42

It’s Saturday for Ariel, and all I can think of, all day, is how much I long to see her. She didn’t specifically say that she’d be back today. I don’t really know her life any more, but she has loads of new friends and a nephew, so she might be too busy.

I wake up, thinking that I’ll go and see Lara and tell her about Leo, but when it comes to it I don’t have the energy for anything, so I follow my usual routine and stay home. I am so good at persuading Dad not to go to work that the part where I either fake vomit or have a breakdown is just a piece of admin now, but today is different. Leo’s story has blown my shaky edifice to pieces. He had a freak accident in the woods, fell down and died, and was covered by earth and never found. And then, as soon as his body was discovered, he disappeared.

I never said goodbye. The sense of loss is overwhelming. I need to tell Lara. Tomorrow.

I have a breakdown to make Dad stay home, and for the first time in ages it isn’t a fake one. I need every moment of it, every single hug I can get him to give me while we watch movies and he takes me to Beachview to see the emergency doctor and I go to the cupboard and wait to die.

I hope and hope and hope, and then the door opens and she’s there. She has something new to tell me. I can see it.

‘Joe,’ she says, and she kisses me in the only way she can. Our faces disappear into each other a bit. I used to feel nothing when this happened, but today it makes me do a kind of shiver. I missed her with every atom of my non-being, and she’s back. I want to hang on to this non-kiss forever, with everything I have.

‘What?’

‘I found Troy. But it’s not just that. I found something else. There’s something I really, really need you to look at.’

I walk round the tiny space while she opens up her phone. I’m too tense. There’s nowhere to go because the other end of the room is just three steps away, but I do it anyway. Step, step, step one way. Step, step, step back again. Step, step, step. Step, step …

‘Here. Sit down.’

At first I don’t register what she’s showing me.

‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘Is that Troy grown up? Is he a … painter?’

‘Yeah, but it’s not that. Look. Down here.’

I’m still staring at Troy. His hair has faded as if he’s started to wash the colour out, but he’s exactly the same Troy. I see him every day, and now here he is again, smiling awkwardly at a camera, with wrinkles.

I tear my eyes away and focus on the thing Ariel’s trying to show me instead. Even this takes a while because my head is so full of the sight of Troy painting in France in his thirties.

He did it. He did the thing he keeps telling me he’s going to do. Moved to France, met a girl, became an artist.

Then at last I see it.

Behind Troy in his cluttered studio is a shelf of objects. There are books, jars of brushes, a box, a piece of material. A football trophy shaped like a foot kicking a ball.

I open my bag and take it out. This time it comes out easily. I hold it up next to the screen.

I look at Ariel and see, now, what it was in her eyes.

‘I try to give it back to him,’ I say. ‘All the time. I’ve been trying to give it back for twenty years.’

‘But you never can.’

‘I can’t get it out of my bag. It’s one of the things that’s fixed. So how can Troy have it?’

‘Joe,’ she says, ‘I’ve been thinking about this every moment since I saw it. There’s no way this could have happened unless Troy knows a whole lot more than he ever said.’

‘He must have seen me just before I died. Or after.’

‘Or,’ she says, ‘during.’

We spend the rest of our time composing the message Ariel sends through his website. There’s no point in being half-hearted: we need to write something that will stop him in his tracks. It takes a long time, but in the end she fills in the contact name as Joe Simpson, with a new email address that she’s set up in my name. The message says:

Mate. You hate your name because it’s an anagram of Tory. In primary school we found a frog on the playing field and took it to the playground to try to scare girls, but they thought it was cute and made it a little hat from a leaf and called it Froggykins. Modelling agency scouts say you have a strong look. You hate it.

You always said you’d meet a French girl and become an artist, and now you’ve done it.

I took your trophy. I think I was jealous. God knows, but I’m sorry. I was in a little room behind Boots at Beachview. I don’t know what happened after that, but I’m here now. In that same room at Beachview. I met Ariel here. She’s helping, but I need your help too, mate. Please. I need to know what happened. I’m guessing we had a fight and you threw an unlucky punch. I don’t mind any of that. I just need to know. Please help. Just come back to that room, any afternoon except Sunday, between four and five. Please.

Joe

It sounds off-the-wall batshit, but it should get his attention. Ariel couldn’t possibly have known about Froggykins.

Knowing what I do of Troy, he’ll try to tell himself it’s madness for a day or so, but then he’ll crack and reply because it’ll play on his mind too much.

‘Wait,’ I say.

If Ariel sends this, then it will make things happen. I don’t know if I want things to happen.

She looks at me. She understands.

‘I don’t have to press send.’

My mind is full of clutter. I don’t know what I want.

This thing has momentum, though. I don’t think we can stop it now. I can’t live for eternity, wondering what would have happened if we’d done this.

‘Do it,’ I say, and she does.

We sit and look at each other in absolute silence until the door opens and someone – is it Troy? – walks in. Everything goes blank.