Game on. If they still lived in that house I was coming for them. My visit to Joe was a fluster of plans and possibilities, and I promised to report straight back on Sunday.

Early on Sunday morning I crept out of the house, leaving a note to say I’d gone for a walk to clear my head. I narrowed it down to five houses by walking along the road next to the cricket pitch twice. Then I sat on a bench across the field, wrapped in my warmest coat and scarf, and pretended to play on my phone until I saw actual Gus coming out of number five and setting off for a run.

I tried to get my head round the fact that this man was two years older than Joe, who was a year younger than me, but that at the same time he was approximately twenty-one years older than I was. He was middle-aged. He had lived without his brother for twenty years, which was five years longer than he’d lived with him. I was older now than Joe had ever been, would ever be, and I was moving away from him every second.

Joe should have been thirty-five. The reality hit me properly for the first time. The boy I liked, the boy who was in Year Ten, was thirty-five. That was all kinds of icky.

I rearranged my hair and made a pouty face, while holding up my phone and taking a photo of Gus. It wasn’t a good picture, but it was recognizable.

As soon as he was out of sight I pulled together all my brave atoms and walked up the garden path to number five. I saw one of those red-and-yellow plastic cars that little kids play in, on its side in the gravelly front garden. It looked old. Maybe it had once been Joe’s.

I looked up and saw pink curtains at the upstairs window.

I pushed the flyer through the blue door and walked away fast, trembling. I went home via the supermarket, bought lots of fresh vegetables and cooked a huge soup for Sasha and the baby and me.

Then I realized that I couldn’t meet Joe today, even though I’d promised I would. It was Sunday, and the mall closed at four. I hated knowing that I couldn’t chat to him. I missed him. I hated, most of all, the fact that he would be waiting for me, that the only person he could really talk to wasn’t going to show up.

I sent him silent apologies, and hoped he wouldn’t think I’d abandoned him forever.

16

I wake up in the usual way. I write down everything while I’m still half in the dream, and stare at the words.