‘How come I’ve not seen any of them at the bookshop?’

‘They all have their own bookshop or café or whatever, depending on what area they cover.’

‘So there’s more than one Deborah?’

She chuckles, her eyes wide. ‘There’s only one Deborah.’

‘So why are they here?’

‘To celebrate the new reapers. We do it every year. It’s kind of like a Welcome to the Family thing.’

‘I thought you said that you aren’t allowed to draw attention to yourselves?’ I ask, wondering how a hundred reapers blasting music and dancing around a bonfire on the beach – a bonfire they’re not allowed to be having, by the way – isn’t drawing attention to themselves.

‘It’s Brighton.’ Dev waves her hand at me. ‘No one cares.’

I guess not. It certainly explains why some people are drinking. But that’s Brighton. People see a party and they want to join in, even if it’s snowing. They wouldn’t be so keen if they knew who they were dancing with.

‘Dev!’ I hear someone say and look back to find a girl walking towards us.

I say girl, but she’s older than us – eighteen, maybe nineteen. She grins at Dev and I’m taken aback for a moment. She looks so much like Adara. They have the same heart-shaped face, the same full, wide mouth and milky-tea-coloured skin. I’ve never seen Adara without her hijab. It’s so much a part of her that it hasn’t occurred to me to ask myself what her hair’s like beneath it. This girl’s hair is a bit longer than Dev’s but as dark as mine with the same thick, unruly waves. I’m a bit envious because it’s what I was going for when I was fourteen and cut all my hair off, except for the smooth, blunt fringe that stops halfway down her forehead, which shouldn’t suit her but does.

She jumps on Dev, throwing her arms around her with such enthusiasm, they almost fall over.

‘Is this Ash?’ the girl asks when she lets go and steps back.

Dev thumbs at me. ‘This is her.’

‘Hey!’ She grins at me this time. ‘Danica Daniels. Kiddie cancer.’

There’s something about the way she says it, like she’s telling me what school she goes to, that makes me hesitate when she holds out her hand.

I look down at it, then reach out and shake it carefully. ‘Kiddie cancer?’

‘Danica reaps children who have cancer,’ Dev explains with a solemn nod.

‘I thought you reaped the people who died in the way you did?’

‘We do. At first, anyway,’ Dev says. ‘But we can’t have four-year-old reapers running around, can we?’

I guess not.

I didn’t think about that.

‘I got promoted,’ Danica says with less enthusiasm this time.

‘To children with cancer? That’s a promotion?’