‘Anyway. That day I caught up with them just before we got to school. I was mad jealous that they were going to France. That trip cost two hundred pounds, and I remember how impossible that was for my family. I quite liked French, and I would have loved to go – not for the bit where you have to stay with people you don’t know for a week, but for the bus ride, the ferry, the friendship, the in-jokes you have when you get back, all that – but I had no chance. I was eaten up with jealousy. I think I tried to talk French to him. Ça va bien, that kind of thing, as a way of saying, “Hey, you’re going to France today!” and he told me to fuck off. I don’t know. I wasn’t good at that stuff. I had no social skills. Didn’t get any for years and years. If ever arguably.’

‘You have social skills now,’ said Izzy politely. Lucas nodded his thanks.

‘I don’t think we had any lessons together that day, though as I said it was a long time ago and I don’t know what I’m remembering or what I’m filling in. After school I definitely watched Joe walking into town, telling Troy he was going to get a present for the family in France. I wanted to go with him, but of course I couldn’t. I wish, though, that I had. I wish I’d followed him. Kept him safe. And we know that Joe went to Beachview and then he was never seen again.’

Izzy said, ‘When did you find out that he was missing?’

I was a bit surprised by that. I was surprised by the fact that it hadn’t occurred to me to ask. For some reason I’d been incapable of thinking past the moment when Joe’s eternal day cut out.

Lucas sighed. ‘That night. Everyone did. You can’t imagine what it was like, you kids now, but we didn’t have social media or any of that. Some folks had mobile phones, but I didn’t. People were calling round on landlines, asking if anyone had seen him. Mum knocked on my bedroom door and asked if I had any idea where he was. I think a bit of her thought she’d find him in there, talking to me. If only. We joined in the search they’d started. Small town – you know how it is. Everyone was out. We walked all the way round the streets and shouted his name, asked everybody, stuck his photo on lamp posts like people do for cats. I kept thinking we were definitely about to find him. Just round the next corner. Maybe the next.’

He stopped talking, and I realized that, in a way, this was where the story ended.

‘But no one ever did,’ I said.