‘Yeah. Wrapped in a carpet like in the movies would have attracted attention, particularly once the whole town was looking for a missing kid. Is there another way out?’

‘I don’t know. Is the wall hollow? Maybe you could get something out that way? Air-conditioning ducts, also like the movies?’

‘I know someone who could tell us about that. Ariel, I realize it’s Saturday tomorrow, but if you’re free would you be able to meet back here? Before we see Joe, I mean?’

We exchanged numbers and I went home. I didn’t know what to do with my feelings, so I took Raffy out to look at the sea again and, again, I imagined Joe’s bones somewhere out there, smuggled out of Beachview through the walls and washed by seawater over the years. It made me cry and cry, but then I cuddled the baby tight, and smelled his baby hair, and felt his baby warmth, and turned round to go home.

The fact was we were alive and Joe wasn’t, and it was time we sorted everything out.

48

I get up at five because I’m too full of everything to sleep. I don’t know what to do with myself.

I have seen Troy.

And he could see me too.

And he didn’t kill me.

I want to dance round the house, like Lara dances round the train. I’d never realized what a weight it was, trying to accept the fact that my best friend had accidentally killed me over a football trophy. Whatever the truth might be, it won’t be as bad as that. I find that I’d rather be murdered by a stranger, a proper bad guy, than by the person who’d been my best friend for almost all my life.

Now, like Lara, I want to stay. There might be nothing out there. Here there is something. And I would rather live the same day until the end of time than be nothing. I know that with all my dead, unbeating heart.

All the same, I take Gus’s camera and decide that I’ll break with my routine and spend the whole day at the mall, just in case Ariel and Troy go there too. I should have arranged that with them, but I didn’t think of it before the door opened, so this is my only way of clawing it back. It’s their Saturday. Maybe Ariel will bring the baby. If she was holding him I’d be able to see him. I love her face when she talks about him and I adore the fact that she gave him my name.

I get ready for school as normal. Mr Armstrong offers me his old francs. Troy comes along and I grin at him, so happy to see young Troy when I have old Troy in my head too.