29

‘Where are you going?’ Izzy was standing in front of me, blocking my path on what was, in fact, the one day I wasn’t going to Beachview. So I had a good answer.

‘I’m going to pick some kids up from primary school and babysit them.’

She gave me a sceptical look. ‘You? Seriously?’

‘Seriously. The girls I looked after the other night. Come with me. You’ll see.’

She didn’t look convinced, but started walking with me anyway.

‘Look, Ariel,’ she said. ‘OK, I wasn’t expecting you to be looking after kids, and I know you said we can go to London on Saturday, but none of that stops me worrying about you. I’ve been wanting to chat outside school for ages. You always run away. We never hang out any more. And you won’t tell me where you go. You just manage not to answer every single day. Don’t hate me, but I texted Sasha. Because I’m worried about what you’re doing.’

Izzy was looking at me with her big brown eyes, nervous but resolute. Her hair was blowing across her face in the wind.

I froze.

‘What?’

‘Don’t hate me.’

‘What?’ All my words had gone. This was a total ambush.

She turned away. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I knew you’d be like this, but I have to do it. It’s only because I know you’re vulnerable. And I’m sure you’re meeting someone. You’re acting weirdly. And in the past, no matter what was going on, you’ve always talked to me about it. What’s so bad that you can’t tell me? It must be something really serious.’

I put a hand on her arm. ‘Izzy, stop! You texted Sasha? When? What did you say?’

‘What do you think, Ariel?’ She was almost shouting. Izzy never raised her voice. ‘Actually we haven’t spoken yet but we’re arranging to. I’m going to say that you run off into town every single day after school, and that I know that you pretend to her that you’re working in the library, but you’re not. I’m going to tell her that I’m absolutely sure you’re meeting someone. Some guy. And keeping it secret. I know you better than you think, and something’s up. What’s happening? What have you got yourself into?’

‘Please don’t tell Sasha,’ I said. ‘Have you already said that?’

Izzy pulled away. ‘No. Like I said, I texted. I asked if we could talk because I was worried about you. She said she’s working until six and she’ll call me then. I’m actually going to be busy, but I’ll take some time out to talk to her and you can’t stop me. I’m doing this for you, Ariel, even if you can’t see it.’

I screwed my eyes up and pictured this from Izzy’s point of view. I knew she was looking out for me. It wasn’t her fault. This had spiralled because I hadn’t been able to tell her I was hanging out with a ghost. That he’d been arsing around in the history room and making me laugh, right in front of her. That he had done some gardening for my mum and taken eleven photos. It was so mad.

‘Can you come with me to pick up the girls?’ I said. ‘Now?’

‘Not really. I do actually have other things to do, like I said.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Meeting someone.’

‘Who?’

She looked down. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you for ages, but you’re never there. Don’t worry. We can do that another time.’ She looked at her phone. ‘My thing’s at five. So I guess I could walk with you for a bit.’

‘What’s your thing?’

Izzy sighed. ‘Look, my stuff is much less consequential. I don’t mean that in a passive-aggressive way. Your life went to shit over the past few years. Mine’s fine. Seriously, don’t worry. And do let me worry about you. I actually think you’re being groomed by some older man and that, after everything you’ve been through, you’re incredibly vulnerable to that kind of thing. I remember how quickly you fell for that boy who gave you the wrong number. Are you honestly telling me it’s nothing like that?’

‘Nothing like that at all. Tell me about you.’

‘Tomorrow.’

I gave her a hard look. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s rubbish being shut out. OK. Can you come to Manor Park School? Izzy, I’m sorry. Let me tell you because it’s really not what you think.’

‘Really tell me?’ she said. ‘Now? The truth?’

‘Right now.’

‘Go on then.’

I took off my blazer, stuffed it into my bag and put a hoodie on instead.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Promise you won’t think I’m mad. I mean, think what you like, but promise you won’t hate me for being mad.’

I wasn’t looking at her but I knew she was smiling.

‘I promise I won’t hate you,’ she said, taking my hand, and I risked a glance at her and then stopped for a hug. Her hugs were small, but surprisingly powerful.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m not meeting anyone. Seriously. Not anyone real. I go to that little room at Beachview on my own. I’ve been going there after school for ages and just sitting and talking to Mum in my head. It’s really calming. Almost like meditating.’

She took my hand again and squeezed it. ‘Oh, sweetie,’ she said. ‘But what about –’

I nodded. ‘And then I discovered that something happened in there once. In that very room. There was a boy of about our age. Joe Simpson. A different Joe from the one who ghosted me,’ I added quickly. ‘Obviously. He was last seen there twenty years ago. And then he vanished. No one ever saw him again. I’ve become … well, I guess I’ve become obsessed. I’m desperate to work out what happened to him. I have to. I hate it that it’s an unsolved mystery. I work on it every afternoon.’

‘Right.’ Izzy took a deep breath. ‘Have I got this right? The boy you go to meet every day is the memory of a missing boy from twenty years ago?’ She smiled a bit. ‘Can we just clarify – not an older man who’s getting you to send him nudes.’ She paused. ‘Not someone who’s saying he’s the real Joe Simpson, all these years later, for example?’

‘Oh God, Izzy! Definitely not that. Nothing like that at all. I have to find out what happened to Joe Simpson. I just have to. It’s because of Mum. There’s no mystery about what happened to her. She got sick and she died, and I was there through it all. It was no one’s fault. Not that part. With Mum, it’s straightforward. She died and we scattered her ashes. And that makes me feel so terrible for Joe’s family because twenty years later they don’t know what happened. Whether he ran away or committed suicide, but I don’t think he did either of those things.’

We were getting close to Manor Park Primary. I slowed my pace.

‘You don’t know,’ she said. ‘You really don’t, Ariel. Mental-health issues in boys are complicated, and back then there’d have been less awareness.’

‘I know,’ I said as we approached the gates. ‘But I don’t think that’s what it was. Look, I’ll tell you more later. I need to get the girls. I guess you have to leave now?’

She checked the time again. ‘Four ten? I’ve got a bit longer. Where do they live?’

‘By the cricket pitch.’

‘Perfect. That’s on my way. I’ll walk with you and them, if that’s OK. And I’ll tell you my stuff on Saturday, if we’re still going for our day trip?’

She looked at me, expectant.

‘Of course we are!’ I said. ‘But if you’re going to meet them you probably need to know one more thing. This is kind of what got me into this babysitting business in the first place.’

She looked at me, a question on her face.

‘Ms Duke is married to Joe Simpson’s dad. And these two girls are Joe’s brother’s children. They’d be his nieces.’

I walked fast up to the school so she couldn’t say anything.

The girls were happy to see me, and Zara wasn’t shy any more. She warmed slowly to Izzy, while Coco danced around her and talked her through her school day in meticulous detail.

‘And then we went outside,’ she said. ‘And there was a game of It, but I didn’t want to play, so we got a football and we played football instead, but …’ It went on and on.

‘I’m happy that you’re here,’ said Zara as we dropped behind Coco and Izzy. ‘We told Mummy we wanted you.’

I grinned at her. ‘Thank you!’

We talked about school and about the differences between her school and mine. Zara’s best part of school was reading and writing, and I told her that I liked that too, but that history was my favourite, and we talked about how nice it was to be allowed to give up subjects you didn’t enjoy and then, before we knew it, we were at their house, and Izzy was leaving for her mysterious appointment. She gave me a look. I gave her one right back.

‘Come in, Izzy!’ shouted Coco. She stamped her foot. ‘Come in!’

‘Literally can’t,’ she said, holding up her hands. ‘Your parents only asked Ariel. I can’t come into your house as a stranger when they don’t know me and you kids are here. Basic safeguarding, Coco. Tell you what, get them to invite me next time and I’ll totally come in then, OK? Also, I have to be somewhere at five so I need to dash.’

She left, half running, and I went into the house and settled down to watch TV with the girls because after a long day of school that was all any of us wanted. I made a jug of squash, thinking of the squash Mum had given Joe today, and handed out biscuits, and found that I quite liked being in charge. I’d always been the youngest and I still often felt as if I was about Zara’s age.

I watched Zara watching telly and laughing, and overlaid her with Joe. I knew that, right now, he was at Beachview on his own and I hoped he was all right, though I knew that, in spite of the joyous pissing around he’d done today, nobody could be less all right than Joe. I sometimes had a bleak vision of him, two hundred years into the future, sitting there every day. Forget the flames: waiting for eternity in a Devon shopping centre, long after everyone you knew was dead, was surely hell.

When the episode finished, we had a game of hide-and-seek, which was raucously entertaining for about half an hour before it ended scarily when we really couldn’t find Coco. For ten horrible minutes I hyperventilated at the idea that I was going to have to tell Joe’s family that another child had gone missing. She turned up, curled in a ball, in a laundry basket under a towel.

‘I won! I won!’ She laughed as she jumped up. ‘You lost and I won!’

I was so relieved I was almost crying.

‘That was next-level hiding, Coco,’ I said. ‘Are you always this good?’

‘It’s easy for her,’ Zara said. ‘She’s small. She can squeeze in anywhere.’

‘Yes, I AM always so good,’ said Coco, and I looked at the clock. It was quarter to six. Joe would be gone now, and, in this world, Gus was about to come home.

‘We need to calm down a bit,’ I said, and I managed not to be persuaded to have one more game. ‘Does anyone need to do anything for school? Any reading?’

‘You read me a book!’ shouted Coco, pointing at me.

Zara turned her liquid eyes on me and she was entirely Joe. ‘I could read to you from my reading book?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘How about we do that, and then, Coco, I’ll read a story to you, if you find one you’d like?’

I felt like the number-one top babysitter in the entire world. I was brilliant at this. I was going to be an awesome aunt. I realized that nothing had made me feel confident for a long time.

Zara and I sat on the sofa and she read me a chapter of a fairy-tale book, but we diverted into talking about why a princess might need rescuing, which led us to the patriarchy. Then Coco arrived with a picture book about a mum turning into a monster when the children were crap at tidying up, and that gave me a vivid flash of grief, just when I wasn’t expecting it.

I was blinking back tears, and hoping the girls wouldn’t notice, when Gus walked in. He was wearing a suit and looking flustered, but I saw him making an effort to be polite and friendly to me. He didn’t look very much like Joe today; he was sandy-haired where Joe was darker, and his face was different. All those genes had gone right through him to his eldest daughter.

‘Ariel,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been a lifesaver. And I know you’ve got exams coming up, so thank you even more for making time for this.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ I said. ‘Really. The girls have been great.’

‘Ariel is going to be our babysitter now,’ said Coco. ‘She’s nicer than Jane. Me and Zara think so. We want Ariel all the time.’

Gus laughed. ‘Luckily you’re the queens of the world, so you get to make all the decisions. Ariel’s a bit busy, darling.’

I remembered what I’d promised Sasha. ‘I’ve got exams soon, so I will be a bit busy, but I can always do evening babysitting and bring my schoolwork with me.’

‘See,’ said Gus. ‘Ariel’s sensible and she gets on with her homework.’

‘Not always, but I do need to concentrate now. My exams finish in the middle of June. And after that I’ll be totally up for hanging out with you two. Though my sister’s baby’s due at the start of July, so I might be a bit tied up around then.’

I saw a look cross Gus’s face and recognized the feeling that had hit me when I read the book about the mum. Sibling things must be complicated for him. I felt it stabbing me through the stomach. Gus’s brother had gone out as normal and never came back. I imagined Sasha doing that.

‘I can’t wait to meet your sister’s baby,’ said Zara, and I was so happy I wanted to hug her.

‘That would be great, wouldn’t it?’ I said. ‘I’d love that too. You can come to our house, if you like.’

‘I do like.’

Gus went upstairs to change out of his suit and came back down in a T-shirt and the sort of shorts people’s dads wear. As he walked over to us, Coco scrambled to lie on the sofa and pretended to be asleep, pulling a blanket over herself.

‘Wake up!’ Gus said. ‘Wake up, Coco.’ He did a theatrical walk towards her. This was obviously something they did.

‘Can’t,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘I’m a zombie.’

‘I am a zombie,’ said Gus in a monotone. ‘I will eat your brains.’

‘You used a robot voice to be a zombie!’ said Zara. ‘You’re silly!’

Coco leaped up and put her arms out like a zombie. ‘You are silly,’ she said in a robot voice. ‘I will eat your silly brain.’

Gus looked at me. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a game called robot zombies. It goes years back.’

I was standing on the doorstep, saying goodbye, before I got a chance to blurt something out to Gus.

‘Zara told me about your brother,’ I said, and I saw the jolt of surprise. I thought of Joe singing the Teletubbies theme song in my history class today, then pushed the memory away. ‘I’m really sorry. My mum died last year and I know how …’ I couldn’t say any more because a tide of sobs was trying to come up instead of words. I was supposed to be talking about Joe, not my own feelings. But it wasn’t something you could compartmentalize.

Gus reached out, but his hand hovered above my shoulder before he retracted it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Zara said, but she’s become … interested in Joe lately. My brother. I suppose it’s a fascinating thing: the uncle you never met, who you’ll never get to meet. That whole robot zombies game back there? That’s based on the last conversation I can remember having with him. Zara asked me and I told her, and she absolutely seized on it. Why not, you know? It’s nice to see him in her.’ He sighed. ‘But yeah, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that he probably died years ago, but we’ve never had any certainty over it. It’s hellish. I’m so sorry to hear about your mother too. These things are awful.’

I wanted so much to tell him everything, but I couldn’t.

‘Same,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry about Joe, I mean. I can’t even imagine. He just vanished?’

Gus nodded. ‘I can only think that either he had some kind of accident without witnesses, or he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was killed and his body hidden. Both of them are unthinkably awful and we’ve never had the first clue about any of it, though I used to think one of his friends knew something he wasn’t saying.’

This brought me up short. I bit back the word Lucas just before I said it. He had to mean him, though.

‘Seriously?’ I said instead. ‘How come? Who?’

Gus ignored that. ‘But then you end up suspecting everyone. And, in turn, people automatically, and forever, suspect the family, which is grim as hell.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Ariel. You’ve lost your mum. I’m not trying to trump that. It’s just interesting that Zara spoke to you about Joe. She usually takes longer to warm to people, but she’s really taken to you.’

‘I hope that one day you find out what happened to him.’

‘Thanks. Me too. Abby wants to get married, but I just can’t have a wedding without my brother. Other family weddings have had this gaping hole in them, where he should have been. My parents aren’t in the best of health and it would be nice if they knew what happened to him before they died, but we know that it’s unlikely now.’ He looked bleak.

‘Do your parents live locally?’ I regretted that at once, since I’d met Jasper. I was juggling a bit too much here.

‘Yeah,’ said Gus, and he looked back over his shoulder at a shriek from Coco. I could see that the conversation was coming to a close. ‘My dad and stepmum are just up the hill. They’re great. My actual mum’s here for a few months of the year generally, and in India the rest of the time. She only comes over to spend time with the girls. After Joe she just couldn’t bear it, you know?’

‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘Well, I can’t.’

‘Right. Better go and see what’s happening,’ said Gus. ‘But thanks so much, Ariel. And sorry to talk about my brother like that. I don’t usually, least of all on the doorstep. You’re a wonderful find. Not sure how Abby discovered you, but we’re all glad she did.’

‘I put notes through doors offering babysitting work,’ I said. While you were out jogging on the field just over there, I didn’t say. ‘I tried to target houses that had kids, so it was that car that got you one.’ I nodded at the battered red-and-yellow pedal car that was on the gravelly front garden.

‘Oh, that old thing!’ Gus laughed. ‘I should get rid of it. Look at it! It was Joe’s and mine when we were little. We loved it so much that Dad kept it for imaginary future grandchildren, and now even they’re too old for it. Time marches on, I guess.’

I pictured a toddler Joe playing in it, scooting himself along with his feet, feeling like the coolest guy with his own car, and smiled.

‘It does,’ I said.

On the way home I got my phone out to read Izzy’s messages. Or at least I would have done, if she’d sent any. I had been so certain she would have fired me loads of things about Joe, and the girls, but she hadn’t sent anything.

Her life wasn’t all about me.

I had no idea where Izzy was or what she was doing. She hadn’t told me who she was meeting at five. I sent a quick one saying Thanks for listening, can’t wait to hear your news, but she didn’t reply to that either.

When I got home, Sasha said, ‘What’s up with you? Izzy was worrying about you. I called her back after work, but she said that actually everything was OK. All a bit mysterious. Is everything all right?’

‘Yes. It really is. She was concerned about me, but we talked and it was just a misunderstanding.’

Sasha nodded. ‘OK. How was babysitting? What’s for dinner?’

I looked at the fifteen pounds I’d just earned and said, ‘A takeaway.’ While we waited for a curry delivery I sent another message to Izzy:

Sorry I’ve been such a shit friend, and thanks for picking up the girls with me. Whatever your thing is tonight I hope it’s been good and can’t wait to hear about it. Are you still OK for Saturday? We can talk about everything then. I have a mission in London, if you’re up for it.

I looked at the little grey dots of her typing and stopping, typing and stopping, but when her reply came it just said, Let’s do your mission. I had an amazing evening. Loads to tell xxx