28 
VIOLET
I look at Thorn, and see my own shock, my own devastation reflected back at me in his face. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Katie wasn’t supposed to die. Somebody begins to scream, somebody begins to weep, somebody begins to shake my body over and over. I spin my head, confused, before realizing it’s me. I’m screaming and weeping and shaking. But my skin has thickened and I can’t feel the elements on my face or the convulsions pushing through me. I don’t own the screams bouncing back at me from the paving slabs. It’s like I no longer exist in this world.
The only thing that reaches me in my cocoon of shock is the monotonous drone of the flatline, echoing in some faraway land.
Thorn’s gun clatters on to the pavement beside me. Ash must have been holding me, because I notice when he moves to retrieve it.
I hear Thorn’s words as though they’re moving through something heavy and cold, a sheet of snow perhaps. No, not snow. Ice. ‘Ruth, my sweet Ruth,’ he murmurs. ‘What have I done?’
I want to grab that gun off Ash. I want to grab that hateful gun and shoot Thorn in his hateful face. But it’s like I’m trapped beneath that slab of ice, held tight in the freezing waters. Numb and statue-like, just watching the ghostly figures as they move above me.
Ash replies. ‘Her name isn’t Ruth. It’s Katie.’ The heat of his breath against my ear makes me notice a warmth gathering across my back, a reassuring pressure and the continuous thrum of two hearts. Ash and Nate are leaning into me, their arms wrapping around my sides and on to Katie, encasing us in something safe and protective. My skin thins and I begin to feel again, the drone fades in my ears, and I’m aware that I’m still sobbing, still shaking, tears and snot dripping from my chin.
My fingers hover over her face, and I wonder if they’re too afraid to touch her, afraid she may shatter from the softest of impacts. But suddenly, they move on their own accord, sweeping her hair from her face and gently pushing her lids closed. She doesn’t shatter. She doesn’t do anything.
Why did Katie move? Why did she sacrifice herself? Was the message meant for her all along? I want answers, desperately want to understand, but my brain simply won’t work.
‘I will help you bury her,’ Thorn says. ‘And then I will accept my sentence.’
And because I don’t care what happens to Thorn now, because I don’t care about anything except the fact Katie is dead, I find myself just replying with a simple, ‘OK.’
We bury Katie in the graveyard. A small patch of grass behind the church, overgrown and neglected. The repetitive chug of shovels against earth, the pain in my back and the sweat running down my face, are strangely soothing. With every shovel full of soil, I glance at the church and make a plea or a pact of some description: Please let me wake up and Katie still be alive. If she’s in a coma, I will come back for her, I promise. Please take me instead of her. Please.
The church doesn’t reply. God doesn’t reply. We lower her into the ground; she lies in the trench like a broken doll. I reach down, crossing her arms over her chest and arranging thistles around her head so she looks like a sleeping queen from a fairy tale. Then, gently, I release a handful of dirt over her body. A few specks of soil land on her cheeks, adding to her freckles. I expect her to open her eyes, to tell me I’m a cunkwumble and laugh her lovely laugh.
But she doesn’t.
I head into the church alone, leaving the others to finish the job. I wish I could stay and give Katie the beautiful ceremony she deserves, but it feels like my body is about to fold in on itself and just stop. I sit in the church at a random desk, and just stare at the stone walls.
I barely notice Daisy appearing before me. She kneels on the ground and looks into my face with her perfect, chestnut eyes. ‘I am so sorry, Violet.’
I think I nod.
‘Look after Ash,’ she says.
And then I guess I must apologize, because she laughs a sad little laugh, tells me it’s OK, and walks out of the church.
ALICE
Katie’s parents lean over her body, so still they could be made from stone. Her mum sees me and begins to cry. It kills me how much like Katie she looks, same red hair, same green eyes. She pulls me into an awkward hug, her face knocking against mine. ‘Thanks so much for coming, love. It would mean so much to our little girl.’ Her voice collapses and she falls back on to her daughter.
All of the tubes and drips have been removed so that Katie looks like she’s asleep. But her chest isn’t rising, her eyelashes aren’t flickering. Her dainty, freckled face looks slack. But it’s her hands which really get me. Katie’s hands are never still, they’re always drumming, tapping on invisible cello strings only she can hear. I can’t help myself. I reach out and take a hand in my own.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ I whisper. How can someone so warm feel so cold?
Did I kill her? Did something I wrote result in her death?
My knees buckle at this thought, and Danny seems to appear from nowhere, placing an arm around my waist and holding me upright.
‘I’ve got you,’ he says, pulling my head on to his shoulder.
‘Katie today, Nate tomorrow,’ I whisper into his neck. ‘Everyone I love is dying.’
Danny helps me up the path and unlocks my front door. It’s still really early, and nobody’s up, so he calls up to my parents.
‘Mr and Mrs Childs. It’s Danny, I’ve got Alice with me . . . something terrible has happened.’
My parents stumble downstairs, blurred with sleep.
I fall on to my mum, weeping.
She holds me close and stokes my hair. ‘Alice, whatever’s happened?’
I can’t answer.
‘It’s Katie,’ Danny says. ‘She died last night.’
Mum tightens her grip on me. Then Dad joins in. They’re both squeezing me so tight I can barely breathe. ‘Oh Alice, I’m so sorry,’ Mum whispers.
Dad is crying too, I can hear it in his voice. ‘Her poor parents.’
I lie on the sofa with my head on Mum’s lap like I’m three and Dad fetches us all a cup of tea. Nobody drinks it. Danny sits beside me and Mum, and I think he’s stroking my hair too. Nobody speaks, there’s no sound except for me, weeping and weeping until, eventually, I can’t cry any more and the sun has lit up the sky.
The clock strikes seven. Katie died last night. Nate dies today. The grief gathers into a hard, little stone in my chest. I need to find Timothy, and I need to make him stop. I need to make him pay. I look at Danny. He has bags under his eyes, which turn his skin a bluish-purple colour, and his hair looks even messier than usual. ‘We need to go,’ I tell him.
Mum looks a little alarmed. ‘Surely you should stay at home today. You’ve had such a shock.’
But I’m already beginning to stand, my legs weak and my body sore, that little stone knocking against my ribs. ‘I need to find Timothy. I need to go to his office.’
Danny nods. ‘I’ll drive.’
‘No,’ I reply. ‘It’s too central, it’ll be easier to take the tube.’
I hadn’t realized Dad was standing in the doorway, mug of cold tea still clasped in his hands. ‘Alice, we can take you to the hospital if you feel you need to do something. But visiting your editor, catching the tube . . . your mum’s right, you’re in shock.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, walking towards the door, grabbing my handbag en route. ‘I just need to find Timothy.’ Obviously, I’m not fine, one of my best friends died yesterday. And she died doing the exact thing I should have been doing . . . helping Violet, saving Nate. But that stone clanking in my chest reminds me that I need to stay strong. I won’t lose anyone else because of that bloody man.
‘Well, we’ll come too,’ Mum says, dashing after me. Dad follows, and it hits me that they’re actually going to leave the house without styling their hair and brushing their teeth.
This makes me smile, but I still shake my head. ‘It’s OK. Danny will come.’
And I realize he’s already beside me.
Timothy’s secretary scowls when she sees me. The bitch never liked me. She never likes anyone.
‘Alice,’ she says. ‘Timothy isn’t expecting you today.’
‘I know. But I need to see him, it’s urgent.’
She looks at her computer screen, and then back at me, and then back at her screen. ‘Have you heard from him this week?’ she finally says.
‘Not since Comic-Con.’
‘I was so sorry to hear about your friends, Alice. I heard it on the news.’ There’s no feeling in her words – the sentiment is empty. It’s the verbal equivalent of a ‘thoughts and prayers’ post online.
I ignore her. How do I tell her one of them died? How do I say it without dropping my little stone and allowing the grief to take control. ‘Can I see Timothy?’ I ask, simply.
‘He hasn’t been into the office. He emailed to say he was taking a week off to manage a personal crisis.’
Anger flares inside me. Personal crisis. He’s holed up in his flat destroying Violet and Nate’s chances of coming home. I take a deep breath and try to stop my voice from quaking. ‘Have you been able to ring him?’
She shakes her head. ‘I tried a couple of times, but he hasn’t picked up. I’ll ring him now, leave a message saying you’re looking for him.’
‘Thanks,’ I mutter. I run out of the office, Danny close behind.
‘Now what?’ he asks.
‘We go back to his flat and kick the bloody door in.’
By the time we’ve made it across London, it’s well past 10 a.m. Panic is building inside me and I feel ready to blow. And this is so not the time for my crazy stalker to text me, so when my phone buzzes and I see the same unknown number, I’m unable to stop myself screaming, ‘Not now, you nasty, stalking arse!’
‘Jesus, Alice. It’s not your stalker again?’
I nod. ‘I can’t cope with this right now.’
Very gently, Danny takes the phone from my fingers. He opens the message and I watch his expression darken. ‘You better read it.’
They’re my Fandom. Back off, bitch.
Yours, The Fanboy.
Fanboy is the stalker. Timothy is Fanboy. ‘Holy shit,’ I say, fury coursing through my veins. ‘It was Timothy. He wrote on my mirror and sent me that knife. That sick bastard.’ He must have read about the wound on Violet’s arm in the papers and decided to spook me. But why? Was he really that pissed I refused to write the third book? And how did he know it was me who cut Violet’s arm?
Danny lays a hand on my phone, as though he can protect me from the message on the screen. ‘I’m ringing the police.’
But I’m out the car in a flash, running towards Timothy’s building, my heels clacking against the concrete. I try the buzzer again. Nothing. I take my phone out of my pocket and try ringing him again. No reply.
‘Al, we need to ring the police,’ Danny says, catching me up.
I’m all out of ideas when a man with a briefcase pushes through the door, probably leaving to go to work. Instinct, politeness, God knows what it is, but he holds the door for us. And as easy as that, we’re in the building.
I take the stairs two at a time. We reach Timothy’s flat and I ring the bell. It trills out in the stairwell. No reply. ‘Timothy,’ I call out. ‘Timothy, it’s Alice. I need to talk to you. It’s really important.’ I try to cap the anger in my voice. He’s much more likely to answer the door if he doesn’t think he’s going to get an ear bashing.
But he doesn’t appear, in spite of my logic.
I open his letter box and peer through it. This weird smell hits me. It briefly reminds me of the Imp city, a smell of decaying flesh and shit. My stomach clenches.
‘Timothy,’ I call through the letter box. I look at Danny. ‘Seriously, get a whiff of that.’
‘I can smell it from here,’ he says. ‘Smells like something died in there.’ He rattles the door handle.
One good thing about being a writer – I know people. Timothy keeps a spare just where I would expect him to, tucked on the top of the light outside his door. Not as obvious as a doormat or a pot, but easily accessible. I stick it into the keyhole with unnecessary force, and one key-turn later, we’re stepping into the hall.