Matty had got on it, wheeled up and down on the changing area’s concrete and done one ollie before a man who was doing some stretches said to stop.

‘That is the stupidest thing I have ever seen,’ said Nicks, and Matty couldn’t help feeling disappointed, tucking it away under a bench before they went swimming again.

In the library, Matty had found more drowned people, and now looked for the shui gui, the Chinese water ghost from the encyclopaedia that dragged people underwater to steal their bodies. Looked for Ophelia, the painted girl from Shakespeare, who drowned in the stream with her flowers. Looked for Dad. But there was only Nicks, swimming all the way underneath Matty like a blurry beluga whale. There had been no explanation about disappearing last time, and no apology. Matty had just arrived at the Ponds, swum to the central platform, and got a sharp dig in the side.

‘Where do you go to school?’ Matty said now, sitting next to him at the grass slope end, goosebumps lightly rising. Maybe he’d be going to St George’s, too.

‘Don’t go. Learn at home.’

That sounded really posh.

Matty watched the swimmers, imagining Harry Houdini in a straitjacket being lowered into a glass box that was itself then lowered into the middle of the Pond. Imagined Dad in the straitjacket, wriggling like mad. ‘How old are you?’

Nicks glanced over. ‘How old are you?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Older than you,’ he said, and looked smug, putting his hands behind his head, eyes closed up to the sun.

Later, Matty went to the skate spot in the park nearer home. It was a flat stretch of concrete with benches and three steps – you’d get clusters of kids there after school and at weekends, as the nearest proper park was over in Camden. Dad would go with Matty on Sunday afternoons, hand in a packet of Wotsits, glancing over his paper. It was so annoying. Now it felt strange being there alone.

Kyle from class was there, with his older brother who seemed as tall as Giant Haystacks. Kyle wheeled up to Matty. ‘Sorry about your dad,’ he said, picking up his board and bashing it against his foot.

A pain, right in the chest. Maybe Johanna had told him, though they weren’t really friends at school. Or maybe everyone knew. It was like having a handicap, like being in a wheelchair or in an accident. Sorry about your broken leg. Sorry your hand’s fallen off. Sorry your dad’s dead. Missing presumed dead. Unsalvageable.

‘It’s OK.’ It wasn’t OK.