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police. A constable took our names and addresses. He asked if we thought Salim knew his way back to our house. Probably, we said. Then he told us to do three things:
    a) keep trying his phone
    b) go home and wait, and
    c) try not to worry.
    He said he would report Salim’s disappearance to the rest of the squad on duty in the area. If he hadn’t reappeared in a few hours, an officer would visit us. 
    Kat tried to explain about how Salim had vanished sometime after getting on the wheel and before getting off . He looked at her as if she was imagining it.
    ‘Children don’t evaporate into thin air,’ he said.
    ‘Not in my experience.’
    So then we did b) and went home to wait. We were hoping to see Salim in our front garden but he wasn’t there. So Aunt Gloria did a), that is, she pressed and repressed the redial button on her mobile phone. Mum got her inside and made tea. Kat fetched a china plate and arranged some chocolate fingers on it. This was Mum and Kat’s way of trying to do c). But nobody ate any. We all tried not to worry but nobody succeeded.
    Then Mum called Dad and told him what had happened. He said he was round the corner at the Barracks and nearly finished for the day. He’d come home to see if there was anything he could do to help. Mum hung up. Immediately the phone rang. Aunt Gloria grabbed it.
    ‘Salim!’ she said loudly.
    She listened for a few seconds and her face turned into a mini ice age (that’s my own expression and I hope you can guess what it means). She slammed the phone down.
    ‘Some man,’ she said, ‘selling conservatory windows.’ She made it sound as if selling conservatory windows was a crime against humanity. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.
    ‘Three hours,’ she said. ‘He’s been gone three hours. This hasn’t happened before.’
    Then she started pacing up and down the room, punching one fist into the palm of another. It was very interesting to watch. I wondered what kind of weather she could be compared to and decided on a thunderstorm, very localized, with forked lightning.
    ‘Salim,’ she said, as if he were in the room, ‘I’ll have your guts for garters.’
    I had never heard this before and wondered what garters were. Kat told me later that they are what women used to wear around their thighs to keep their stockings up and they are elasticated. I do not think guts would be a tidy way of doing this. 
    Then Aunt Gloria said, ‘Oh, my boy, what have they done to you?’
    I wondered whom she meant by ‘they’.
    Then, ‘You’d better be back by Wednesday or we’ll miss our flight to New York.’
    Then, ‘That stupid policeman. Saying not to worry. I’ll bet he doesn’t have children.’
    Then, ‘Supposing some terrible gang has abducted him? Oh, mercy, mercy, no!’
    Then she noticed me watching her.
    ‘What are you staring at?’ She pointed a pinklacquered fingernail at me and jabbed the air. ‘If you hadn’t suggested going to the London Eye, this would never have happened. You and your bloody bicycle wheel in the sky!’ She flopped onto the sofa and made a wailing sound. ‘Oh, Ted. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’
    ‘Glo!’ Mum said, rushing to sit beside her. ‘Calm down, love.’ She flapped her hand at me as if I was an annoying fly. I figured out that this meant she didn’t want me anywhere nearby.
    I went to see Kat, who was in the kitchen sitting at the table. She had her headphones on and her head down on her arms so she couldn’t see me or hear me.
    So I went up to my room.

NINE
    Dodos, Brigantines and Lords

    I jumped onto my bed, down next to the lilo where Salim had slept the night before, and banged my fist against the wall, then jumped up on the bed again and down again, wall again, and I went,
    ‘ Hrumm, hrumm ,’ bed again, floor again . . . This was the routine I’d had when I was small, before Mum and Dad bought me the trampoline. Then the trampoline came and I jumped on that instead. Then the