Chapter Four

      I walked. I walked and walked for hours. Every time I caught sight of myself in a shop window I nearly passed out. This couldn’t be real. It was horrific. I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t going to steal from that nice lady’s flat. The first place I walked to was my office in the Strand, all the way from Maida Vale. I actually went into reception.

      Hang on, hang on. This wasn’t right at all. It was the same reception guard I’d seen every morning for the last eleven years. And he didn’t look a day younger. So, it looked like whatever nightmare I was in, I was in it alone. Except with my parents. Which, of course, made it even more of a nightmare than it might have been otherwise. Oh Christ.

      ‘Hey, Jimmy,’ I said to the reception guard, exactly as I’d been doing for the last eleven years.

      He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Can I help you?’

      Actually, I was hungry. I was starving. I had always skipped breakfast, but now I felt hungrier than I had in years. I wanted to ask him for a sandwich, but I had something else to do here.

      ‘Can you put me through to the extension of Flora Scurrison, please?’ I asked. Even my voice sounded ridiculously high-pitched and screeching.

      ‘Who?’ he said gruffly. I’d noticed this already. OK, I was scruffily dressed, but he was eyeing me warily, as if I was looking for trouble. Had they done this when I was really sixteen? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps I’d been a tad wrapped up in myself.

      ‘S-C-U-R-R-I-S-O-N.’

      He shook his head. ‘No one here by that name, love. Sure you’ve got the right address?’

      On some level I had known that was going to happen, but it was a real slap in the face. On the way I’d tried going into the bank with my account details. That hadn’t yielded anything either. But a big fear – of running into myself – didn’t seem to be on the cards, not yet at least.

      ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

      Jimmy, I suddenly remembered, had a daughter … er, my age.

      ‘Probably,’ I said, then turned to go. ‘Say hi to Jinty for me.’

      ‘What? Are you one of her friends?’

      No. At the moment, as far as I could see, I literally didn’t have a friend in the world. I had ceased to exist. I was no one. While everyone else, Jinty included, was still going strong.

      As I turned to go, I nearly ran smack into my boss, Karl Dean, a sour, halitosis-ridden old man with a dour world view, as useful for accounting as it was miserable for his life and for anyone else who ever came within three feet of him. He looked at me without blinking. There wasn’t a second’s worth of recognition. He didn’t even look at me as if he thought I reminded him of someone but he couldn’t quite place me.

      Beside him there was someone who could have been me but was not me. It was the woman from the flat. She was looking nervous, and fiddling with her spectacles.