‘I am most certainly not,’ I said with exaggerated dignity. ‘Nothing is as off-putting as a fake phone number. He ghosted me so he’s dead to me.’ I shivered. I hadn’t meant to say either of those things.

‘Bastard.’ Izzy shook her head. That ended the subject.

We made a list of potential middle names for Sasha’s baby instead. We spent the whole afternoon running a World Cup of boys’ names, canvassing opinions from whoever was nearby, eliminating some and sending others into the next round, and by three thirty the results were in: the baby’s middle name was Camembert (pronounced phonetically: Bert for short). That cheered me up immensely and I texted Sasha to inform her that her son’s middle name was Camembert.

Fuck off, she replied. Though I do quite like Bertie. Hmm, thx, I guess.

I saw the telly-ghosts around the place whether I thought about blue or not, but I wasn’t scared of them any more. I thought I was seeing parts of Joe’s last day at school, since I was in the building where it had happened, just as I overlapped with him in the Beachview room. I didn’t know if I was right, but that was what I’d decided to believe.

I looked each of them in the face, in turn, hoping to find Joe here too and wondering whether we’d be able to speak to each other if we met away from our usual space. I had no idea why I could see him. Partly, I supposed, it had to be because of Mum, but I was also starting to think that perhaps I was supposed to find out what had happened to him. Would that help him move on? It might.

In the afternoon I found myself in the loos with a cluster of ghost girls, and no one from 2019.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Excuse me. Do you know Joe Simpson?’ I waved both arms. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

They ignored me. They couldn’t see or hear me at all, and then a toilet flushed and a real girl I didn’t know came out of the end cubicle, smirking.

I was less freaked by the kids from 1999 now that I had an idea about who they were. This wasn’t my story: it was me helping Joe with his, and that took the pressure off. They weren’t a symptom of me losing my mind in the way I’d thought, and that made me want to hug them. They were connected to Joe (they had to be: they wore his uniform and looked like nineties kids). That meant they could be a part of him reaching out to me for help, and I tried my best to embrace their presence, though my favourite times were very much the rare days when I didn’t see them.