20

I wake up, knowing everything. I write it down and make a plan.

Action.

‘I feel sick!’ I run past Dad, into the bathroom, and lock the door. I push my fingers down my throat to make myself vomit, but it doesn’t work. How do people do that? It makes me shudder. I push my fingers as far back as I possibly can, but I don’t seem to have a gag reflex. There’s just nothing.

I fill the jug that lives on the side of the bath (a hangover, I think, from when Mum used it for some complicated bath-hair manoeuvre) and tip it into the loo. It sounds close enough, and I yell, ‘Oh yuck!’ loudly, just to make sure. Then I start brushing my teeth and open the bathroom door with the toothbrush in my hand and a foamy mouth.

Dad looks so worried. He’s been totally taken in.

‘Joe!’ he says. ‘Oh, you poor boy. Were you ill in the night?’

I open my mouth to say no, but change my mind at the last second.

‘Yeah.’ I give a brave nod. ‘I tried to keep it quiet. I didn’t want to wake anyone.’

‘Bullshit.’ That’s Gus.

‘Language!’ says Dad.

‘Sorry,’ says Gus. ‘I mean: bums to all that. You love waking people. I bet you tried really hard to get us up so we could all fuss over you. Precious little Jojo not feeling very well.’

I shrug. I can see that Gus knows I’m faking, but I also know he won’t come out and say it. Dad makes me go back to bed, and puts a hand on my forehead, and fetches a glass of water, which I sip bravely.

‘I’ll call school. You stay here.’ He slaps his forehead like Homer Simpson. ‘D’oh! The French exchange. You can’t go with a vomiting bug. Enzo can come here when it’s his turn. I’ll sort it out. You just rest. Leave it to your old dad. I’ll give Mrs Dupont a call.’

‘I bet you will,’ says Gus from the doorway. I snigger, although I hate the idea of Dad fancying Mrs Dupont. It’s all wrong. I wonder, sometimes, whether Mum has a boyfriend in India. The idea makes me feel sick, so I guess my faking gets a lot better.

‘Shall I stay home with you?’ Poor Dad. My strategy is just to stay where I am and see what happens at four. We’ve agreed that if I don’t turn up for two days in a row Ariel will go and look for me in 2019. Imagine if she found me.

Just imagine that. Imagine if I was out there after all, living. Being thirty-five.

I look at Gus, who is acting cocky, letting me know he knows what I’m up to while he tells Dad he should definitely go to work. You’re going to have a partner called Abby, I tell my brother, in my head. And two daughters called Zara and Coco. Cool names.

If I stay in bed today and don’t even try to go to Beachview, then I will – surely, surely, surely – change the course of my life. I’ll stay alive. I’ll meet Gus’s girls and be a regular uncle.

I climb back into bed, and allow Dad to gather up my clothes and books and pile them on the chair. He picks up my maths book and looks at its cover.

‘Don’t read that!’ I yell, throwing myself out of bed and rugby-tackling him. He sits down suddenly as I pull his legs out from under him, and looks confused as he rubs his bum.

‘Ouch!’ he says. The book is still in his hand. I rip off its cover and tear it into pieces and eat them. It’s easy to swallow. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Eating the cover of a maths book actually feels exactly the same as eating a school dinner or a piece of toast or a Crunchie or a bag of chips.

Nothing tastes of anything.

‘What was that?’ Dad says. ‘Joseph! You didn’t just eat a piece of paper. Did you?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It was a magic trick. Sleight of hand.’

He looks unconvinced. Unfortunately he knows about magic tricks and sleight of hand, and he clearly knows that wasn’t anything of the sort.

‘What was it?’ he says. ‘Creative writing? I really didn’t mean to pry.’

In fact, it said:

ARIEL IS GOING TO BABYSIT GUS’S DAUGHTERS TONIGHT. 1. Give Troy back his trophy. 2. FAKE ILLNESS. Try to stay off school all day b/c if I don’t leave the house I can’t die.

I really needed Dad not to read that.

‘Yeah. Creative writing. It was personal. Sorry to throw you on the ground.’

I get back into bed and try to look sickly and weak. It feels less convincing this time.

‘That’s OK,’ says Dad, rubbing his bum again. ‘I wouldn’t have looked if I’d realized.’ He pauses and it’s full of meaning. ‘You don’t really think you’re going to die if you leave the house, do you?’

‘Creative writing!’

‘I’m starting to worry, Joe.’

‘I’m fine.’

He fetches another glass of water, even though I haven’t drunk the first one. I get comfy in bed, ready to wait it out. If I don’t get up I can’t die. I will not go anywhere or answer the door to anyone. I’ll just stay exactly where I am and when I wake up tomorrow it might be a new day.

Every time I go to school, no matter what I do, I end up at Beachview. If I don’t leave the house, then I won’t. It feels like a logical, achievable thing.

‘You can go to work,’ I tell Dad imperiously from my fake sickbed.

I hear Gus bundling him out of the door, even though he’s saying things like, ‘But if there’s norovirus in the house … and I need to look after Joe …’

I know there isn’t norovirus in the house, and Gus does too, and Dad does as well really. I hear the door slam, in the end, and then Gus’s footsteps on the stairs.

‘Why are you faking it?’ he says, standing in the doorway of my room.

‘I’m not faking.’

‘Joseph.’

‘I don’t feel well. So I don’t want to go on the trip. Imagine being seasick and real sick at the same time.’

‘Bullshit. Actual reason?’

I sigh. I can’t think of a single thing that will work. I need to avoid saying anything that might get me taken to the emergency doctor at Beachview.

‘I just feel a bit depressed,’ I tell him, which is true enough. ‘I want a day lying in bed. Or on the sofa. I just want to watch telly all day. I …’ I hesitate. Could this work? ‘I miss Mum. Do you think she’d have made me go to school?’

‘Yeah. You wouldn’t have fooled her for a second. You fooled Dad because he never lies to anyone, and the kids he looks after are too little to be good at being sneaky, so that kind of thing isn’t on his radar. He’s an innocent. Seriously, though – you’re staying home because you miss Mum? What are you, three?’

I nod to both questions. Yes, I miss Mum. Yes, I’m three. If today doesn’t work I could grab my passport and go and find her. India would be far enough from Beachview, surely?

All I’ll need is hundreds of pounds for the plane ticket, and enough money to get to the airport, and probably a visa (none of which I have). My mind is leaping all over the place. Should I bolt and catch a train? Could I get myself far enough away to be out of danger at four o’clock? I don’t care what happens after five fifteen.

I’ll try that if this doesn’t work.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ says Gus, and I drag my duvet downstairs, and we sit side by side and watch daytime TV and eat all the food, even though I’d clearly be just as happy eating a notebook. When Gus is upstairs, I smash my plate against the wall and swallow a shard of it. It goes down fine and tastes exactly as good as the toast did. I eat the whole thing to avoid having to explain it to Gus.

Is this real? What is this version of Gus? The Gus in Ariel’s world wouldn’t remember today. Would he?

We talk about nothing in particular, and I hang on to the fact that this might work, because if I don’t believe that I’ll fall apart. I’m fifteen. This is not the last day of my life.

Gus rustles up some toasted sandwiches for lunch at two and I make an effort to eat the sandwich and not the plate. Channel Four are showing The Producers. It’s funny: if I see Ariel again I’ll ask if she’s ever watched it. Three o’clock comes. At three fifteen Gus says he’s going to the shop. Dad will be home at twenty past five and at that point I’ll have done it. The rest of my life will unfurl in front of me.

At ten to four there’s a knock at the door. I ignore it, but it carries on. In the end I go and look through the peephole.

It’s Troy.

I guess school ended twenty minutes ago. I have not given Troy a thought since early this morning, but now I can give him his trophy and cross that off my to-do list at last.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘So you’re sick? Not coming to France?’

I try to look really, really, really ill.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Better keep away from me. I’ve been throwing up all day. Seriously.’

He’s already in the living room. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is a lot of chocolate wrappers for someone who’s been sick all day.’

‘Gus stayed home,’ I say. ‘He ate all the snacks in the house so now he’s gone to the shops. He skipped his classes.’

I pick our wrappers and empties up and take them to the kitchen. Troy follows. With my back to him, I eat a Club biscuit wrapper. It’s almost nice. I pour him a glass of juice and get myself water, for authenticity.

‘I do feel a bit better now,’ I say, sipping the water and trying to look tragic and brave. It occurs to me that I could bite into the glass too, but that would give me a one-way ticket to Beachview, so I don’t. ‘But not enough to go on the trip. I mean, my dad’ll never let me, not when I’ve been throwing up.’

‘Oh, man! What am I meant to do without you?’

That hits me right in the chest. What is Troy meant to do without me? ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Sorry, man.’

He’s going to have to live without me forever.

‘Have you seen my football trophy?’ he says. ‘I can’t have lost it. The moment I win something …’

‘Yes,’ I say, and then the phone rings. I let the answerphone get it, and Gus’s voice blasts into the room.

‘Joe! Joe, I know you’re there. Pick up! Pick up right now!’

I do it because of his tone of voice.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I need you. Come and meet me. Emergency.’

‘What kind of emergency?’ I’m already hopping, pulling on one shoe, hoping that my pyjama bottoms will look like crap trousers. ‘And where?’

‘I got hit by a car,’ he says. ‘I’m fine. I mean, I’m alive clearly. But I need you to come and help. They brought me in here, but now they won’t let me leave unless someone picks me up and Dad’s phone’s off.’

‘Where are you?’

I know, though. Of course I do.

‘Beachview.’

The walls close in. The ceiling comes down. Whatever I do, I’m going to end up there. I can’t escape. I have no agency at all. Every road leads to the same place.

At four I’m back at Beachview. I try to go to the emergency doctor’s to pick Gus up to take him home in a taxi, but my legs walk me into an angry man, and then into the cupboard where Ariel is waiting.