18

It’s the weirdest thing to wake up half knowing something that is impossible. There’s a piece of paper beside the bed with a message about the cupboard at Beachview and a girl from the future called Ariel, but I already know it. It stayed in my head.

It stayed in my head! That is new. I’m sure it’s new. I know that I’ll go there after school, and I know that I have lived this day thousands of times, and I will do it again today and again tomorrow, if there is really any concept of a tomorrow.

I know that I must be dead. It’s a fucker of a thing to find out about yourself. I stagger into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. I think of Ariel and fill my head with the blue of the sky.

There it is. I’m glowing bright blue. She was right.

Dad shouts up to me. I manage to half fall down the stairs and say goodbye. I know that this is going to be the last time he sees me for a very long time. Who am I kidding? He’s never going to see me again. I know that. He doesn’t.

‘I love you, Dad,’ I say, and I hug him. ‘Always remember.’

He steps back and smiles at me.

‘You know, Jojo,’ he says, ‘I can see you’re feeling anxious.’ He looks stricken. I remember how I used to be, and try to step back into that Joe. I smile, attempt a swagger.

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Not really. I was just trying to get in touch with my empathetic side. Mrs Dupont told us to do that.’

What the hell am I even saying? Still, it seems to work. His face relaxes a bit.

‘Sure? Mrs Dupont is a wise woman. Are you missing Mum? I can see how much you wish she was here right now, to wave you off to France. Sorry she’s not, mate.’

‘Yes,’ I say, and he’s right. Mum is not here, on this day, and that means I haven’t seen her for twenty years. I wish with all my heart that she could have still been at home on 11 March. I work hard to stay in my persona as old-Joe, even as I realize that I can hardly remember my mother. She has long hair and dark eyes. She wears floaty clothes. I haven’t seen her for twenty years. I will never see her again. The day she went away was the last day of my life when I had a mother.

She’s in India (I think? I can’t remember much of the past any more) and now I’ll never see her again.

If she was here maybe this wouldn’t happen.

I shake my head. There’s no way I can blame the one person who has nothing to do with this. She’s miles away: this isn’t her fault.

‘She’ll be back,’ Dad says. ‘You know that. But before then: the French exchange! You’ll have a blast.’ I see him searching around for an appropriate phrase in French, but not finding one. ‘Comme çi, comme ça,’ he says instead. ‘Voilà! L’addition, s’il vous plaît!’

I give him a blast of the most sincere smile I can manage, and do a little dance for some reason. A kind of jig on the spot that looks stupid, but this is Dad and it’s the sort of thing he likes.

‘Vraiment bien,’ I say. I’m not at all scared about the French exchange because I’m not going. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘Interesting. I mean, it’s going to be weird, right? But also I’m staying with my friend Enzo in France and that’ll be cool.’

‘That’s the spirit. Good. So I’ll see you before you go, and then you’ll be home before we know it.’

Gus comes down the stairs noisily.

‘You still here?’ he says to Dad, who looks at his watch and says, ‘Bums!’

‘Bums?’ I say.

Dad shrugs.

‘If I said bums in front of a kid at work it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It’s arguably their favourite word. So I can allow myself that from time to time.’

‘Allow yourself a bum from time to time. Quite right,’ says Gus, and I want to cry. I’m going to miss them so much.

I meet Troy on the corner and we talk bravely about how much better our new life in France is going to be, about how we’ll have baguettes and croissants and snails.

‘I probably won’t come back,’ he says, and he spins a fantasy about living in a Parisian attic with a beautiful woman and discovering his talent as an artist. I’m sure I’ve heard it before, but I go along with it, asking questions, stretching it out all the way to school.

We pick up other people as we go, and I look at all of them, knowing that they will be adults and I won’t, that they’ll tell new people, ‘When I was at school one of my friends disappeared.’

I’m going to see them tomorrow too. And again and again and again. Every single day until the end of time.

I look at Jemima and she grins back at me. I know she’s really pretty and that I used to have the most massive crush on her, but I don’t feel anything. I remember an intense friendship with Marco that went somewhere unexpected, but I don’t really remember that either. I realize I have no idea whether I like girls or boys, or a bit of both, because the only person I have any feelings for is Ariel, and it’s not so much that I fancy her. I did, when I thought we were both real, and of course I still do, but it’s been complicated by the facts.

I remember that I’m supposed to be gathering information for her, and let Lucas walk with me, so I can work out how much he hates me. We don’t really get on, but it’s quite a leap to think of him killing me later today.

Lucas is just a bit of an oddball, I think. He’s huge and seems much older than the rest of us (though I’m thirty-five, so I beat everyone). He makes me feel uncomfortable, which I guess makes him a suspect.

‘Hey,’ I say.

‘All right, Joseph?’ he says. He gives a stupid grin. ‘Comment ça va?’

I ignore the French.

‘Lucas?’ I say. ‘Would you murder me if you could definitely get away with it?’

He gives me a weird look. ‘Why would I want to murder you?’

‘Is that a no?’

He frowns and walks off.

As soon as I get into the tutor room I start recording our conversation in my notebook.

‘What are you writing?’ says Troy, trying to look at the page. I hide it with my hand, like when you don’t want anyone to copy your spellings in primary school. All I’ve written is Lucas didn’t say no when.

I hope Troy didn’t see. He’d assume this was going the way of my friendship with Marco, which I can barely remember, though Troy will, very clearly indeed.

Marco isn’t in our tutor group. I’m sure I never see him beyond the occasional glimpse of the back of his head today, and that must be why I can hardly even picture him now. I wish I could. He made me have feelings.

Throughout the rest of the day I ask people if they’d murder me if they could get away with it, and a surprising number of people don’t say no. A few say yes, but I think they’re just trying to be funny. I write it all down.

I’m in maths when I remember the other thing. Ariel did find something: Gus has a girlfriend and two children. Gus! He’s thirty-seven. Ariel saw him out for a run and took a photo. It all comes into my head at once, as if I’d opened a door and found them all on the other side of it. Coco and Zara. My nieces. A woman called Abby Fielding.

I have no idea how I’d forgotten that, or why I’ve remembered it now. I know that I can’t just sit here, trying to solve simultaneous equations. I have a bit of power, even if it’s tiny.

I stand up. Mr Patel looks at me. When I say, ‘Gonna be sick,’ he gestures to the door.

‘Go with him, Troy,’ he says. I shake my head.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, and I dash out of the room, and, to make it convincing, into the boys’ loos.

Troy follows anyway: I’d have done the same. I run into a stall and lock it, and think about making vomit noises, but what’s the point? I flush, then come out and give him a shaky smile.

‘You all right?’ He pulls himself up on to the window sill, but his feet still nearly reach the floor. The room is echoey, clattery and smelly. The window is frosted and smeared with grime. All the stalls are open.

I nod and say, ‘No’.

He says, ‘I knew it. Go on then.’

Troy and I have been best mates since we were four. We’re the classic old friends who met when we were cuter than we realized in reception class, and just never fell out. He’s taller than everyone, and very lanky, with bright red hair and olive skin. I only know that he gets stopped by scouts from modelling agencies because it’s happened when I’ve been with him. ‘You have such a strong look,’ they say. ‘So distinctive.’

Anyway. I realize I have nothing to lose.

‘Troy,’ I say. ‘You’ll think I’m batshit, but listen. Something terrible is going to happen to me today. I’m going to …’ I stop. I can’t do it. The words won’t come out.

I watch him trying to work out where I’m heading with this.

‘OK,’ he says in a guarded voice. ‘What are you going to do? Mate, you’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?’

‘No! But. Oh God. It’ll sound mad.’

‘I can handle mad.’

I force the words out. ‘I’ve been living through this same day for twenty years. Every day after school, I meet a girl at Beachview. Except for when it’s Sunday for her. It’s never Sunday for me. She’s from 2019. The Y2K bug never happened, but some planes fly into the World Trade Center in 2001, and global warming … Anyway, I know I’m going to disappear tonight and twenty years from now no one will have any idea what happened to me, but Gus has a girlfriend and two daughters. Zara and Coco.’

I frown at the floor as I speak. When I do look up, I have to stop because I can see that he is mentally flipping through emergency procedures.

This might be the best thing that will ever happen to me. If he gets me taken away it could change the course of my life. I’ll stay alive, and meet my nieces and live my life. If that happens I will find Ariel in the future and do everything I can to make her life brilliant.

For a moment I’m elated.

‘Mate,’ Troy says, and I see him looking at me hard. ‘Shit. OK. I think we should go and talk to someone. I’ll call your dad.’

‘OK,’ I want to say, but it turns out I can’t speak any more, and then I fall apart quite dramatically, and when I come back to the surface I’m sitting in the head’s office and they’re calling my dad to come and get me.

I can’t speak. I can’t do anything apart from cry, and I can’t even do that properly. I am going to die. I am going to disappear. This is the last day of my life, and every time I say it they think I’m madder than the time before because no one, no one believes me. Only one person understands, and she won’t be born until 2002.

Dad arrives and he is so worried that it makes me worse.

‘I’ll get a message to Mum,’ he says, and I shake my head. There’s no point: she won’t get here in time. I suppose she’s going to have to come back anyway. He’ll have to call her in a few hours when I go missing. I change my head-shake to a nod.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Call Mum. Tell her I need her.’

I can feel them exchanging glances above my head, and I let myself become passive, which everyone knows is not the Joe Simpson way. They can do whatever they want. I’m not going to Beachview, and that means I won’t die. If I keep my bum on this chair I’ll stay alive.

Dad says he’ll take me home. Mrs Dupont comes in and they talk quietly about withdrawing me from the French exchange. The deputy head, Mr Marks, is the first-aider, but this is too big a job for his tub of plasters and TCP, so he calls the GP and then says I need to go to the walk-in centre at half four and get referred for emergency assessment. I let it happen: inside I’m starting to glow. I can do this. I can get myself checked into some secure hospital-type place, somewhere where they lock the doors, and then I won’t be at Beachview at quarter past five, and that means – surely it means – that I’ll stay alive. I can take control by doing absolutely nothing. I’ve changed the course of the day.

The car is stuffy and has a definite smell of fast food.

‘You been having McDonald’s in here?’ I ask Dad, picking up the tiny end of a straw wrapper. Dad is always lecturing us about healthy eating.

He looks so pleased that I’ve spoken that he confesses at once.

‘I have,’ he says. ‘Guilty as charged. I had such a yen the other night. I just thought of it, and it took me right back to when McDonald’s first arrived in this country. How excited we were to go down there. We pretended to be American. So I had the feeling that it might still be the best thing in the world, even though I know it’s actually not. I went to the drive-through, and then I sat by myself in a car park to savour it.’

‘And?’

‘Yuck. I ate the chips. Threw the burger away. Enjoyed the milkshake.’ He nods to the scrap of paper in my hand. ‘Which was my undoing.’

‘The great detective has uncovered your secret,’ I say, waving the end of the straw wrapper at him, though my heart isn’t in it.

‘We can get you a milkshake now if it’d cheer you up,’ he says carefully. ‘Or a happy meal. A Fish McGuffin or whatever.’

‘Egg McMuffin.’

‘Sure!’

‘No. I mean it’s Egg McMuffin or Fillet-o-Fish. Not Fish McGuffin. I don’t want anything. Thanks, though.’

‘OK. Do you … I don’t know. Do you need some water? Want me to sing a song? Or should I shut up? What can I do to help you the most?’ He puts his hand on mine and the car swerves, so he takes it away and shouts, ‘Sorry, mate!’ out of the window.

I love my dad. There’s no one like him. He must have had a terrible time when Mum left, but I’m pretty sure he never showed so much as a glum face to me and Gus.

I think about Mum. I wish I had a phone like Ariel’s so I could look at photos of her. That would be cool, to be able to look at any picture I want any time. To swipe through them in that casual way.

I don’t remember Mum leaving. I just know that I haven’t seen her for ages.

When I realize where this clinic is, all my optimism is flushed down the toilet like the shit it is. Where else could it possibly be but round the back of Beachview? And what else could Dad possibly say but, ‘We’ve got half an hour or so. Shall we go in?’ And of course he goes off to the loo, leaving me to buy us both a Coke, and of course I walk into some angry man and then go in. I don’t want to, but I do it anyway. My legs take me there. Of course, of course, of course.

I can’t even get myself sectioned out of this.