48

I get up at five because I’m too full of everything to sleep. I don’t know what to do with myself.

I have seen Troy.

And he could see me too.

And he didn’t kill me.

I want to dance round the house, like Lara dances round the train. I’d never realized what a weight it was, trying to accept the fact that my best friend had accidentally killed me over a football trophy. Whatever the truth might be, it won’t be as bad as that. I find that I’d rather be murdered by a stranger, a proper bad guy, than by the person who’d been my best friend for almost all my life.

Now, like Lara, I want to stay. There might be nothing out there. Here there is something. And I would rather live the same day until the end of time than be nothing. I know that with all my dead, unbeating heart.

All the same, I take Gus’s camera and decide that I’ll break with my routine and spend the whole day at the mall, just in case Ariel and Troy go there too. I should have arranged that with them, but I didn’t think of it before the door opened, so this is my only way of clawing it back. It’s their Saturday. Maybe Ariel will bring the baby. If she was holding him I’d be able to see him. I love her face when she talks about him and I adore the fact that she gave him my name.

I get ready for school as normal. Mr Armstrong offers me his old francs. Troy comes along and I grin at him, so happy to see young Troy when I have old Troy in my head too.

At that point I change my mind and decide to spend the day with young Troy. I love the fact that I know that, in spite of what’s about to happen, his life will basically be good. He’s happily married to a Frenchwoman. He has a child and he called him Joe.

‘Wish we were going to Paris,’ he says. ‘Now, if it was Paris I would seriously just stay there. Eiffel Tower. Mona Lisa. The city of love.’

‘Would you find a French girlfriend?’

‘Easily. We’d live in an attic overlooking the river, and I’d probably discover I was an amazing artist and so I’d become the new Picasso or something.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Shame we’re not going to Paris then. We go past it on the bus, so you could jump out.’

He nods. ‘Might do. Tell the driver to stop because I’m sick and then run off to my new life …’

‘Troy, mate,’ I say. ‘You’ll end up living in France. You’ll get married to a Frenchwoman and change your surname to hers because you want a completely fresh start. You’ll have at least one kid. A boy called Joe. And you’ll be an artist. You’ll sell your paintings on the internet.’

Troy laughs. ‘OK. Sure. I’ll take that. Selling on the internet? That’s very futuristic of me.’

‘That’s because it’ll be the future.’

I don’t mention the trophy because we’ve dealt with that now. There’s no point in my trying to give it back. It’s nice not to dwell on that for once.

At the end of school I say goodbye to Troy, and then head to the mall to meet Future Troy. Past Troy thinks we’ll be back at school in a few hours to go on the French exchange, and I keep things as light as I can, then run to Beachview and sit on a bench, waiting for the angry man. I’ve been meaning to take his photograph for ages. I might as well do it today. You never know: Troy might recognize him.

I sit by a drooping plant, camera on my lap. At ten to four I see him charge in, frowning, and go into Boots. I take a picture as he passes, but it won’t be a good one. I stand up and decide to get a chocolate milkshake this time so I can annoy him to the max by throwing it all over him and then taking a photo of his reaction. I’ll put the camera right in his face.

The choreography works as it always does. I turn and bump into him. This time I take the lid off the cup and throw it on to his shirt. For a few seconds we stare into each other’s eyes.

He pulls himself together and snarls, swears even more than usual, and while he’s doing it I drop my cup so the drink splatters all over our shoes and take his photo. He tries to grab the camera. I duck away. He runs after me, shouting. I run round the corner and into the cupboard.

Ariel and Troy are there. They have a box with them and they’re doing something to the wall. I’m startled, again, by Troy as an adult, and I wonder what they’re doing, but then I realize that I’m not the only 1999 person in this room.

I didn’t think the man would follow me here, but he has. I turn, full of adrenaline, and laugh at him.

‘What the fuck,’ he says, ‘do you think you’re doing? Did you attack me with some baby drink and take my photo? You owe me new shoes. Give me your camera.’

‘No.’

‘What’s going on?’ says Ariel. ‘Who’s here? Make them go away. We’ve found something, Joe. It’s urgent. Make that person go away.’

‘What the …?’ says Troy.

‘You know you’re a wanker,’ I tell the angry guy, over the sound of Ariel and Troy. ‘I see you every day. You’re a bastard. I hate you. I bet everyone hates you. You should try being nicer.’

‘You should try fucking off,’ he says.

‘I said nicer,’ I say. ‘Not more of a wanker. Yes, I did spill my drink on you on purpose because you deserved it, and I don’t care about your shoes.’

I only said that so Ariel would know who it was that I was talking to from 1999, but of course it enrages the man more than anything. He squares up to punch me. I am ready. He wants to kill me: I can see it in his face. Have I solved it? Is this my killer?

He huffs and takes a step back.

‘You’re not worth it,’ he says. He walks out, slamming the door behind him. I wait. He doesn’t come back.

I sit on the bench, gasping for breath, even though I don’t need to breathe. I’m trembling all over.

Ariel is beside me. Troy sits on my other side.

‘I thought he was going to kill me,’ I say. ‘He wanted to hurt me so much. He was going to. Then he walked away. It feels so weird. I was geared up for it to happen.’

Ariel puts her hand on mine so we’re overlapping. Troy doesn’t say anything.

‘The angry man,’ she says.

‘Yes.’ I stand up, pace around and sit down again. ‘I chucked my drink all over him and then took his photo because I thought Troy might have recognized him from twenty years ago. It was a long shot, but you never know.’ I’m still trying to calm myself. ‘What were you two doing in here? Are those screwdrivers?’

‘Yeah,’ says Ariel. ‘Joe. We have things to tell you.’

I register the tone of her voice, so I focus on what they’re trying to say.

‘I’ve been in here today with my dad,’ says Troy. ‘He was working so he couldn’t spend much time on it, but he told me which panels were hollow and let me borrow his tools. He thinks I’m mad, but that’s OK. He already did. A son of his changing his surname. There’s no coming back from that with him.’

‘I came over a couple of hours ago,’ says Ariel. ‘Troy and I arranged it all yesterday.’

I tell myself not to be jealous of them doing things without me. They are alive and I’m not. And they’re doing it for me, even though I’m not sure I want them to.

‘Troy and I have been talking a lot about this. Since there was never any sighting of anyone taking anything that could have been a body out of this place, we thought maybe –’ She has to stop, overcome.

‘We thought you might not have gone anywhere,’ Troy says. ‘It was just an idea, but this is a strange building, and maybe you went out through some kind of heating vent thing, or maybe you’re still in it somewhere. Maybe that’s why you always come back here, every day, no matter what. This room was never part of the investigation. We know about it, but hardly anyone else does. All they know is that you were seen on CCTV outside Boots. Then they dredged the river and did what they could with the sea, but we’re not sure anyone ever looked right here.’

I nod. I don’t know what to say.

‘You can’t see it, can you?’ says Ariel. ‘We’ve taken the wood panelling off this wall. Is it there in your world? Is there a panel of wood painted white?’

I look at where she’s pointing, at the panel of wood, shiny white with a smiley face drawn on it.

‘Yes. It looks quite new.’

‘Amazing,’ says Troy. ‘Because now it looks really old. It doesn’t look as if it’s been repainted, or replaced in the past twenty years, and it has graffiti and stuff on it.’

‘We’ve unscrewed it,’ says Ariel. ‘And we’ve just got the front bit right off. I wrote some of that graffiti – that bit about my dad.’ She touches it, and for the first time I see it.

‘What’s behind it?’ I say. I’m afraid. Very afraid. A wave of terror crashes in the place where my stomach would be, if I had one.

‘Just before you got here,’ says Troy, ‘we found – well, we found your schoolbag. And this was on top of it.’

He reaches down and picks something up very gingerly, holding it by the edges. I look down.

‘The football trophy,’ I say. We all stare at it. There it is at last. The foot kicking the ball. The real one, the one that’s in my bag.

‘Tell us about the angry man,’ says Ariel. ‘We don’t have much time. He followed you in here?’

I make myself calm down. Forget the trophy. Yes. The angry man.

The trophy, though.

‘He did. I was extra rude to him. I took his photo, right in his face. He came after me and said he was going to take the camera and that I had to buy him new shoes. But he didn’t take it. He didn’t do anything. He just stormed off.’

‘It’s not time yet,’ says Troy.

‘That’s true,’ says Ariel. ‘He might come back. Can we see the photo?’

I get out Gus’s camera and switch it on. Its small screen is nothing like the tech from the future, but all the same I got some good shots. He’s staring right at the lens, face contorted in fury.

I hold it out.

‘Here he is,’ I say. ‘See how lovely he is? Ariel and Troy, meet the angry guy.’

Troy leans in and looks at it. He tries to touch it, to bring it closer, but finds he can’t.

‘He seems nice,’ he says. ‘Don’t recognize him, though. Sorry.’

Ariel looks.

She leans forward and looks again.

‘Oh,’ she says.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Ariel?’ says Troy.

Ariel doesn’t look at either of us. She just carries on staring at the screen. Then she stands up, walks over to a wall and leans her forehead on it. She goes to the part of wall they’ve taken apart in their world and looks into it. I don’t know what’s wrong. Troy and I exchange glances. Neither of us has the faintest idea of what is going on with her. She has her arms up round her face and her back is shaking.

‘Ariel?’ I say it this time. I look at her back. She’s kind of leaning right into the wall. It looks extremely weird. It’s proper ghost behaviour.

Then she leaps back.

‘Oh my God!’ she says. ‘Oh shit!’

Troy and I both jump up. I try to put an arm round her shoulders, but I can’t. Troy can and for a fraction of a second I hate him.

‘Ariel?’ he says. ‘What? Tell us what’s happening.’

I watch her force herself back under control.

‘There are bones in the wall,’ she says, her voice expressionless. ‘Bones. Down there. At the bottom. In the wall.’ She takes a deep, shuddering breath and speaks fast. ‘And that’s not all. The angry man. The man in the mall. The one who killed you. That’s my dad.’