My eyes search for it

haunting the skyline.

‘You say your friend was Wesley?

My art teacher who died was called that.’

‘Yes, he was your art teacher.’

I stop panting.

‘Your friend was my middle-aged art teacher …?’

My thoughts buzz like flies.

‘How old are you again?’

I’m lost in a memory.

‘He had a really beautiful bike, you know. Carbon fibre and painted the colour of a galaxy. And when he rode it, he rode it with everything he had. Everything that was Living. When we were on that bike, we were Alive and nothing else mattered.’

‘We?’

The penny sort of drops and I can feel it

P I N B A L L I N G

down my ribs.

‘He streamed for you, too.’

The breeze moves the trees in front of us so the view behind starts building from tiny shards, like one of Rowan’s paintings. And, dot by dot, I see a seaside town in a valley of green hills, snapping off into blue.

‘Do you think …’

I swallow.

‘Do you think, that if I hadn’t been watching, he would have slowed down? That he would have seen the car?’

Oh,

Alice.

I grip the bench like she might be able

to feel it.

‘You were watching.’

And it’s not a question, because

from the hollows in her voice

I know she was.

I don’t know why it’s easier to talk about it with Rowan – a boy that I’ve never even met – than it is with Mum. Maybe it’s because he can’t see me. Or that, right now, I can’t see him, either.

‘The bell tower was the last thing he saw. Before the car came out of nowhere and – and stopped him seeing altogether.’

I let out my breath slowly.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t take you up.

Just –

something happened. Up there.

Jonah’s always bugging me to take him, but –’

‘It’s okay,’ I say quietly. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

But the thing is,

even this,

the worst thing,

I want her to see and make

beautiful.

He swings round to check on Jonah and Benji, poking at something in a tree. And then I see his hands squeezing his legs like he’s clinging on to something that’s falling away.

I wish. I wish I were there to be solid for him.

‘After Dad left,

Mam’s drinking got worse.

She’d get into these

dark places

and the only thing that seemed to brighten them

were my paintings.’

I hunt for the places his paintings lurk in the distance – the tunnel by the playground and next to the sea; the castle climbing frame; the pavement in town. But we’re too far away to see even a hint of colour.