Then a lady came walking along the footpath with her daughter, who was wearing a school uniform. The girl had the facial appearance of a seven year old. Yet she was around the same height as Lewis, he realised, as they drew closer. Lewis had been used to the fact that he almost came up to the height of the average adult woman, but this lady was so tall, that Lewis estimated her height at around ten foot eight inches. The lady smiled down at him in a friendly way, and asked, “Are you alright, little boy? Is your Mum around somewhere?”

“I’m 14,” he said.

“Is he one of the dwarves, Mum?” asked the girl.

“No Stefanie, don’t say things like that,” said the lady, assuming he must be a midget, “Can I give you a lift home? Our car’s just over there.”

“I guess so,” said Lewis, “I’ve … found myself a long way from Lindfield.”

She drove him to his front driveway and dropped him off. Yet everything about his property seemed as unexpectedly larger by a factor of two as the surprises he’d had in Turramurra. He was about to step into his driveway, to try to puzzle it out, when he noticed an unfamiliar mother playing with an unfamiliar infant son in the front garden. Again, the woman was tall enough to dwarf Lewis Rickland. It wasn’t his family at all! He studied the driveway carefully. There were small garden beds on each side of it. They were twice as large as he expected them to be, yet they were still parallel to each other and to the driveway.

“Parallel! That’s it!” he thought, “It’s wild as can be, but it’s the only thing that could ever explain this, “I’ve come to a parallel earth.”

Something had happened back at the Swain Gardens. When had it occurred? He had first noticed it after he had taken the picture. It had to have something to do with the place he had been standing when he took the shot. He had to get back to the Gardens. On this earth, which he would call Earth B or Earth Double, in deference to the size factor of its people and objects, the identical Swain Gardens had been built in Brentwood Avenue, Turramurra. On his own earth, which he would call Earth A or Earth Single, the Swain Gardens had been built in Northcote Road (and Stanhope Road) in Killara.

“I just hope that my school student railway pass works on the trains on this earth,” thought Lewis, ”I’ve got to get home. I’d love to come here again, but I can’t get home late enough to have to explain all this to my parents.”

He ran himself to exhaustion, heading for Lindfield station with his schoolbag tiring him further. He caught the train to Turramurra, remembered the view from the lady’s high car window of the streets to take, and ran from the station to Swain Gardens Double. He soon reached the Gardens, glad that daylight saving and the warmer time of the year would prevent the sun from going down and stranding him there lost in the dark.