Ten minutes later I’m back outside Macca’s house, soaking wet and contemplating my third break-in of what I think of as the recent past.

I’ve never had to break into this garage before. And it’s properly shut. This is not a case of just edging my fingers in the gap and pulling: that won’t be possible for thirty years.

In my hand is a steel crowbar, filched from the janitor’s store.

When I left the school, I counted thirty seconds between a lightning flash and the thunder. So the storm was ten kilometres away. Now, as I’m standing outside the house, I can only count to five. The storm will be right on top of me soon.

When it comes, the thunder is a growl like a billion angry dogs, followed by a long, deafening crack that hurts my ears. I take my chance and jam the crowbar into the space where the two garage doors join, and push. The door splinters and creaks and bursts open just as the sound of the thunder fades away and I know that the noise has not been heard over the storm. Seconds later I’m inside the garage, shivering. The planks are stacked up against the wall, and I descend the steps to open the circular door, but I already have a sinking feeling that something won’t be right.

Alan Shearer’s not in his drawer. The sides are about 15cm high, and impossible for a hamster to climb out. Still I hunt around the bunker desperately, saying softly, “Alan Shearer! Alan? Come on …”

But he’s not there. I slump into the swivel office chair and fight back tears, because I know that Macca has him, and I know what might happen to him in Macca’s hands.

It’s no use. The tears, when they come, are hot and angry and I cry for my pet, and for myself, stranded in a year where I don’t belong, and for my dad, who died too early, and for Pye, whose new friend – me – is not what he seems. And now I’ve started, I can’t stop, because I’m thinking of Grandpa Byron on the ladder seeing his only grandson disappear in front of him, and my mum who must be so, so worried.

And it’s no good just setting the return time earlier, as if that makes what has happened somehow un-happen, because it doesn’t. I might be able to return and somehow stop Dad meddling with spacetime, so I never receive the letter from my dad, and don’t ever time travel, or go off on a spree of moped thefts and break-ins. But those things have definitely happened, somewhere in the vast infinity of the universe. They happened to me. And somewhere in that vast infinity there will always be a Grandpa Byron and a mum broken-hearted for a lost Al, a me that one day just disappeared.

What was I thinking of? How could I have taken such an insane risk?

The tears and sobs have exhausted me, and I flop down on the bunk bed and sleep and dream of nothing. Nothing at all.