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thoughts were the same as always. Alex thoughts. The body might have been Philip’s but the mind was still his. On the inside, he didn’t feel any different at all. Except for the knowledge that something freakish and terrible had occurred. No matter how hard he tried to suppress that thought, it was there, nagging away at him.
    After a few minutes, he came to a row of shops, then a car park and more shops, a post office, an Indian restaurant. A train station, with bays out front for buses. The sign outside the station said Litchbury.
    Alex hadn’t heard of the place. He went over to the timetable board, where there was map of the local rail network. A few people were about, going into and out of the station or M&S Simply Food, or waiting for buses. Among these strangers, in this strange town, he was conscious of being an outsider, of acting suspiciously somehow, as though he was a spy in their midst. Not that anyone paid him much attention. To them, he was probably just a schoolboy bunking off. He studied the map. Litchbury was at the end of a line that ran into—he traced the route with his, with Philip’s , finger—Leeds. Leeds . Where was that? Somewhere up north. A long way from south London, anyway. His spirits dipped. He could have ended up anywhere, really, he supposed. Tokyo, Mumbai, Buenos Aires. Litchbury wasn’t too bad when you considered it like that. Even so, he thought of being this far from Mum, Dad and Sam, from where he belonged, and of how long it would take his mum to reach him.
    And when she did …
    He tried not to think about how he would convince her it really was him inside this body. Behind this face. Or even if she believed him, what she would be able to do to rescue him. To reverse this. How could she? How could anyone help him? Never mind hours , he might be stuck like this for days, weeks, months, years.
    Forever.
    The phone buzzed again. Fumbling it from his blazer, he opened the message.
    Meet in Smoothies after skl? cu there Bx .
    This one was from Billie. Two girlfriends.
    To pass the time until Mum returned his call, he parked himself on a bench outside the station and opened Philip’s schoolbag. In the rush to leave the house, the bag had been shoved into his hands by the giraffe-woman as she had bundled him out the door. What was in there? Keys to the house, maybe. Money. Packed lunch (having brought up his breakfast, Alex was hungry). Some clues, perhaps, to who Philip was. Of all the billions of people in the world, Alex had wound up as him . He couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t just down to chance—that there had to be a reason, some connection that had paired them together like this.
    Alex opened the various compartments and set the contents down beside him on the bench. The results were disappointing. A waterproof coat, rolled up tight; schoolbooks (maths, history, French); a school planner; another Snickers wrapper; pens, pencils, ruler, eraser, sharpener; a calculator; an iPod; a fixture list for Yorkshire County Cricket Club; a lighter; a pack of playing cards; a one-gigabyte memory stick; deodorant (Lynx); hair gel; breath-freshener spray; a twopence coin; a dried-out apple core; a half-finished tube of Polos; a young person’s travel pass; four elastic bands; two paper clips; a mobile phone top-up card; another Snickers wrapper; and finally, a small key (for his locker?) on a key ring in the shape of a pair of breasts.
    Alex popped a mint, binned the apple core and wrappers and methodically put everything else back into the bag except for the planner, the iPod and the playing cards. There was something odd about the box; it was too light to contain a deck of cards. He flipped the lid. Cigarettes. Well, that explained the foul taste in his mouth when he’d woken up. It also explained the lighter, the Polos and the breath freshener. He’d never smoked, apart from half a cigarette at a party, just to give it a try. But even if he’d liked it (which he hadn’t),