At the other end of the line a distant bell began to ring. I opened the door, handed the phone to Barry, went outside and listened.

“Hello,” I heard Barry say. “Hello. Mr Penrose, is that you?”

And something must have been said in reply, because Barry turned to me and gave a thumbs-up. I gave a thumbs-up back to him and he turned away once more and went on speaking.

And speaking.

And listening.

And speaking some more …

And some more …

I looked at my wristwatch. It was now twelve-thirty. I bashed my fist on the glass of the door. Barry turned and made sssh-ing noises.

I dragged open the door.

Barry put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “Go away,” he said. “I’m talking to Mr Penrose.”

“Well, I want a go.”

“Do you want to speak to him?”

“Er, no,” I said. “Not at this moment.”

“Then, go away. Come back in half an hour.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t.”

“Well, who do you want to speak to, then?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Then, go away and think of someone.”

I let the telephone-box door swing shut. I so, so, so wanted to talk to Mr Penrose. Tell him I was sorry. Ask him to forgive me. Just to talk to him. But I confess I was scared. I know I should have been scared anyway. After all, he was dead. This was a pretty big number. But it was more than the business of awakening his corpse in his coffin. It was the matter of speaking to him. To P.P. Penrose, the greatest writer of the twentieth century. The creator of Lazlo Woodbine. Penrose was my hero. I was a fan.

I was totally stuffed.

And so I just stood there, outside the phone box, while Barry rabbited on and on, then listened, then rabbited on some more.

And then, at four-fifteen in the morning, Barry came out of the phone box.

“Finished, have you?” I asked in a tone that was far from friendly.

“I have to go,” said Barry. “To the toilet. I’m bursting for a piss.”

I glanced towards the phone. The receiver was down. “He’s gone, then, has he?”

“Yeah, he had to go for his lunch. Time is different there. Everything is different there. Well, not everything. Actually, it’s mostly— No, listen, I really do have to go to the toilet. Use the phone now. Call someone.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You’re acting really weird,” said Barry. “Go on, call someone. It’s no problem – they’re really anxious to say hello. They’re dying to talk. Hey, that’s a good’n, isn’t it, dying to talk.”

“Go to the toilet,” I said.

Barry went off to the toilet.

And I just dithered. If Mr Penrose had gone off for his lunch, then I couldn’t speak to him. So who could I speak to? What famous dead person would I really like to speak to? I thought hard about this, even harder than I had been thinking for the last couple of hours, and my conclusion was the same: quite a few of them. But I didn’t know the exact dates of their deaths. I was going to have to come back tomorrow night.

But then I thought of my daddy. I could phone him. And he had said that he had something fantastic that he wanted to tell me. I could phone my daddy.

Barry returned with a smile on his face.

“That was quick,” I said. “Where is the toilet?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Barry. “I just pissed in someone’s desk drawer.”

“You stupid sod.”

“Calm down,” said Barry. “It will be dry in the morning. Just a bit smelly. No one will suspect anything.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

“What? Aren’t you going to phone anyone? Mr Penrose will probably have finished his lunch by now. Time is different there.”

“I have to think,” I said. “I don’t want to waste this. I want to do it properly. To some purpose.”

“Please yourself, man. But if you’re not having a go, then I’m going to speak to Mr Penrose again.”

“What did he say?” I asked. “What is he like?”

“He’s OK,” said Barry. “A really nice bloke. Very forthcoming, very open. Talks a lot about sportsmanship. He’s very big on that. But he’s so angry. Someone did something to him. Did voodoo on him or something after he died and—”

“I don’t want to know,” I said. “I’m going home. Close the door on your way out. I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

“I’m going to bring a tape recorder,” said Barry. “Get this on tape. This is big news. The world should know about this.”

“No,” I said. “Hold on. You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. This is beyond big. This is beyond anything. And it’s a secret. A government secret. If anyone found out that we’re doing this, that we’re unauthorized and doing this, we’d be in really big trouble. This is our secret. We can’t tell anyone. No one must know.”

“OK,” said Barry. “It’s our secret.”

“Let’s shake on this.” I put my hand out and Barry shook it. “Fair enough,” I said. “Now, I’m off. Some of us have to work in the morning.”

“Both of us have. Stuff it, I’ll call it a night in half an hour. See you tomorrow evening.”

“See you.” And so I left Barry and wandered off home.

I slept all alone in my bed, but I didn’t sleep very well. There were far too many bits and bobs whirling about in my head. FLATLINE was something so big that the implications of it all were beyond imagining. The very concept of definite contact with the dead. That changed everything, didn’t it? All theories of God and the hereafter. All of recorded history. It would now be possible to know literally everything. About exactly what happened in the past and exactly what happened after you died. Everything would be known. It was too much to think about. Too much for me, anyway.

The more I thought about it all, the more messed up I became. There was power here. Those who could speak with the dead could learn a lot. A whole lot. Einstein had probably thought up loads more important equations since he’d snuffed it. And all those other scientists and composers and geniuses. And all the murdered could identify their murderers – well, the ones who’d seen them, anyway. And, oh, the more I thought, the more messed up I became. This was such a big secret. The biggest secret.

And Barry and I were on the inside of it. We were an even bigger secret, because the men who held this secret didn’t know that we knew about it.

Eventually I did fall asleep, but, as I say, I did not sleep very well and when the alarm rang and I crawled off to the telephone exchange I was feeling very sick indeed.

And when I went into the bulb booth to relieve Barry, I was not altogether thrilled to find that Barry was fast asleep.

I awoke him with a kick in the ribs.

“Whoa!” went Barry, lurching into consciousness.

“Time to go home,” I told him.

“Oh yeah, man.” Barry yawned and stretched.

“Have a good night?” I asked him. “Chatting with Mr Penrose?”

“You’re not kidding. What a man. He told me all about the people he’d met and the things he’d done. I’m going to write his biography.”

“What?”

“Straight from the hearse’s mouth,” said Barry, grinning foolishly. “He’ll dictate it to me down the phone. It’s a secret, though; you can’t tell anyone.”

I made fists once again. “I’m not going to tell anyone, am I? But you can’t do this.”

“Why not? Give me one good reason.”

I couldn’t. “This is ridiculous,” I said.

“I think it’s brilliant. And when I’ve done Mr Penrose I’ll do some others. Mr Penrose says that the famous dead are crying out to the living, but the living can’t hear them. But we can hear them down the FLATLINE phone and they all want to dictate their life stories. You can do some too. We’ll be rich authors – there’s millions to be had in this.”

I gave my chin a stroke. Barry was right of course.

“I’m going to buy a tape recorder today,” said Barry. “We can just set it up at the phone and let Mr Penrose talk for as long as he likes each night. This is so brilliant.”