27

I got up at half past six, had a shower, ate a big breakfast and left a note for Sasha:

Gone to school early. Coursework project. Remembered at midnight x

She’d be pleased with that: it was exactly the kind of thing that she wanted me to do. I used to be conscientious about my work and always do it as well as I could, right on time. Now I was more distracted than ever. I didn’t care what grades I got this summer as long as it was enough to get me into sixth form, and even then I couldn’t bring myself to be that worried about it because I was pretty sure the college would take me anyway, and Joe was more important. If it was a choice between getting the best possible grades and saving someone I cared for, with every atom of my being, from being trapped in an abyss outside of time and space I knew what I had to do.

I texted Izzy and told her I was going in early to do some work. She replied k, which meant she was annoyed, but I’d make it up to her at school.

We always walked there together. She had listened to me for the past few years and, now that I was coming through the grief, I was hearing more about her own stuff too. I loved it when she talked about her home, which was happy and normal, and made me feel warm inside.

Now I knew she felt I was shutting her out and she was hurt. I was going to have to give her something, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. I hit the same barrier every time I thought about confiding in someone. I couldn’t tell Izzy, I couldn’t tell Sasha, and I couldn’t tell Gus or Abby, or Ms Duke or Jasper, because none of them would believe me, and all of them would think I was crazy, and the people in Joe’s family would be horribly hurt.

An empty school is an eerie place. My shoes squeaked along the corridors and up the stairs, and then I was outside the geography rooms, where there were posters of volcanoes and oxbow lakes, and right at the end of the corridor … there he was. There was Joe. He had that blue thing around him right away because I’d looked at a picture of a river just before I saw him.

I ran to him, my arms outstretched. I ran through him, just for fun, and shivered at the sensation. ‘Oh my God!’ I said, laughing.

‘Well, hello, you,’ he said. ‘It worked.’

‘Look at us!’

We couldn’t stop smiling at each other. I didn’t think I’d ever been so pleased to see anyone.

‘What does this mean?’ I was trying to work it out. My phone pinged. I ignored it.

‘It means we’re amazing!’ said Joe. ‘That’s what it means.’

‘Right?’ I did a little dance. No one in 2019 was watching after all. Joe joined in. He grinned and attempted a cartwheel. It was shit, but that didn’t stop him doing another three. I could see him beginning to embrace his world.

‘And it might –’ He stopped abruptly, then started again. ‘It might mean that if we can be in the same place at the same time of day, and if it’s a place that exists in both our worlds, we can meet up and do things. Or it might not,’ he added quickly. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Let’s work out a time and place. See if we can do it. It would be the most …’ I had to stop speaking. It was too much. I checked my phone instead, then grinned and held it out.

‘Hey! Look!’

Ariel. Sorry for short notice AGAIN, but could you babysit for a couple of hours tomorrow, 4 to 6ish? My mum’s going into hospital and I really want to be with her. It would involve picking up the girls from after-school club, because I know you have school yourself so can’t be there at 3.20, and taking them home, just hanging out, and then Gus will be back at 6. I understand short notice & that you’re prob busy. Could’ve asked other babysitter, but girls insist on you!! Abby xxx

I closed my eyes for a second and did my breathing exercises. In for a count of five, hold for five, out for five. Cloud tops of Venus. It was the idea of someone’s mother being ill.

I calmed myself down.

‘Do it,’ Joe said. I wasn’t sure whether he’d noticed me panicking. ‘I mean, if you want to. I can manage without seeing you tomorrow. Plus, I’m seeing you twice today.’

I nodded and gathered myself to reply to Abby. Sorry to hear about your mum, I wrote. Hope she’s OK? Yes, that’s no prob.

You are amazing!! she replied. Mum’s fine. It’s a scan, nothing immediately worrying. So it’s Manor Park Primary and the after-school club is in the hall. The girls will be deeeee-lighted! xxx

I turned back to Joe, aware that people would start to arrive soon, and I had an idea. Of course it was fine to be holding one side of a conversation in a deserted corridor. I could be as animated as I wanted, as long as I changed one thing.

I fished my earphones out of a pocket, plugged them into my phone and put one into my ear. ‘Now I can say what I want without looking mad,’ I told him, pleased with myself.

He nodded. ‘Don’t you feel stupid, though? Talking on a mobile phone? I do when I use mine.’

‘Not at all. Everyone does it.’

He looked around. ‘I can’t believe we can meet somewhere else. This kind of opens things up?’

‘I saw a boy once,’ I said, remembering. ‘He was writing “help me” on the wall out in the playground. It wasn’t you. I don’t know why it wasn’t you. It should have been, don’t you think?’

‘What did he –’ Joe started, but then a boy came into focus. He walked up to Joe. I thought of blue and he was blue.

‘Talking to yourself?’ he said.

Joe sighed and pulled a face I hadn’t seen before – irritated, mean even. ‘Lucas,’ he said with a bit of a swagger – maybe this was what his human self had actually been like. ‘No, you twat. I was practising for the play.’

‘What play?’

‘It’s not a school thing. It’s for a drama course I got into. National Youth Theatre.’

I laughed at that. What a random lie, and how easily he’d told it.

Lucas laughed too, not believing him any more than I did. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Right. Sure it is. Shouldn’t you be parlaying en fransay today?’

‘If I knew how to say fuck off in French, mate, then believe me I would.’

Joe walked away, looking cocky and completely unlike the Joe I knew.

I walked with him.

‘Hey there, Mr Attitude,’ I said. I looked back at Lucas, who was clearly hurt. ‘National Youth Theatre? Congratulations. I hear that’s an incredibly difficult audition to pass.’ Joe gave me a side-eye and a half-smile. ‘So that’s Lucas,’ I said, still pretending I was talking into my phone. ‘I could totally see and hear him. You were pretty harsh.’

I remembered that I was going to try again to talk to Joe’s people, and spun round. ‘Lucas!’ I called. I waved my arms. ‘Hey, Lucas Ingleby? You OK?’

He couldn’t hear me. I turned back to Joe, who whispered, ‘How did he feel to you?’ I could see his anxiety. He was the Joe I knew again now. ‘My mind always comes back to him, and that must mean something. Maybe he …’

I interrupted. ‘You were much worse to him than he was to you. You f-bombed him. He was just mildly taking the piss.’

He looked surprised. ‘D’you think?’

We both jumped as a bell rang. It meant we had to go to registration. I was standing outside a geography room that was a tutor room in my time too, so lots of people were suddenly pushing past.

‘See you later,’ I said, and I reached out so my hand could float through his, and then set off down the corridor, alone, between the crowds of Joe’s people and mine, shivering as I went.

I tried to concentrate all day, but I’d stopped caring. I cared about Joe, who was dead, but no one knew why. Joe, who was going to visit Mum and Sasha again today. I cared about my nephew and my sister, and Zara and Coco, and Izzy. I had no space left for quadratic equations after all that. I was going to get some GCSEs, but, more importantly, I was going to work out what had happened to Joe Simpson and free him from this glitch. I was hoping quite hard that I had it in me to do both those things at once.

Izzy, though, was pissed off all day. She barely spoke to me.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered when we were in tutor.

‘What for?’ she said tightly. ‘You haven’t done anything.’

‘Exactly. What’s up?’

She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter. There was something I was going to talk to you about this morning, but you weren’t there. And you always run off after school. Are we even friends any more?’

‘Oh, Izzy!’ I felt terrible. ‘Of course we are! I love you. Let’s do something at the weekend.’ An idea was forming in my mind. ‘In fact, why don’t we go to London, like you said?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Later I found Sasha watching Netflix from under a duvet, with a McDonald’s milkshake next to her. She looked exhausted, and I felt bad for being out after school every single day. Sasha never questioned it because she thought I was studying.

‘Hey.’ I climbed under the duvet with her, and she took my hand and placed it on the baby.

‘You OK?’ she said.

‘Yep.’

‘How’s revision?’

I sighed. ‘Boring.’ Boring and sketchy. ‘You know what it’s like. I’ll just have to hope I’m doing enough.’

‘You are. I have faith.’ She sighed. ‘Do you think we should move house? I’ve been wondering.’

I looked at the telly. Sure enough, she was watching Selling Sunset. People were looking round a huge mansion with a pool, in the Hollywood Hills.

‘We can’t move to that house,’ I said.

‘Yeah. But you know. A house. Smaller. One that’s not Dad’s.’

‘We can’t,’ I said. This was Mum’s home, and since I’d been seeing Joe I wondered whether she could still be here, walking round us every day, watching us, checking on us. She might be. She might be waiting for the baby, like Lara on the train.

‘Yeah,’ said Sasha. ‘It’s still Mum’s house.’

I nodded. We were silent for what felt like a long time.

‘I’m babysitting tomorrow,’ I said, remembering. ‘After school, up to six.’

‘Ariel,’ Sasha said, leaning back and frowning. ‘That’s when you study. Can’t you just do evenings? If you have to do it at all.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sorry. But it’s only two hours. How about this: I won’t take any more daytime ones.’

‘OK. Do tomorrow, then stop. We just need to get through this summer. You pass your exams –’

‘And you have a baby.’

She stroked her bump and I noticed again how tired she looked. I wondered, all of a sudden, where her friends were. Sasha had always had a crowd of people around her. Now she was always on her own, at work at the cafe, or collapsed at home.

I knew where they were really: they were at university, almost all of them, and the ones who weren’t had still moved away to do apprenticeships and things. Sasha was the only one of her noisy, laughing gang who was still around.

‘You look exhausted,’ I said. ‘Let me run you a bath. And while you’re in it I’ll cook a chilli, and nip out for chocolate.’

Sasha nodded. ‘Now you mention it,’ she said, ‘those would be the best things in the world.’