37

The more I stayed away from Joe, the easier it became. At first it was almost impossible, and I only followed his wishes because I felt bad that I had all the power. He had to be at Beachview at four. I didn’t so I made sure that I was busy after school, every single day.

The hallucinations at school faded almost to nothing. First I stopped feeling the blast of cold when I walked through them. Then I couldn’t see them clearly, and eventually they were just smudges of blue at the edge of my vision. I missed seeing them around. I often wondered whether one of the blurry shapes was my Joe, but I never let myself look for him.

I missed him with all my heart. I longed for him. But he’d told me he didn’t want to see me any more, and so I stayed away. I concentrated at school, only mildly distracted by the hints of ghosts. I did my work and joined lunchtime revision sessions. My mind cleared a bit and I could see the exams coming up, and felt that I hadn’t left it too late. If I revised really hard I could do it.

I applied to sixth-form college, for A levels in history, English and French. I didn’t think I’d have gone for French if it hadn’t been for Joe and Ms Duke, but I was working extra hard at it now because Ms D was the link between my life and Joe’s, and because Joe had never been to France, and because Troy lived there and I’d never managed to get in touch with him. Every strand led to France, so learning the language properly seemed like the least I could do, even if I had stopped trying to solve the mystery of Joe’s death.

I had never felt alone like this. I didn’t have Mum. Izzy was ecstatically loved up with Tally. When I went looking for Jack one day after school, I found him kissing a girl from the year below and backed away.

And I didn’t have Joe. I only went into his room when I knew he wasn’t there. A few times, between four and five, I stood outside clutching the door handle, but I didn’t go in. The more I didn’t do it, the easier it became. I supposed he was living by a schedule he had crafted for himself, making sure he saw all the important people in his world, apart from me. I went to an open evening at college, and I knew that he’d been right, that I was growing away from him, that one day I’d be just another adult, and he would still be fifteen.

At the end of April I was dutifully eating a nutritious breakfast (muesli with chopped banana, raisins and yogurt) while reading over my chemistry notes, and also keeping an eye on my phone, when Sasha laughed.

‘Look at this!’ she said. ‘New trick!’

She’d put her glass of juice on her bump as if it was a little table. She took her hand away and it wobbled, but stayed there.

‘Wow,’ I said, distracted for a moment from the email that I’d just seen in my inbox. ‘That’s amazing. A built-in shelf!’

‘Portable coffee table.’ She sighed. ‘I’d love a coffee so much. But since I decided to give it up, right back at the start when everything was making me sick, I can’t really go back to it now. I can manage nine more weeks without coffee.’

‘Nine weeks! Are you serious?’

‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Do the maths. Baby due on July the second. It’s the first of May in two days’ time.’

I thought about that. ‘If it’s about to be May, and my exams start on May the eleventh, I should step up my revision.’

Sasha reached across and pushed the fruit bowl towards me. ‘Eat another banana,’ she said. ‘Brain food.’

We called it the ‘fruit bowl’, but it only contained four blackening bananas.

‘I aready had one,’ I said. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘OK, but we need to get rid of these before they start to smell.’

‘I’ll make a banana cake.’

‘Yes! Can you make it so we can toast it and put extra butter on?’ She paused. ‘For the baby.’

‘Sure thing!’

A part of me was panicking about my exams, even though I knew I was doing everything I should be doing. Until recently I’d thought it would be OK to wing it, and I’d be just about all right, but now I wanted to do extra well. I didn’t need to get nines in everything, but I wanted to. Then I’d go and tell Joe, and he’d be pleased for me. That was my aim. If I had a piece of news like that then it would be all right to go back and see him. Wouldn’t it?

I walked slowly down the road, opening the email as I went. I stopped altogether to read it and let other people walk past.

Hi there, Ariel and Izzy. Hope you’re both doing well. It was nice to talk about Joe with you the other week. Hope you’ve got everything you need for your article. I was thinking, it’s really going above and beyond to do this sort of research for a school mag rather than just rehashing the old stuff. I think you have great futures in front of you.

Sorry this has taken a while. I reached out to Troy like I promised, but I’m afraid when he finally did reply it wasn’t the most friendly. Copied and pasted here. After he sent it he disappeared from my LinkedIn, so I’m thinking he really doesn’t want to talk. Anyway, I tried. Sorry not to have something better to report.

Cheers, Lucas

Then, in a different font, it said:

No, of course I’m not interested in talking about Joe, least of all to some kids. Journos are all the same whoever they’re writing for and I have nothing to say to any of them except fuck off. Surprised at you tbh. T

That stung. I’d thought that Troy and I, as Joe’s best friends, should have had some sort of affinity.

I needed to find Troy myself.

Then I remembered I wasn’t doing this any more. I didn’t need to find Troy: I needed to take my exams. This was no longer my thing.

I started to feel angry. I squashed it down.

I didn’t think anyone had directly told me to fuck off before.

I was never going to live in the cloud tops of Venus.

We had kind of kissed and then I’d been dumped by a ghost.

Dumped by a fucking ghost!

It made me boil with rage.

I didn’t care about Troy. He was just some grumpy old man. Of course he didn’t want to talk about it. I tried to imagine, nineteen years from now, if someone who wasn’t even born yet contacted me because they were writing a stupid little article about the anniversary of Mum’s death and wanted some quotes from me. I wouldn’t want to talk to them either. I’d definitely want to tell them to fuck off too.

‘I know we’ve dropped the Joe thing,’ I told Izzy when we met on the corner, ‘but look at this.’ I forwarded her the message. She looked at it and winced.

‘Whoa,’ she said. ‘He sounds nice.’

‘Right? Anyway, fuck him.’

She tucked her arm through mine. ‘Yeah. He makes himself sound guilty.’

‘He wouldn’t kill his best friend, though. Would he?’ That hung there for a while and then I shook myself. ‘So. Did your mum book the holiday?’

‘Not yet, but I think we’re going to Spain. Tally might come too. Do you think you and Sasha will go away? Oh, of course not. The baby!’

‘I don’t think we would have anyway. It would be weird, me and Sasha going on holiday.’ I thought a few years ahead and perked up. ‘It’ll be lovely, though, to take the baby away, in a year or two. We could go to …’ I tried to remember where people went on holiday with small kids. ‘Mallorca or something. I don’t know. Not a city break, but somewhere with nice safe beaches.’

Plans like this made me happy. They were the future.