"I'm still here," said Johnny. Someone had filled his stomach with ice.

"Don't you think that's shameful?"

"Er. Yes."

"One of them was black."

Johnny nodded dismally at the phone. Yoless had explained about this sort of thing. He'd said that if one of his ancestors had joined Attila the Hun's huge horde of millions of barbarians and helped them raid Ancient Rome, people would've definitely remembered that one of them was black. And this was Yoless, who collected brass bands, had a matchbox collection and was a known spod.

"Er," he said, "it was us. I mean, we didn't beat her up, but we found her. I got the ambulance and Yoless tried- Yoless was definitely thinking about first aid..."

"Didn't you tell the police?"

"No-"

"Honestly, I don't know what would happen if I wasn't around! You've got to tell them now. I'll meet you at the police station in half an hour. You know how to tell the time? The big hand is-"

"Yes," said Johnny, miserably.

"It's only two stops on the bus from your house. You know about catching buses?"

"Yes, yes, yes, of course I-"

"You need money. That's the round stuff you find in your pockets. Ciao."

Actually, after he'd been to the toilet, he felt a bit better about it all. Kirs- Kasandra took charge of things. She was the most organized person Johnny knew. In fact she was so organized that she had too much organization for one person, and it overflowed in every direction.

He was her friend. More or less, anyway. He wasn't sure he'd ever been given a choice in the matter. Kirs- Kasandra wasn't good at friends. She told him so herself. She'd said it was because of a character flaw, only because she was KiKasandra, she thought it was a character flaw in everyone else.

The more she tried to help people by explaining to them how stupid they were, the more they just wandered off for no reason at all. The only reason Johnny hadn't was that he knew how stupid he was.