Did you know a shark can detect blood in the water up to five miles away? I sometimes feel that way with danger: I can notice the faintest traces. It is like a smell. An aroma of something from the past, and it was playing in my nose when I said to Sangeeta, “Can we go now?”

“All right, Alfie,” she said. “What about your friends?”

“Now. We need to go now.” I hurried, head down, toward Sangeeta’s car with Sangeeta trotting behind me to catch up. When I glanced back, I saw Roxy and Aidan looking puzzled and hurt, and I wanted to go back and explain, but I could not, because I did not understand it properly myself.

I am certain Sangeeta thought it was delayed grief that had made me hurry off and so she left me alone in my thoughts as we drove away. But it was not grief. Well, not only grief.

It was Jasper.

It was fear.

Plus the realization that Aidan and Roxy had lied to Sangeeta. For me. They had done that for me.

Sangeeta had stopped the car outside Earl Grey House and was saying something. I had not been paying attention until she took something black from her handbag and put in it my hands.

“…It’s just for safety, you know. I’ve put my number in already, and Aunty Reet’s.”

A cell phone. I had never owned one before. Or even used one, for that matter. I turned it over in my hands, examining it.

She must have thought I disapproved, because she said, “Yeah, I know. Sorry it’s not a smartphone, but it does the job.”

Instead of asking her how to use it, which would sound odd, I thought I would figure it out myself.

Later I lay on my bed in my room at Earl Grey House. I stared at the ceiling. For the first time in a week, I thought about Mam and did not feel the hole of emptiness opening up inside me. Instead I felt a cold, sickening fear.

Jasper.

I had it all worked out. He did not know where I lived, so he had waited for Mam’s funeral, knowing—or hoping—that I would be there. Then he would approach me.

Why, exactly, I could not figure out—but it could not be good. The memory of his bearded face leveling with mine on the creaking cargo boat all those years ago kept coming back, and it scared me.

Fear had replaced grief—and it was about to get worse.