‘Hey!’ Leah shouted. ‘Give that back!’

‘Or what?’ William smirked. As usual, Toby and Katie stood on either side of him, their gloating expressions matching his. ‘You’ll attack me with your ham sandwich?’ The three of them burst into ugly laughter.

Leah screwed up her fists by her side. ‘William, that doesn’t belong to you,’ she seethed, taking a step forward.

But William whipped the watch above his head, putting it far out of her reach. ‘Now, now,’ he sniggered. ‘It’s not nice to snatch.’

‘What do you want, William?’ Mimi spat from behind Leah. She and George had both jumped to their feet, and Mimi was glaring at him through narrowed eyes, her hands on her hips.

William shrugged. ‘I don’t want anything. Just a little lunchtime fun.’

‘Well, this isn’t fun for us, so just give us our stuff back and leave us alone,’ George said. His voice was shaking slightly.

‘Give us our stuff back and leave us alone,’ Katie mimicked, pitching her voice high. She rolled her eyes as William and Toby sniggered. ‘You’re such a baby, George!’

George’s face turned red but he didn’t say anything.

‘This is quite a nice-looking watch,’ William said thoughtfully as he lowered it from above his head, studying the patterns and shiny glass face. ‘My dad has one similar. It would be such a shame if it got broken . . .’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Leah seethed. Angry tears stung the corners of her eyes but she blinked quickly. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that they’d upset her.

William grinned. ‘I can’t help it if I have butter fingers. And I’m very jumpy. One wrong move from you lot and my grip might . . . slip.’

With a small cry, Mimi suddenly lunged forward, her face creased with anger and a little bit of panic. The compass was clutched in one hand, whilst the other stretched forward, reaching for the watch dangling in William’s hand.

‘No, Mimi!’ Leah cried and she grabbed Mimi’s arm, stopping her. They couldn’t risk William dropping the watch and breaking it.

Mimi screwed her face up in frustration as William and his friends howled with laughter. ‘You’re such a bully,’ she snapped, but her words only made them all laugh harder.

William hefted the watch in his hand. ‘I don’t know what you’re all so bothered about. It’s just a broken watch. I bet it doesn’t even work properly.’ His thumb shifted, moving towards the crown at the top of the watch’s circular face.

A heavy certainty settled in Leah’s belly. She knew what he was about to do, and although it hadn’t worked before, she was sure that it would this time. She lunged forward, dragging George and Mimi with her, as William’s thumb pressed down on the crown once, and then twice. The lunchtime bell echoed across the school field, letting everyone know what time it was.

Noon.

As Leah’s hand closed on the silver watch chain dangling between William’s fingers, Mimi gave a sudden gasp. The compass in her hand was buzzing like an overexcited beetle. The single needle beneath the glass began to spin around and around. Abruptly, the buzzing stopped, and the compass went still. Without warning, it jerked Mimi forward, pulling her across the grass as though someone were dragging her along by a rope. She came to a sudden halt next to William. The compass thunked down on top of the watch, as though a magnet had suddenly drawn them together.

Everything went still. The four of them stood frozen, Leah gripping Mimi’s arm and the watch’s chain, whilst George lingered to the side, his palm squeezing Mimi’s shoulder. Behind them, Katie and Toby were as still as statues, their expressions blank.

‘Oh no,’ Leah groaned.

The world tilted. Colours ran and mixed like paint on a palette, blurring into a vortex of blue, purple and silver. Leah only had time to register the shock in William’s eyes before she felt herself being uprooted, her body spinning and swirling as she and her friends were once more pulled back through the disorientating void of time.