my back and clenching my toes was still not enough to hold it back any more I gasped and spurted onto my stomach, while Alex, who was apparently well-versed in showing consideration to his partner, held on and squeezed gently until he was sure it was over. Then he went to his bag and produced a packet of tissues, a couple of which he handed to me.

"Now you're just trying to flatter me," I said, taking them nonetheless. "One of these would be plenty big enough."

"So? You can do it, and there's enough there for you to continue your family line, if you ever find out what it is. Seriously, MM, was that okay?"

"That was absolutely bloody amazing," I said, wiping myself down with one of the tissues. "Thanks, Alex. Okay, it's your turn."

"No, it isn't," he said. "Not straight afterwards. Right now you're feeling sort of down and you're only offering because you think you should. You'd do it, but you wouldn't enjoy it. Now if you'd like to offer again tomorrow evening, or even tomorrow morning, I might take you up on it, but right now you're probably feeling like you're ready to go to sleep, so that's what we're going to do. Okay?"

"Okay," I said. "Thanks. But tomorrow evening it's definitely my turn to do it for you."

I got into my sleeping bag – without putting my shorts on – and lay back, watching as Alex got undressed, put his stuff way and got into his own bag. Then I turned out the light.

"Alex," I said, "what made you decide to do that this evening?"

"Mostly, I thought you'd enjoy it. I was a bit nervous about it – after all, you might have reacted really badly. But I didn't think you would, somehow."

"So… do you think I'm gay, then?"

"Well… I don't know. It's more that you've never really seemed interested in sex at all, which I suppose is normal, seeing that you're a bit of a late developer. But I thought you'd enjoy it, and when you didn't object to the massage, or to losing at strip poker, I thought it would be safe to try. And if you really enjoyed it and you're not just saying that, I'm glad I did."

"And does that mean that you're gay?"

He didn't answer that for several seconds. Then:

"Yes, I think so," he said. "I'm not really interested in girls at all, but lately I have started finding some boys sort of attractive, so I suppose I must be."

"Who?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"Which boys do you find attractive? I bet it's Colin Ferguson."

"No, not really. I mean, yes, he's got the blond, blue-eyed sportsman look, but he's a complete dick, so I wouldn't want to go out with him even if he wasn't blatantly straight."

"Who, then?"

"Well, you, for a start."

"Oh, come on! There are loads of boys in our year who are better-looking than me."

"I don't think so. And none of them have got your personality. You're easily the most decent person I know."

"But… hell, Alex, I'm a dwarf!"

"No, you're not. You're just growing a bit more slowly than me. Anyway, you're six months older than me, so I'm not exactly cradle-snatching, am I?"

I thought about that for a moment. It was true that I'd never really thought too much about sex – at least, not in the past four years or so, although if my vision earlier was accurate it looked as if I had known a bit about sex in my previous life. Yes, I was interested to see what some of the boys at school looked like naked, and I liked seeing Alex without his clothes on – but then again I'd have probably been interested to find out what the likes of Karen Lester looked like naked as well. Fat chance of that ever happening, of course.

"Are you okay?" asked Alex, and he sounded worried. "Look, I'm sorry, MM – I didn't want to freak you out. Maybe you should go home tomorrow."

"Is that what you want?"

"God, no! It's great being here with you like this. But if you're not happy being stuck in a tent with a raving queer…"

"Did I say I wasn't happy?" I asked. "You're my best friend, and that isn't going to change. Besides, I really liked… you know, what we just did. I don't know if I'm gay or not, but I really don't care if you are – in fact if you're going to make me feel like that again I'm completely in favour of it. So stop worrying and go to sleep."

We settled down, but it took me a while to go to sleep: I had a lot to think about.

***

Although I was interested to find out how I'd escaped from the stricken airship I didn't have the dream that night – in fact I didn't have any dreams at all, as far as I could remember when I woke up. I sat up and saw Alex propped up on one elbow and looking at me. He looked worried.

"Are you okay?" he asked me.

"Of course! Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, after what happened yesterday evening… I was sort of afraid you'd changed your mind about me."

I bent over him and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek.

"Does that answer your question?" I asked.

"Yes, I suppose it does," he agreed, smiling at me.

"Good. Then let's get up and see what's out there today."

I started to get dressed, wondering why I'd followed that impulse to kiss him. I'd never kissed anyone before except for Auntie Megan – at least, not since I'd been reborn in the barn just down the road from where we were now. But it had seemed the right thing to do: it was a perfect way to show him that he was still my friend, and that his sexuality wasn't going to change that in any way.

We had breakfast and walked to the bus stop.

"How come you didn't know you can speak German?" he asked me.

"I suppose it just never came up. We don't do German at school, and I don't know any Germans – at least, I didn't until we met the Anagrams this week…"

Lukas's younger brother was called Klaus, hence the label we'd given them.

"Anyway, I suppose it was just one of those things that are stuck in my head somewhere," I went on. "Perhaps it's a good sign: perhaps it means all my memories are going to come back."

"As long as that doesn't change you, fine," said Alex.

"It won't – at least, not as far as you're concerned. I wonder if I can really speak German properly… Does Joe speak German, do you know?"

"What, Joe Silver? I don't think so. Why should he?"

"I just wondered if his family came from Germany originally. A lot of Jewish people did, and 'Silver' sounds like it might be a translation of a foreign name – like 'Silbermann', perhaps."

"No, his grandparents are Russian, not German. He can speak Russian – it's a family tradition to speak Russian at home – but as far as I know he can't speak German, and I don't suppose it's a very popular language around his grandparents at least. So you can't practise on him. But we're going out to the Indian with the Anagrams this evening, so you can practise on them and their parents."

"Yes, but I don't want to make a dick of myself by trying to speak to genuine Germans. I don't think I'm anything like fluent, and I probably have a terrible accent, too."

"I should think they'll be happy that you're making the effort. I bet they don't meet too many English people who are prepared to try saying anything at all in German. I'm pretty sure they won't laugh at you, anyway."

The bus came and we made our way back to the barn. Today we started out north of it and gradually worked our way round to the east, but once again nothing leaped out at me. The track that gave access to the barn for vehicles led away more or less due east, and so for our final exploration of the day we followed it to the road, climbed over the fence on the far side of the road and kept heading due east. We skirted around the bottom corner of a field, but apart from that we tried to keep going in a straight line. After about twenty minutes we came to a track that cut diagonally across our path, protected on either side by a barbed wire fence.

"Do you remember this?" asked Alex.

I shook my head. "But my clothes were torn, and I could easily have done that climbing through or over a fence like this. Let's keep going a bit longer – we've generally reckoned on half an hour's walk in each direction so far, so…"

I climbed over the fence, crossed the track and ducked through the fence on the far side, where the strands were more widely spaced. On the far side it seemed to be getting misty, and the further we went, the thicker the mist got. I was just wondering about going back to the track and following it to the nearest road when I saw things looming up in the mist, and a few more paces were enough to show us exactly where we were.

"Have you ever been here before?" I asked.

"No," said Alex, gazing at the stones. "It's sort of bigger than it looks in pictures, isn't it?"

"I think maybe the mist is helping with that. Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim bought me here when we went hunting for where I came from – that would be three years ago now. It wasn't misty when we were here and you could see the whole thing clearly. Auntie Megan told me that when she was a kid you used to be allowed right into the circle, but they stopped that a few years ago because they were afraid of erosion. That seems a bit silly to me – after all, it's been here about three thousand years and it hasn't eroded away yet, so I can't see that letting people actually touch the stones is going to make that much difference."

"I don't know," said Alex. "If a hundred tourists touch exactly the same place every day for a thousand years it's likely to wear away at it."

"Well, maybe. But that rather supposes the world will still be here in a thousand years, and I'm not sure that it will. Come on, let's walk round and have a look at the other side."

Somehow Stonehenge looked even more impressive wreathed in mist, but I wasn't quite sure why the mist was there: we hadn't seen any anywhere else all day. So when we bumped into one of the guides a bit further round the circle I asked him about it.

"It happens a lot around here," he said. "Like you say, it doesn't seem to happen anywhere else, but somehow it's been happening a lot around the stones. Only this year, though: this time last year we hardly ever saw any mist. It started just before Christmas last year, and since then we seem to get days like this almost every week, whatever the weather is doing five miles away. Strange, isn't it? We tell the tourists it's Merlin weaving spells, or some such tale, but it would be interesting to know what's really causing it."

We walked on, taking the path that led to the far side of the monument. Looking in the other direction, towards the north-east, there was no mist at all, but around the stones it was thick enough to veil them quite effectively. I stood and stared at the monument.

"What is it?" asked Alex. "Do you remember seeing Stonehenge on your way to the barn?"

"No, but… maybe that night was misty, or something…"

"Night?"

I turned and looked at him. "That's it, Alex!" I cried. "Of course – it was dark when I got to the barn. That's why I just stopped there and went to sleep instead of trying to find a house instead. It's no wonder I haven't seen anything I recognised: I wouldn't have seen very much at all unless the moon had been full and the sky clear. Maybe if we do the journey in the dark I'll see something, or run into something, that will ring a bell.

"Look, let's call it a day for now and go back to the site. That'll give us a chance to have a shower and rest for a bit before we go out with the Anagrams this evening. But suppose we ask them to drop us off here on the way back? We can go back the way we've just come, but we'll be doing it after dark, so perhaps… What do you think?"

"I think you're nuts. How are you going to see anything in the dark?"

"It won't be completely dark – there's a half moon tonight, and that'll give us enough light to stop us walking into things. Look, Alex, if this doesn't work we can go back to days for the last section, but I'd like to try this once at least. Please?"

"Well, okay, then. But I still think you're nuts."

We made our way – by road – back to the bus route and caught the first bus back to the site, and there we took a shower, found some presentable clothes to wear and then just rested until Lukas came to tell us it was time to go. We took our bags with us – I wanted us to have our flashlights and our waterproof coats, and I had my maps and compass, as well as my computer, which I still didn't like leaving in the tent, and we also took our sleeping bags, because at the last minute I thought that it might be interesting to spend the night in the barn.

The Anagrams' motorhome was every bit as shiny and well-equipped as I had thought, and I decided that when I was a bit older I'd have to get one of these: they're a whole lot more comfortable than a small tent and sleeping on the ground. Of course, I'd probably have to win the lottery before I could afford it…

It only took about fifteen minutes to reach the restaurant, and as soon as I stepped through the door I was hit by that wonderful smell that pervades the air inside any good Indian restaurant. Uncle Jim was a connoisseur of curry-houses, and he was quite prepared to travel all the way to Tower Hamlets or even Southall to try out a new one. He'd introduced me to curry less than a month after I moved in with them, and by now I knew what everything – or almost everything – on an Indian menu consisted of, so once we'd sat down and the Anagram boys started discussing between themselves exactly what was in a Lamb Rogan Josh I was able to intervene and explain it to them.

"How did you know what we were saying?" asked Lukas. "You speak German?"

"Well… yes, a bit," I said, in German. "I don't suppose my accent is very good, though."

"Yes, you do have an accent," agreed Lukas, "but it is not an English accent. You sound as if you come from the East – from Mecklenburg or Brandenburg, perhaps, or maybe from Berlin. Who taught you to speak German?"

"Good question," I admitted. "I honestly can't remember. I didn't even realise I could speak German until this evening… see, I had some sort of an accident when I was ten and I can't remember anything that happened before then. Apparently it must have included me learning German, though."

"I see. So if Klaus and I speak to each other you will understand everything?"

"Probably not. Try it and I'll tell you."

The brothers obligingly started talking about the weather, then about their holiday, and then, once it was clear that I had understood most of it, they went off into some sort of local dialect full of slang and left me for dead.

"Don't worry," Lukas said in German. "Probably nobody who doesn't live in Trier would have understood much of that. I expect you and Marco could speak to each other using London street talk and we wouldn't understand a word of that, either. So at least we know we can still keep secrets from you… seriously, I'd say you started very young and learned for several years, because you could probably pass as a native if you tried. And not too many foreigners can do that."

I thought about that during the first part of the meal: I was definitely English – the police had established straight away that English was my native language, and once they'd done so they didn't even bother checking to see if I spoke anything else – so why had I been taught German so thoroughly?

But in the end I couldn't remember anything at all that might help me to answer that, so I settled back and enjoyed the meal instead, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped. It wasn't even that expensive: even with three courses it was still well under ten pounds each, which was a fair bit less than we would have paid in London.

Afterwards we asked Mr Anagram – actually their name was Böttcher, but it was a lot easier to remember 'Anagram' – to drop us off at Stonehenge, telling him that we wanted to try doing a little cross-country walking at night. He wasn't entirely sure that it was safe, but I said we'd be staying off the roads and so wouldn't be in any danger of getting hit by a passing lorry, and that seemed to reassure him a bit. Nonetheless, when Lukas said that it sounded interesting and that he'd like to come with us, his father told him to forget about it, pointing out that we were experienced, used to British roads and conditions, and had come properly equipped, whereas Lukas hadn't either the experience or the kit.

We said goodbye, waved as they drove off and then went through the gate into the field that contains the stones. The moon was giving us some light, but the mist was still clinging to the stones, and as we got close to them it seemed to get thicker.

We followed the path to its closest point to the circle. There was one complete arch on this side, and I stepped over the low rope which is there to keep visitors away from the stones – after all, there was nobody about – and walked up to it, stepping under the arch and looking up at the lintel-stone. It felt surprisingly cold there – I suppose the mist was responsible for that – and so I stepped on through the arch into the circle. Directly ahead was one of the larger arches and I went and examined it: you really don't realise just how tall those stones are until you stand right next to them. Alex followed me through the arch and came to stand beside me.

"They're big, aren't they?" I said, putting my hand lightly on the stone.

"I suppose they are," he agreed. "Shall we go? This mist is getting thicker."

"Huh?"

"The mist… what is it, MM? Have you remembered something?"

"I don't think so, but…" I hesitated, but then shook my head. "No, it's nothing. You're right, it's getting thicker. Let's go before it gets so thick we can't see anything at all."

I got the compass out and set off, heading due west, a path that took us to the south of the outer arch we'd walked through and on out of the circle. And by the time we'd been walking for five minutes or so the mist had disappeared. Weird, I thought.

We'd walked for another ten minutes before I realised we hadn't crossed the track. I was sure we were heading in the right direction – I know how to use a compass, after all – so where was the track? The only explanation was that we'd crossed it while we were in the mist: there must have been a pair of open gates opposite each other.

In due course we reached the road, and that was where it was supposed to be, though the fence here was wooden rather than wire and so a lot easier to get over. We'd hit the road a bit further north than expected, but we found the track leading to the barn easily enough, even though the sky was beginning to cloud over. When we were about halfway between the road and the barn the moon disappeared behind the clouds, and after that it was hard to see anything at all. In the end we got our flashlights out, since the alternative might have been walking into a barbed wire fence.

The barn looked different at night, more solid somehow, and someone seemed to have been tidying up since we had left it that afternoon. There was also a large tractor parked in a separate building at the side, and that hadn't been there earlier in the day either.

We found a ladder leading up to a hayloft, and that seemed the perfect place to spend the night, so we unpacked our sleeping bags and laid them out.

"So," I said, "I seem to remember that it's my turn to do something for you tonight."

Alex shook his head. "Not tonight," he said. "I probably shouldn't have had the extra mushroom bhaji, because I'm not really feeling at my best. Besides, I'd prefer to wait until we're back in the tent… although if my stomach has settled tomorrow morning, maybe I'll take you up on it then."

"Okay," I said. "Just say the word. In that case we might as well go to sleep – it's after ten, so Joe will have given up on us for the night, and probably Auntie Megan will too. We'll talk to them tomorrow night."

We decided it might be better to sleep more or less fully clothed tonight – after all, farmers tend to start the day early, and if the one who owned this barn came along at daybreak to fetch his tractor and found us, it would be both embarrassing and impossible to make a run for it if we were sleeping in the raw. So we just took off our shoes, got into our sleeping bags and went to sleep, and tonight, even though I'd eaten a lot of spicy food before going to bed, I slept undisturbed.

I woke up next morning when I heard Alex calling to me. His sleeping bag was empty and his voice was coming from the foot of the ladder.

"You'd better get down here," was all he said when I acknowledged him.

I put my shoes on and went down the ladder, and he beckoned me to come outside the barn. When I got there I saw what the problem was: this simply wasn't the same barn. The one we were used to was metal and fairly basic; this one was wooden, quite a bit bigger and divided into different sections, and the tractor, which was still in the side building, was like no tractor I had ever seen before: it was huge, had metal wheels without tyres, and seemed to have been designed by an insane railway engineer with a passion for the 1880s, because there were gleaming pipes all over it, and a tall funnel, and some bizarre metal rods attached to the front wheels that looked vaguely like the things you see on the wheels of steam locomotives.

"What the bloody hell is that supposed to be?" asked Alex.

"A tractor?" I suggested.

"Ever see one like that before?"

"Well… not exactly."

"Me neither. Come on – let's get packed up. I want to get back to the road before the mad scientist who dreamed that up appears."

We went back to the hayloft, packed everything away and headed back along the track towards the road. There was no traffic on it when we got there, which seemed a bit unusual, but we headed north along it until we reached the usually busier A344. And here we found some traffic all right, except that the first five vehicles to pass us were all horse-drawn. And then came what I suppose was a lorry of some sort, except that there was a chimney at the back that was belching smoke, and as it passed we could see a man in the back shovelling coal into a firebox.

We stared at the vehicle until it passed out of our sight, and then we turned and stared at each other.

"Well, I don't know where we are," said Alex, "but somehow I don't think we're in Wiltshire any more…"

Chapter Four

"So what do we do now?" asked Alex.

"Good question. I don't suppose there's any point in going back to the camp-site, because I'll be amazed if our tent is there… perhaps we ought to find a police station or something."

"Do we have to? I'm trying to avoid the police at the moment, after all."

"Somehow I don't think the police here are going to be looking for you. Besides, in these parts you're Marco Fielding, remember? Come on, let's just head for Shrewton. Maybe there's a police station there."

Alex didn't look very enthusiastic, but when I started walking in the direction of Shrewton, which was the nearest village, he quickly fell in beside me.

"So where do you think we are?" he asked.

"Seriously, I don't know where we are or how we got here. Perhaps there was something strange in the samosas last night and we're hallucinating all this, but I've never heard of a hallucination affecting two people in exactly the same way. What we really need to do is to find out how to get back to where we belong, but I think we probably need to find out where we are first. That's why I want to find a copper, or at least someone with a map."

"Are you sure you're not already where you belong?"

"You mean, this could be where I came from originally? Well… I did wonder about that. But I still can't remember anything here, and I'm pretty sure I'd remember it if I'd seen one of those coal-burning trucks before."

We walked on for another five minutes, and then a wagon drawn by two horses pulled up beside us.

"Can I offer you young gentlemen transport?" asked the man on the driver's bench.

"That's very kind of you," I said. "We're only going into Shrewton, though."

"You might as well ride, all the same," he said.

I know you're not supposed to get into a vehicle with a strange man, but this vehicle was open-topped and probably wouldn't be going very fast, so we could jump out any time we wanted. And the man didn't really look strange, either, even if his clothes looked a little rustic. So I said thank you and climbed up next to him, and Alex passed me the bags and then came and sat beside me. The man shook his reins and the horses moved on.

"So where have you come from, then?" he asked me.

"That's a good question," I said. "We're lost… well, sort of lost. I mean, we know where we are, but not how we got here. I'm hoping someone will be able to help us. Is there a police station in Shrewton, do you know?"

He turned and looked at me. "If it's the constabulary you're after, you'll not find it in Shrewton," he said. "Nearest constable will be in Sarum, most likely."

"Oh. Well, is there anyone else who might be able to help us?"

"From your voice I'd say you were quality," the man observed. "Best I take you to Squire Cheevers, I'm thinking."

"That would be kind. Thank you," I said, though I had no idea what the local squire might be able to do… and then I wondered how I even knew what a squire was, because you don't meet too many of them in Palmer's Green.

"'Tis strange attire you have, Sir," observed the driver a little later, looking in particular at my jeans and trainers.

"Ah, yes. It's… experimental," I said. "We're from London, you see."

"Ah," he said, nodding sagely. Obviously coming from London could explain away all manner of strangeness.

Before too long we were coming into Shrewton, which looked rather different from the version we had seen before: here the houses were made of traditional materials and looked much older than those in the one we'd seen previously. Several had thatched roofs, and there wasn't a pre-fab in sight. The village was also about half the size of its counterpart, though it had three pubs instead of one.

The squire lived in a fairly large house on the far side of the village. The driver took us round to the back of the house and rang an old-fashioned bell that hung by the back door, and a large woman dressed in black with a white apron opened it and ushered us inside. The driver spoke quietly to her for a moment, wished us good luck and went out again, while the woman told us to take a seat and then disappeared through another door.

We appeared to be in a kitchen, but one that had been lifted straight out of a history book: there was a huge cooking range that took up one end of the room, a deep sink with a pump handle over it, an array of cupboards and shelves, and the large wooden table at which we were now sitting, a table which certainly hadn't come from an IKEA catalogue: it was solid and heavy and a bit rough in places, but it looked as if it had been in the room for about five hundred years and was good for five hundred more.

In due course the woman reappeared and beckoned us to follow her, leading us into first a corridor, then a large hallway, and finally into a room that might have been a particularly old-fashioned doctor's consulting room: there were bookshelves along one wall, some rather dreary portraits on another wall, and a solid-looking desk beside the window, behind which sat an individual who looked as though he'd just been auditioning for the part of Mr Pickwick: grey curly hair that had receded to a narrow strip of territory above his ears and round the back of his head, amazing side-whiskers, round, red face and a pair of pince-nez perched on his nose.

"Thank you, Mrs Peters," he said, and the woman retired.

"I understand that you're in difficulties?" he went on, addressing Alex, presumably because he looked the more imposing of us.

"Well, yes," I said, drawing his eyes back to me. "You see, we don't know quite how we come to be here. We seem to be lost."

"This is Shrewton," said Mr Pickwick.

"Yes, we know that. We know where Shrewton is, too. The problem is that this Shrewton isn't the one we were in yesterday."

"What on Earth do you mean, boy?"

"Yesterday we were in a different Shrewton, a larger one, where vehicles aren't horse-drawn and buildings are different. I don't know how we got from there to here, but somehow we did, and somehow we have to try a way to get back."

"A different Shrewton? What nonsense is this? You're wasting my time, boy!"

"Show him your computer," suggested Alex.

I thought that was an excellent idea, so I pulled my computer from my bag and turned it on.

"Have you ever seen something like this, Sir?" I asked, selecting 'My Pictures' and showing him three photos, starting with Uncle Jim in his truck and moving on to one of the three of us standing outside our house (Alex had taken that one), and then one of our neighbours' new Porsche.

Clearly he hadn't, because he just gaped at the pictures.

"This is our world… at least, it's Alex's world," I told him. "I'm not sure whether it's mine or not, though it's where I've lived for the last four years. You see, I had an accident when I was ten and I lost my memory, and so I don't really know anything about where I came from – it could be here, or it could be the world in those pictures. I really need to find out – that's why we came to this area, because this is where I was found… well, here, but in the other world."

The squire was still staring at the photographs, but then I thought of something else to show him. I went back into my bag and took out my watch.

"This is the only thing I was carrying when I was found," I said, handing it to him and taking the computer away at the same time – I didn't think he'd have anything useful to say until he stopped staring at the photos. "Do you know where it might have come from?"

He took the watch, examined it and then opened it.

"This is a very fine piece of work," he told me, in a completely different tone of voice. "To buy this new would cost at least two hundred guineas. It is not the sort of instrument you would give to a boy on his tenth birthday unless your family was very rich, or unless the boy was highly unusual. If this is indeed yours, then you are undoubtedly far above my station. Might I ask your name?"

"I'm afraid I don't know it, Sir," I admitted. "My foster-parents gave me the name Keith Lambert, but I know it isn't the name I was born with."

"That is most unfortunate. Well, I am minded to send you to the Lord Lieutenant – he is better equipped to speak of the aristocracy than am I."

He pulled a string on the wall behind him and we heard a distant bell, and a few seconds later Mrs Peters reappeared.

"Tell Boulding to prepare my carriage," the squire told her. "Gentlemen, have you partaken of breakfast?"

"Well, no," I said.

"Then take them into the dining-room and prepare a light breakfast," the squire instructed Mrs Peters, and she took us into another room, told us to take a seat and promised us that she would bring breakfast in a few minutes.

"Well, that was interesting," I commented, once she had left. "Do you think he's really going to send us on to this Lord Whoever, or is he on the phone right now to the local loony bin, telling them he's caught a couple of escaped nutters?"

Alex, who was being uncharacteristically quiet, merely shrugged, so I answered my own question.

"Come to think of it, I didn't see a phone," I said. "But somehow I think he means what he said. Certainly his mood changed when he saw my watch. Perhaps it's the local version of a Rolex – not too many kids wear those."

"Carmody said he was going to get Joe to sniff him one out in Enfield, remember?" said Alex, rousing himself a little. "Perhaps the squire thinks you nicked it."

"I don't think so. After all, he never once questioned my ownership of it. Anyway, since we've got the computer out, let's see if we can get online."

I wasn't particularly surprised to find that we couldn't: every attempt to connect to the Internet or to my email account brought up an error message to the effect that no network was available. Of course it could just have been a wi-fi dead spot, but by now I was fairly sure that this whole world was a wi-fi dead spot.

About fifteen minutes later Mrs Peters came in pushing a trolley that contained a number of silver covered dishes, which she set out on top of the sideboard.

"Please help yourselves," she invited us. "I'll be back with the tea shortly."

Squire Cheevers's idea of a 'light breakfast' was dishes of sausages, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and eggs both scrambled and fried, together with a rack of toast and a dish of creamy yellow butter which, I was fairly sure, had not been supplied by Tesco: more likely it had come straight from the farm. And it, and everything else, tasted wonderful. We were just finishing off when the squire appeared, holding a thick envelope on which was written, in copperplate lettering, "Maj.-Gen. Sir Edmund de Breville, Bart".

"My man will conduct you to Sir Edmund at Devizes," he told us. "I have written you a letter of introduction. I feel sure that he has the contacts to discover the origins of your watch."

"Thank you, Sir," I said. "And thank you for breakfast, too – I can't remember when I last enjoyed a meal so much."

"You are too kind," replied the squire. "I fear my poor table cannot compare to those to which you are accustomed."

"Trust me, that was something special," I said.

He led us out to the front of the house. Mrs Peters was waiting by the front door, so I said "Thank you for a lovely breakfast" as we went past, and she looked rather surprised – perhaps she wasn't used to guests thanking her in person – but nonetheless pleased.

At the front of the house was a light carriage with a pair of matched horses harnessed to it, and a chap in livery holding the door open for us. We climbed inside and he closed the door and got up onto the driving seat at the front.

"Thank you again," I said to the squire. "We'll be sure to tell Sir Edmund how kind you've been."

"It was simply my Christian duty," replied the squire, though he looked pleased, too. I seemed to be managing to find all the right things to say.

The driver shook the reins, and as we began to move I ducked back inside the carriage and sat down. Almost immediately I became aware that Alex was just sitting there, staring straight ahead and trembling slightly.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

"I want to wake up now," he said, quietly.

"Huh?"

"I said, I want to wake up now! I've had enough of this, okay? This was a good dream, but it's gone too far – right up to when I started eating that breakfast I was sure I was dreaming, but I can still taste it, so… please, MM, help me to wake up!"

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I can't. You're not asleep."

"But I must be! This simply isn't possible – there's no such thing as a time machine, so we just can't be in this… this place!"

"I don't think it's anything to do with time," I said. "There was a newspaper on the squire's desk and it had today's date on it. I think this is another version of England, somehow – maybe the oil has run out, so there aren't any more cars, or maybe the car was never invented in the first place."

He shook his head slowly. "But how did we get here?" he asked. "Even if you're right – and I don't see how that's possible either – how did we get here – and how do we get back?"

"I don't know. Perhaps the man we're going to see can tell us."

"But we're going the wrong way! We should just go back to the barn – that has to be where we went wrong!"

"But it might not be. It might have been earlier, in the mist – or maybe it was nothing to do with us at all. Maybe someone else did something, and we just got caught up in it."

"I don't care! I just want to go home…"

There was a tear running down his cheek, and that was really worrying, because I didn't think I'd ever seen Alex cry before. The problem was that I couldn't think of anything to say that might help, because I had no idea what was going on either. But it was different for me: I thought I might actually be on the trail of my past here – certainly the squire's reaction to my watch suggested that this might be the case – and while I would have been a lot happier if I had known how we had got here and how to get back, I was quite prepared to carry on in order to find out as much as I could. Poor Alex had just been dragged along with me, and he obviously wasn't happy about it.

"We're going to be okay," I said. "After all, everyone's been decent to us so far, haven't they? I think this is a pretty interesting place, and it has to be more interesting than just wandering aimlessly about the fields, like we were doing. This is a proper adventure!"

But he didn't respond to me at all, just seeming to hunch up even smaller in his seat and looking straight ahead.

I moved as close to him as I could and put my arm round him.

"We have to stick together," I said. "I need you, Alex – who else is going to pick me up and carry me when I fall over?"

That didn't get a response either. I opened my mouth to try again but then glanced out of the window and saw that we were just passing the campsite – at least, the place where the campsite was in our world. The farm was still there, but there were cows grazing in the field where our tent should have been. I didn't think it would help Alex's state of mind if I mentioned this, so instead I said, "Look at it this way: there's no way I'm going to able to carry you, so you need to be able to walk out of here when we get to wherever we're going."

Still no answer, and now I was really starting to get worried.

"Come on, Alex," I begged. "Please don't give up on me. You're my best friend. I love you."

Slowly his head turned to face me. "What?" he said.

"I said 'You're my best friend – I love you'," I repeated. "Okay, I know you're not supposed to use that word with boys, but I don't see what else I can call it. You're a proper friend: you've never let me down and you've always been there when I needed someone, and if you weren't around I wouldn't be able to cope with life at all. So, yeah, I love you. Is that okay?"

There was a long pause. Then, "Good psychology," he said, with a faint smile. "Say something outrageous – that ought to snap the stupid great ox out of it."

"Are you saying you don't believe me? Come on, Alex, look at me – now, do you think I'm lying?"

I don't know what sort of expression I was wearing, but whatever it was it seemed to convince him.

"No," he said, quietly. "No, you're not lying – hell, you never lie. Sorry, MM. But even so…"

I leaned in close and kissed him on the cheek once more, and that shut him up, just as it had the first time.

"Do I have to do that every time just to convince you I mean what I say?" I asked.

"No, but I certainly won't mind if you do. Look, I'm sorry about… you know, the rabbit in the headlights thing, but this just feels wrong. Maybe this is real – maybe it's even where you came from – but to me it's as if I'd gone to bed at home and woken up in Africa, with no idea of how I got here or how to get home. In fact it's worse than that, because if we were in Africa we could just go to the nearest airport and fly home, and I'll bet we can't do that from here. And as for this being an adventure… adventures are great to read about, and I like stories where people are stuck in weird places and likely to get killed at any moment, but I've never wanted to be in one myself. In stories the hero strides about as if being whisked off to another planet is just like going shopping in Oxford Street, but when it happens for real, all I can say is that I'm not sure whether I'm going to puke or piss myself first. I guess I'm nobody's idea of a hero."

"We've barely started yet," I pointed out. "Maybe in the end you'll die heroically to save my life."

"More likely I'll just wish you luck as I run out the door."

"I don't think so. Anyway, like I said, this place looks completely safe right now, doesn't it?"

"I suppose. It's just not knowing how to get back that scares me. If we knew that all we have to do is to go to sleep in the barn again, or run three times round Stonehenge shouting 'I'm a loony' or something, then I could probably relax a bit, but as it is… what if we can't ever get home?"

"We got here easily enough," I pointed out. "I don't see why going the other way should be any more difficult. All we have to do is to find out how, and maybe" (I re-read the envelope the squire had handed me) "Major-General Sir Edmund de Breville, Bart, can explain it to us. After all, it would be odd if we were the first people ever to end up here, and he's supposed to be the big man in Wiltshire, so if anyone knows…"

"Yeah, I suppose. But… promise me you won't go off anywhere without me."

"Of course I won't. We're a team."

He gave me another faint smile, and although I didn't think he was back to his old self yet, at least he seemed to relax a little.

The carriage rolled on. I wasn't sure how far it was from Shrewton to Devizes, but the journey took about fifty minutes, and it was a very smooth ride: the carriage was well-sprung and the road surface was very flat.

Sir Edmund lived in a large house just south of the town. It was an imposing place at the end of a tree-lined drive, and I have to admit I found the mere sight of it intimidating: at that moment I felt like a dead-ordinary kid from North London, rather than a lost scion of the aristocracy, and I wondered how on earth I was supposed to address a Lord Lieutenant.

But the carriage delivered us to the front door rather than the tradesmen's entrance round the back, and that left us with no choice but to try to look like decent, well-brought up boys, rather than a pair of scruffy yobs who had slept in their clothes.

The door was opened by a man in a black suit who had to be the butler. He looked down his nose at us, clearly unimpressed by our 'experimental' clothing, and said "Ye-e-e-s?" in an intimidating tone.

"Good morning," I said. "We have been sent by Squire Cheevers at Shrewton. We are here to see Sir Edmund."

"I see. Do you gentlemen have an appointment?"

"No, I'm afraid not. But we do have a letter from the squire."

I handed it to him, and he looked at it as if I'd just handed him a week-old kipper. He seemed uncertain as to whether he should close the door in our faces or tell us to go round to the tradesmen's entrance, but in the end he took a deep breath and invited us in.

"Thank you," I said to the squire's coachman, and at that the butler twitched in apparent disapproval: I supposed that thanking mere servants for doing their job wasn't the Done Thing.

The coachman bowed and went back to his carriage, and the butler told us to wait in the hall and glided away into the distance.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" asked Alex quietly.

"No, but we're here now," I replied. "Let's see what happens."

Three or four minutes later the butler returned. He didn't look a lot friendlier, but he did ask us to follow him, and that was definitely a step in the right direction. We followed him through to a study that was not so very different from the squire's, except that this one was lighter – it had a much larger window – and the portraits, being of brightly-dressed ladies rather than miserable-looking men, were a lot less gloomy.

Behind the desk was a man of about sixty who was wearing what appeared to be a black velvet jacket and a small round pill-box hat with a tassel in the middle, and who was wreathed in tobacco smoke from the pipe he had clenched between his teeth. He looked up as we came in, removed the pipe and set it down on a polished brass device that was obviously designed for the purpose, and then he asked us to sit down on two chairs in front of the desk.

"Squire Cheevers tells me that you've been suffering from amnesia and can't even remember your true name," he began, and unlike the squire he was hedging his bets by looking straight between us. "But he says you have a watch that he thinks will allow me to identify you. May I see it?"

I pulled the watch from my pocket and handed it to him, and he looked it over, paused to look at me, and then opened it and read the inscription inside.

"I can see why the squire found this interesting," he commented. "This is certainly a valuable timepiece, and quite unique. Perhaps you had better tell me what you know about yourself."

So I explained about being found in the barn, and that I had no memories before then. Then came the tricky bit, where I had to try to explain that the world I had been living in for the past four years wasn't this one.

"Yes, the squire mentions that. He says he would have thought you a lunatic, had it not been for your… the squire describes it as a 'magic book' that contains pictures from the place where you live. Would you be good enough to show it to me?"

So out came the computer again. I turned it on, found the picture of Auntie Megan, Uncle Jim and me and showed it to him.

"That's my foster-parents," I explained, "and the house behind them is where I live. It's in North London. Oh, and this thing – it's called a 'computer' – can play music, too. Hold on a moment…"

I spun the computer round and opened 'My Music'. Actually most of what's in there is not 'my' music but Auntie Megan's – I generally use YouTube or Spotify if I want to listen to something, but Auntie Megan had copied some of her music tracks onto my machine one day when I'd asked her what sort of music she liked. In fact I thought it was probably just as well it was mostly her tracks rather than mine, because I couldn't see a sixty-year-old soldier being particularly impressed by grime or rap.

I'll admit I quite like some of Auntie Megan's choices, so I selected Radiohead's Exit music for a film, which I thought wouldn't be too loud or strident for someone like this, and double-clicked it. The reaction was everything I could have wished for: the Lord Lieutenant stared at the screen (my player has a visualisation of swirly geometric shapes) and then examined the whole machine, trying to work out where the sound was coming from. Clearly it defeated him, because after a few seconds he just sat in his chair and watched the screen in silence until the end of the track.

I was tempted to follow it up with some Tinie Tempah, but then I came to my senses and turned the computer off instead.

"I don't know where you obtained that machine, young man," he said, "but I am certain that it was not here. I do not even recognise the material from which it is constructed. In any event, it certainly lends credence to your story. And now I might have something to show you, but first: do you know the date that you were found asleep in that barn?"

"September 20th 2007," I told him. It's a date I know perfectly, because to all intents and purposes it was the day I was born.

He nodded slowly and stood up. "That would fit," he said.

He went across to one of the bookcases in the room and came back with something that turned out to be an old-fashioned photo album, and from the sepia tones of the pictures in it I assumed it had belonged to his great-great-grandfather. But apparently that wasn't the case at all.

"I know you say that you have no recollection of what happened before you were found," he said, "but I would like you to look at this photograph. Perhaps it will help you to remember something. Is there anyone in this photograph that you recognise?"

The picture took up the whole of one page of the album and showed a group of around fifteen or sixteen people. The men were wearing evening dress or military uniforms, and the women were in full-length dresses, and at first glance I would have guessed it was a photograph of Queen Victoria's cabinet ministers and their wives, or perhaps a collection of minor royalty. Whoever they were, I didn't recognise any of them, but then I hadn't expected to: I had no idea what Disraeli looked like, or any of Victoria's numerous children or cousins either. I was about to hand the book back, but then I looked again…

I'd been concentrating on the men because, after all, in Victoria's day there were hardly any women of importance anywhere except for the queen herself. But there was a woman in the back row of the photo who did remind me of someone: it was the long, wavy, light-coloured hair that had taken my eye. I couldn't be sure, and on the face of it it was absurd to think that the wife of a Victorian aristocrat could have commanded a flying machine, but even so there was definitely a likeness. And the man next to her in the photograph had a small pointy beard… okay, several of the men in the photo had beards, but even so, this could have been the guy with the telescope in my dream.

"I've no idea who they are," I said, "but I think I might have seen these two before."

By now I was beginning to think that Alex's conjecture about the dream being the remnant of an earlier incarnation was true, and so I expected the Lord Lieutenant to tell me that the photo had been taken in around 1912. But instead he nodded.

"It certainly fits," he said. "That photograph was taken at Christmas 2006. The woman is the Duchess of Culham – Dowager Duchess, she was by then – and the man is her brother, Lord Folliot of Chisbury. It is most interesting to find that you have some memory of them."

"Why? Who do you think I am?"

"It would be better for me not to say, I think. Better that I ask Lord Folliot to speak to you in person, because if I am wrong and speak too soon it would cause great embarrassment to several people, not least yourself."

He pulled on one of the strings on the wall and a minute or so later the butler reappeared.

"Ask Adams to fire up his boiler and tell Rodber to saddle up – I'll have a despatch for him shortly," his boss instructed him. "And perhaps you could ask cook to prepare some lemonade?"

The butler's expression was interesting: clearly our status had changed, and he was wondering if we might complain about his attitude towards us – if we hadn't already done so, of course. So he bowed to his master and favoured us with a little nod, too, as he left. I'm not generally one to cause trouble, so I kept quiet.

Over the next hour or so we watched Sir Edmund write a letter which he subsequently sealed and handed to a teenage boy in riding clothes, drank some delicious lemonade that had nothing in common with the bottles of fizzy stuff you buy in the supermarkets, ate a couple of ham sandwiches and played Sir Edmund a couple more tracks from OK Computer. Then the butler returned to announce that Adams had completed his preparations and to take us downstairs to the front of the house, where Adams and his vehicle were waiting for us.

It was about the size and shape of a hearse, although it was mid-blue rather than black, with a normal driving position at the front and a passenger compartment on the right hand side behind the driver's seat. The left hand part was closed off from the passenger compartment by an internal wall, though the top part of this was glass, allowing you to see out of both sides of the car. There was a large hopper at the top of the left-hand compartment towards the front, and underneath it a closed area of what appeared to be black metal. And at the back of the car was a chimney.

The passenger compartment could seat four, two with their backs to the driver and the other two in a more normal position opposite them, facing forwards. I like to see where I'm going, so I took one of the rear seats, and Alex came and sat next to me. The chauffeur closed the door, walked round to the driver's seat and got in.

The next few moments were kind of surreal: my eyes suggested that this was a normal car journey, but my ears were telling me that I was on a train pulled by a steam engine, especially when Adams blew the car's whistle as it rolled out of the gate.

The vehicle seemed capable of a good turn of speed, and once we were clear of Devizes it was soon rolling along at around forty to fifty miles [60-75 km] an hour. It slowed down a bit going uphill, but it turned out that it was going downhill that caused a problem, because after one quite long descent Adams stopped the car at the side of the road and got out. We were interested to see the engine, and so we got out too and came round to the left-hand side of the car, where Adams had opened a panel and was poking about in the hopper with a metal rod.

"It's a design fault," he explained, when I asked what was wrong. "The hopper is the wrong shape, and the feed chute is a little too small. When we hit a downslope the coal jams in the feed – not every time, but often enough to be a nuisance. I've started to make a replacement. I haven't finished it yet, but I hope it'll fix it."

"How does it work?" I asked.

"Haven't you been in an auto-carriage before?" he asked.

"Not one like this," I said.

"No, of course – this is one of the most recent models. Well, as you know, when the technology was first applied to private vehicles they started out with a two-man crew, the same as in the military and commercial vehicles. But while that works well in something the size of an auto-cannon, it cut down the passenger space too much in a private conveyance, and so the self-loading firebox was developed. I can control the coal feed and the water supply from my cab, so there's no need for a fireman – at least, I could if the hopper worked properly. Still, I think that should fix it. If you'd like to get back aboard, gentlemen?"

So we set off once more. I wasn't sure exactly where we were heading: the compass suggested that we were going basically north-east, but since there was a huge metal boiler right beside us I wasn't sure how reliable that reading was.

Alex noticed a sliding wooden panel at floor level in the wall between us and the boiler and firebox assembly, and when he opened it a gust of hot air came through. He closed the panel again smartly.

"This would be a good way to travel in the winter," he commented. "It would almost be like a mobile sauna: you strip naked, slide the panel wide open and divert some of the steam in here, and then when the car stops you can get out and roll about in the nearest snow-drift."

"Only if you're a complete masochist," I said. "Rolling naked in the snow doesn't sound like my idea of fun."

"That's what you're supposed to do with a sauna. In places like Russia and Finland that's exactly what you do. It's supposed to be very refreshing."

"I'll take your word for it. Anyway, I imagine that if we jumped out of the car naked we'd probably be arrested, even if we tried to claim we were just looking for a snowdrift."

"Well, we would now, obviously, but in the winter we might be okay. And perhaps this world doesn't get all wound up about naked bodies the way our world does."

"Do you want to try putting that to the test?" I asked.

"Yes, okay," he replied, and he actually started getting undressed.

"Alex!" I hissed, hoping that Adams wasn't going to turn round. There was a glass panel between us that prevented him from listening to our conversation, but if he'd looked over his shoulder…"I wasn't being serious! What if it's an even bigger no-no here than it is at home?"

"Chill," he said, doing his shirt up again. "As if I'm really going to. Mind you, I seem to remember there was something you were going to do for me today, and this would be a really interesting place to do it. I bet none of our friends can claim to have done it in a steam car."

"And we're not going to be the first, either," I said, firmly. "I promised I'd do it for you, and I will – in fact I'm looking forward to it. But we're not going to leave nasty sticky marks all over Sir Edmund's car, so you're going to have to wait until this evening."

"Oh, okay then. But it would be sorta fun to do it in here."

"Tough," I said. But somehow the image of the mobile sauna stayed with me, even if I thought I'd give the snow-rolling a miss. I wondered if the people we were going to visit owned a steam-car…

We'd been travelling through countryside, just seeing an occasional village, and the roads were mostly free from traffic, with just the odd rider or horse-drawn vehicle, and I wondered where we were going. I had an idea that Oxford ought to be somewhere in this direction if my compass was telling the truth, but I didn't see any road signs at all, and nor did I manage to read the name of any of the three or four small villages we passed through.

But then I did manage to read a sign at the edge of another small town: Abingdon, which I'd vaguely heard of and thought was somewhere close to Oxford – so perhaps my compass was working properly after all. And then, two or three minutes after leaving Abingdon, we crossed a railway line, turned left and followed a driveway that seemed to lead into open green countryside – until we turned a corner and found ourselves looking at a very large country house, or perhaps it would be better to describe it as a 'stately home'. Whoa, I thought, whoever lives there has to be rolling in money… and once again I felt like an insignificant kid from one of the less fashionable London suburbs. What on earth was I doing in this sort of environment?

The car drew up outside the front door. Adams came round and opened the car door for us and we followed him up the steps to the front door of the house. He rang a bell, and the door was opened by another butler, though this one was wearing a grey morning coat and pin-striped trousers, rather than Sir Edmund's butler's funeral director black. And while Sir Edmund's man had greeted us with barely-disguised disdain, this man's reaction was quite different: for a moment his professional reserve slipped completely: his eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped open. But then he recovered and his face returned to a neutral mask.

"Are these the young gentlemen of whom Sir Edmund de Breville wrote?" he asked, addressing Adams, and the driver nodded.

"Sir Edmund's rider reached us fifteen minutes ago," the butler continued. "I believe that the household are ready to receive guests. Please come in, gentlemen."

I said "Thank you" to Adams and followed the butler into the hall.

"May I know your name?" he asked Alex, and Alex gave him his real name – clearly there was no further need for Messrs Fielding and Jordan here.

"And I've been living under the name 'Keith Lambert' I said. "I know it isn't my real name, but it's the only one I've got."

The butler opened his mouth but then apparently thought better of whatever he had been about to say, because he closed it again, turned and walked on into the large hallway.

"If you would like to follow me, gentlemen?" he said, and we followed him to a door on the left-hand side of the hall, which he opened, gesturing us to go in.

There were five people in the room, but the first one I saw was the man with the pointy beard. The beard, and his hair, were now grey – in my dream they had been black – but I was fairly certain that this was indeed the same man.

"His Grace, the Fifth Duke of Culham," announced the butler loudly.

So Pointy Beard is now the Duke, I thought. There was no sign of the blond woman, and I wondered if it meant that she was dead, because in that case it was logical for the title to have passed to her brother… and then I noticed someone else I recognised.

Sitting off to one side was the red-haired boy. He was older than in my dream, too, and I guessed that he was probably about the same age as me. As I entered the room the boy stood up and took a step towards me.

"Oh, God, it is true – you are alive!" he exclaimed.

"Wolfie?" I asked, and that was enough to get him moving towards me at a stumbling run.

Behind me Alex had now entered the room and I heard the butler say, "And Mr Alexandros Demetriou." It took a moment or two for that to sink in, but then:

Hang on, I thought, what do you mean by 'And'?

But before I could develop the thought the red-head reached me and threw himself into my arms, kissing me fervently and then enveloping me in a firm embrace.

"I thought I had lost you," he said. "I thought I would never see you again…"

He swung me round, and that left me looking over his shoulder at Alex, and the expression on Alex's face told me that my life had suddenly become a great deal more complicated…

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