“Alright,” he said, “Every Friday night this year, I have been visiting this youth group, but not from the Lindfield you’re familiar with. I come from another Lindfield, on another parallel earth. They’re actually real. All you have to do to go from one to the other is stand in a special spot that’s common to both worlds (although mine is in Killara and yours is in Turramurra) and slightly bend your legs. Then you just suddenly find yourself in the other earth. On my earth, everything and everyone are half the size of the places and structures and plants and people of your earth.”

“I trust you’d be willing to show me this special spot,” said Mrs Fielding.

“Yes, but would you keep it between us and Melendy?”

“I will, but first I’d like to know how being from another earth gave you knowledge of Melendy’s other potential name. Even if your people have mind reading power, it doesn’t explain you knowing something that Melendy herself was never told.”

“We can’t read minds, but in January this year, I met the only person on my earth whom I’ve so far found to have a counterpart on yours. I was reading a book on a Saturday afternoon in January, a week and a half before school resumed, in the park behind the Lindfield library. LYNDA Fielding was there with her friends, while her father played tennis with his … What?”

Mrs Fielding’s mouth had dropped wide open.

“That’s where Melendy’s father was playing tennis on Saturday afternoons earlier in the year. He changed it to Sundays, when he had the chance to play at Turramurra Park. It was closer to home for us, and had available courts on Sundays. Melendy didn’t go with him, but she was there on the Saturdays in January with her friends. Tell me the rest.”

At that point it crossed Lewis’s mind that Lynda Fielding might live in Chelmsford Street Turramurra on Earth Single too, but he didn’t even want to find out. They were both beautiful, but here he was with Melendy, and she was as big and exciting as the other girls in Jenny Wilmer’s youth group. Yet she was as beautiful and friendly and fond of him as Lynda. He would never know what became of Lynda Fielding. She would most likely grow up, marry someone on Earth Single, have children, and many years later, in the age of the internet, she might read Lewis’s online published memoirs (conveniently disguised as a fiction) and think back to the days of her two Saturday near miss encounters with Lewis and laugh. Lewis was in love with Melendy Fielding. Of that he was sure. Right now he had to go on with narrating his story to an expectant Mrs Fielding.

“Lynda and her friends were nice to me, and I thought Lynda and I liked each other. I saw them two weeks in a row. On the third Saturday (which was the first Saturday in February, just after school had gone back) I had hoped to go and try to find a way to see more of her. Then my father told me on the Monday before that I had to do school work on Saturday afternoons. I was devastated. On the Friday afternoon, I was trying to get over it in Swain Gardens on my world, which I call Earth Single, because it’s single sized to me. I stood in that spot and bent my legs to balance steadily to take a photo, and popped into Swain Gardens on your Earth Double. I call it that, because of things being double sized. I guess you could call yours Earth Single and mine Earth Half.”