“It’s not going to happen.” sighs Alan. There’s a loaf on the table and three glasses. A bread knife grazes a board and the butter is at the threshold between molten and solid, moulded into the form of a swordfish.

“Come on, there’s still hope! Just a little longer.” Pete reassures him. Pete is usually right about these things. Pete’s part of the problem, though. Pete’s a dog, and dogs aren’t supposed to talk, at least not in Lavenham, such exciting things aren’t allowed to happen round here. Three months ago Jude from round the corner gained the power of flight. They were having none of it, the villagers. Her husband, the milkman, moved out and took the children with him. Two days later and she wasn’t seen again, probably beaten to death by the local rabble. Too exciting for Lavenham.

Alan has told only his parents, surely he can trust them, they’re not going to tell anyone, they will still love him. Every second Sunday they come round for malt loaf and elderflower cordial, with a dash of rum. He told them on Thursday that Pete had started talking to him. They are twenty minutes late. He thought they had taken it well. Maybe they were as blind as the rest. Too exciting for Lavenham.

Honesty is not the best policy, contrary to that classic from my mother’s bottomless bag of pearlescent wisdom. Honesty is a good policy. It’s a very good policy, it keeps you calm, stops you panicking when someone is looking over your shoulder, or when someone notices the facts don’t quite line up, when lies collide and explode in spectacular, destructive supernovae. It’s a good policy, it frees up space in your head for other things, like recipes, or quantum physics, or phone numbers. There are better policies out there, though. I’d advocate precisely the opposite. Lie about everything, bathe your existence in swirls of deep fantasy, elegant cascades of deception, plumes of deceit. Sit and watch the fractal web of mistruths unfurl in front of you, rampant in their treacherous glow. It’s more beautiful that way. And it gets you cookies.

He had been wading through the stream for around half an hour before it struck that he didn’t know where he was. Granted, he knew where he had been and, presumably, how to get back, as rivers rarely change their course, he could just retrace his steps. Such is the way with rivers. The rare sun had brought him out of the house for the first time in weeks: unaccustomed to the heat, he had decided to cool off by taking a paddle in the clear water. As he pursued the current, familiarity melted away around him, until he was completely alone, away from town and trouble. He crawled out onto the bank, propped himself up against a lime tree, and thought about nothing at all.

I stopped being able to see last week. Light got in my eyes, it made pictures, they were there, hanging on the walls of my brain, projected on my homuncular gogglebox, but I couldn’t see them. Like when you go to a gallery and you know the paintings are all around you, but there are other things to do, like talk about shopping or rain, or think about last week or what Suzy was or wasn’t saying to you, so you don’t really see them. You stay there so late that it’s closing time, and you don’t realise until the cleaners come and you smell the soap on the floorboards, and then you know that it’s time to leave, and, for a few seconds or minutes, you’re in the moment, because the citrus invasion from the janitor’s spray has jerked you into presence, but by this time the lights have been dimmed and, even though you’re lucid, and are trying to look, they are just not what they are meant to be, murky riddles on an artist’s wall.

“It’ll be alright, she’s not suffering any more.” Gloria comforted Peter. Peter sniffed and nodded. She had had a hole in the big toe, and the time had come where she was deemed not worthy, and simply tossed away. Time was, a good owner would whip out the thread and needle, and darn the holes, make them good as new. Not these days. Simply toss ’em out and get a new one. Leave the other behind. “It’s not fair.” sniffed Peter. “I know, I know.” the other socks reassured him. He and Gloria, vibrant green and yellow, best pals from the off. You can’t darn a broken heart.

My father doesn’t want me to jump. I say “It’s fine, I can do it!”. He says “Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll get yourself killed”. I know I can do it, I have the equipment. It’s the grand canyon, it takes a while to fall, there will be plenty of time to spare just in case it takes a while to kick in. I say, “I can fly dad, I’ve done it before!”. He says “No you haven’t”. I am squishing a polyester pillow against my chest, I check the buoyancy, it feels fine. I say “I have”. He says “Just come back with me.” I decide to submit. I start to come with him. Just as he loosens his grip, I jump.

Last week Steve put an ad in the paper. It read as follows: “7th June, 6pm, time travellers party, The Fox and Saviour.” He had also left the instruction that time travellers must not let on that they are time travellers: if no one turned up, then the future-people would know that this was not a party worth going to, so they wouldn’t come. There would have to be a seed population of present-folk. Otherwise it would be impossible to get them there in the first place. Of course, there is then the downside that there isn’t really much point in bringing time travellers if you don’t know they’re time travellers, what’s the point in that? Steve arrived at 6:20pm, and by the time he got there, there were twelve people and no cheese twists left. No one polishes off 200 cheese twists in 20 minutes. Sound evidence, he thought, of time travellers. But he didn’t say this, just in case.

We set out fourteen days ago, three of us. It was a Wednesday, we were at work, discussing charts and scales and office politics. Years and years, just the same day over and over again. I snapped. “Guys, fuck all this. Let’s go to Panama.” They were confused. I brought them muffins. They came round to the idea. We didn’t even quit, we just left, half-drunk coffees on the desk. We were all unattached and free. We would start a new life. We could do anything we liked. And we did. And now we’re in Panama. And it’s shit. We should probably go back.