This one feels as though it’s dying. Like it’s slowly being worn away away away by the thousand footsteps that are trying to forget that once upon a time a living thing bloomed here.

He puts my camera back in its holder so my view changes to the sky, where – in the distance – I can see the bell tower. Wesley’s finish line throwing the world into shadow.

And I want to look away. I want to keep walking. I want to push it to the back of my mind.

I swallow.

‘Don’t you get annoyed? At people walking over your painting?’

I look at the mistake under my trainers.

‘Some things are better forgotten.’

Flowers blooming from a Monopoly world.

Her smile as she held him.

O U T.

My insides jump and I cough them back down.

‘Listen,

the bank’s gonna close.

I should …’

‘I’ve got to go, anyway,’ I lie.

He puts his hand up to disconnect the stream and I watch as the colour drains.

Rowan is no longer streaming.

49

Alice

It’s taken half an hour and several spoons to muster the courage to type his name into Google.

Wesley Cooper.

Every letter dredges up a new memory from that day. The way the sun bled into the clouds. The starburst glare from the red traffic light. The shadow in the window of the car driver’s seat before the stream went dead.

Just like Rowan’s floor painting. I’ve buried it underfoot in the hope that eventually it all gets worn away. But what if I stopped staining the soles of my feet? What if I tilted my perspective? What if I stopped and looked and saw the life that once bloomed on the other side of the camera?

The truth is, I didn’t know Wesley at all. It took some digging in Screen Cast for me to even find out his surname. I know that he wore his watch on his right hand. I know that he rode his bike to work and at weekends. I know that he used to love to go as fast as he possibly could.

But I don’t know anything of the man who got all those hundreds of people to turn up at his funeral. Or of the person who passed a note to my mum to say that he saw something special in Rowan. Something that I see, too.

I press enter.

I expect him to come up as the top result, but instead I see pages from businesses and people living whole worlds away. I’m about to give up when I click search videos.

And there, at the top, is a picture of the handlebars of a bike. Wesley’s bike.