C.J. SKUSE is the author of the YA novels PRETTY BAD THINGS, ROCKOHOLIC and DEAD ROMANTIC. She was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, England. She has First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Children and, aside from writing novels, lectures in Writing for Children at Bath Spa University where she is planning to do her PhD. THE DEVIANTS is her fifth novel.

For my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Roy Snead,

Thank you for the days, those sacred days you gave me.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

1. A Day at the Beach

2. Moonlight Adventure Saturday, 1 August

3. Thumping Good Fun

4. The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

5. An Old Friend One month earlier – 9 July

6. An Adventure Beckons

7. Back at Whitehouse Farm

8. Jolly Good Fun

9. A Little Upset

10. A Horrid Shock

11. A Smashing Time and a Piece of Advice

12. Ella Thinks Up a Plan

13. Up To Mischief Tuesday, 4 August

14. A Shock for Max

15. A Rather Unpleasant Meeting

16. Junior Springs a Surprise!

17. Five Go Adventuring

18. Curious Discoveries

19. A Rather Splendid Party Friday night, 21st August

20. A Mystery is Solved

21. Mostly About Ella

22. Back to the Island

23. A Nasty Surprise

24. Discoveries at the Witch’s Pool

25. Several Things Happen

26. One Goes Down to the Sea

27. A Shock for All

28. Away on Their Own

29. Five Have a Wonderful Time

Acknowledgments

Copyright

1

A Day at the Beach

I’m sitting beside the café window when I see the man running up the beach and I instantly know it’s washed ashore. The sand flicks up behind him as he sprints. And he’s screaming.

His face is alive with fear. He’s running so hard to get away from it, what he’s found. In those brief moments, I am the only person in the café to see him. But, within seconds, the quiet crumbles into chaos.

‘Somebody! Help!’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘Did he say a body?’

Someone calls my name, but I don’t turn around. I keep walking, out of the café, into the morning air, along the Esplanade, down the steps and onto the wet sand, like the sea is a magnet and I am metal.

People overtake me. Someone shouts, ‘Call the police.’ Thudding footsteps, snatches of breath. The sand’s covered in a billion worm hills and tiny white shells. A group of crows squawks nearby. They’re all clustered around an object, pecking at it.

‘Let the police handle it.’

‘Don’t look. Don’t look.’

I keep walking towards the mound, until I can see for myself what the man was running from. Until I can see for myself what I have done.

‘Tell me everything. Start with what was happening between you and Max.’

2

Moonlight Adventure Saturday, 1 August

It’s like those really old paintings you see in art galleries – if you look at them from a distance, they’re beautiful. A quick glance, it’s a masterpiece. But as you get closer, you start to see all the cracks. We were a masterpiece, me and Max. We’d known each other for ever. We had the same taste in music. We finished each other’s sentences. We ate Carte d’Or watching Botched Up Bodies and he’d pretend not to wince. We watched romantic comedies and he’d pretend not to cry. And he had these marvellous arms and always wore sleeveless hoodies in summer.

But close up, there were problems. And these problems were becoming harder to ignore. I was snipping at him more and he took nothing seriously.

He could still impress me though. This one night, he arranged a big surprise for me at the garden centre. I had no idea what the occasion was.

‘You don’t remember, do you?’

There had to be a good reason why he’d gone to so much trouble. Not only had he stolen Neil’s keys and broken us in after hours, he’d set up a table in the café, with lit candles, buttered teacakes and two glasses of milkshake. It looked like something from a honeymoon brochure, with all the fairy lights strung up in the palm trees and the white cloth on the table. Essentially, though, we were still in a garden centre. I’d worn an actual dress and shaved my actual legs to be taken to a place that sold worm poo and weed killer.

‘Of course I remember,’ I lied. ‘This is nice. Thanks.’

He folded his arms. ‘I could get quite offended, you know.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t have a Scooby, do you?’

‘Ummmm, well… I’m pretty sure it’s not my birthday. And you’ve just had your birthday, so that must mean that it’s…’ I scanned my brain for something, anything. What did 1 August mean? But I had nothing. Max looked so disappointed it was almost painful.

And then I got it. It was the synthetic strawberry smell of the shakes that did it.

Our first proper date, five years ago, when I was twelve and he was nearly thirteen and we realised we liked each other more than as the best friends we’d been since primary school. It had been here, in the café, supervised by our mums on another table. We’d had teacakes and strawberry milkshakes, and Max paid for it with his own money from his Pokemon wallet, even though his dad owned the store. Then we had our first proper kiss, inside one of the sheds, while the mums went to look at geraniums. On the way out, Max had held my hand.

My whole body flashed over with goosebumps. ‘Oh God. I’m so sorry!’

‘It’s all right.’ He shrugged. ‘I wanted to do something without my parents or your dad being around. Something for us.’ He pulled out a chair for me and sat down opposite. ‘So I thought we could come here when no one else was around, hang out and have teacakes and milkshakes, just like then. Well, I could, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

Like a sadistic magician, Max whipped away my buttery teacake and creamy shake, replacing them with a bowl of freshly chopped fruit and an ice-cold bottle of Evian.

‘I figured you’d be on low cal till breakfast. There’s no orange or lemon, don’t worry.’

I smiled, but my heart sank. My summer training plan meant I was on a strict low-carb low-fat diet. ‘Oh, goodie.’ It was sweet that he’d remembered to leave out the citrus, though. Only Max would know to do that.

‘Happy anniversary, Ella Bella Boodles,’ he said, leaning across to kiss me.

‘Happy anniversary, Max,’ I said.

We tucked in by the light of a salted caramel Yankee Candle. The fruit was freezing, and burst against my sensitive teeth like I was crushing gemstones. It was weird, being there when no one else was around. Normally when me and Max met for lunch there’d be loads of shuffling grannies with walking sticks, or kids on the next table having food fights or pasting stickers all over the undersides of their chairs. Tonight, but for the trickle of a water feature somewhere, the place was silent.

Outside, the night had coloured everything dangerous. Through the large glass windows, the looming mass of Brynstan Hill was just visible. They called our town Volcano Town. Apparently, in Old English, Brynstan meant ‘brimstone’ – that biblical ‘hell hath no fury’ stuff. That was the only exciting thing about this little place – the fact that the huge green hill we lived around could spew out molten lava any old time, and blow all the sheep and Iron Age remains to bits. At Easter they put three crosses on it. In November, they held a huge bonfire on the top with fireworks – from afar, it looked like an eruption. I liked the night. It was the only time of day I didn’t have to stare at the bloody thing.

‘Did I tell you Dad’s bought a new car?’ said Max, around a gobful of teacake.

I winced as I bit down on a freezing chunk of melon. ‘Another one?’

‘Limited edition Porsche 911 Turbo S. Over a hundred and forty grand. Grey leather seats.’

‘Grim.’

‘No, it’s sweet. The ride on it is unbelievable. Top speed’s, like, two hundred miles an hour. Nought to sixty in three seconds. It’s, like, one of the fastest cars in the world.’

‘Like one of the fastest or actually one of the fastest?’

‘One of the fastest,’ he said, his face alive with joy.

I chomped down on an apple chunk. ‘Don’t say “like” then. If it’s one of the fastest, say it’s one of the fastest.’

‘All right, all right, easy, Tiger.’

‘What’s the point of a car that fast anyway? Can’t drive it anywhere at that speed. It’s ridic.’

‘Why are you so snippy?’

‘I’m not snippy. It winds me up, that’s all. Your dad spends money like it’s going out of fashion, and my dad reuses tin foil.’

I hadn’t realised how much my anger levels had risen in the last five minutes. Max was always the one who pointed out my potential bitchplosions; like a scientist keeping an eye on the heat levels inside the crater. But Neil – his dad – always had that effect on me. Everywhere he went in the town he was treated like royalty, all blinding smiles and two-handed handshakes, but to me he was a show-off who stank of aftershave and wore too much gold.

‘Dad’s earned it, Ells. You can’t say he hasn’t.’

‘How many new cars is that this year?’

‘Only three,’ he said. ‘It’s being delivered from Germany in a couple of weeks. Oh yeah, Mum asked me to ask you to come over for lunch tomorrow.’

‘Bit late notice, isn’t it?’

‘You haven’t got anything on, have you?’

‘Yes, I have. Training.’

‘You don’t train at weekends.’

‘Summer regime.’

‘What about next Sunday then?’

‘I can’t, Max. I can’t mess Pete about.’

He closed up. I could tell he was pissed.

‘Maybe the weekend after next?’ I suggested, more to cheer him up than anything.

‘Yeah, yeah. I won’t hold my breath. It’s not haunted, you know. I know you said it freaks you out, but Jess isn’t there, I promise.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I felt bad about lying to him about that.

‘I wish she did haunt it,’ he said, a pink line of milkshake framing his top lip.

‘Funny thing to wish,’ I said, still feeling awful. I reached out to thumb away the mark from his mouth.

‘I know. Sometimes you just need someone to talk to who’s not your parents, don’t you? Like a big sister.’

I reached out to him and pulled his hand towards me. I held it between both mine. ‘You can always talk to me.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, with a smile. ‘So, you’ll come for lunch next Sunday then?’

I sank back in my chair. ‘Your mum always cooks everything in tons of lard.’

‘You can just have the veg, can’t you?’

‘Oh, cheers. I’d rather just be with you anyway, not all your family.’

‘It’s not all my family. It’s just my aunts and uncles. And we don’t have to stay with the olds all afternoon, do we? We can go into town, or across to the island, or something?’

That gave me actual chills, despite the warmth of the restaurant. ‘No, not the island.’

‘We could hire a boat like we used to.’

‘I don’t want to hire a boat like we used to.’

‘All right, all right.’ He threw down his half-eaten teacake and sat back.

‘There’s just no point, is there? There’s nothing to see. Just trees and a few old rocks.’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? We can just go there for some alone time. We used to spend whole days there when we were kids.’

‘Yeah, well. We’re not kids any more, are we?’ Max’s face was still doing that scrunched-up thing. ‘I’ll come over for lunch soon, I promise.’

‘How about when the new car’s there? That weekend, yeah? Please? I’ll tell Mum to do your potatoes in Fry Light. She won’t mind.’

‘OK. I’ll change my training schedule that weekend.’

His face lightened at once, but I could feel my forearms heating up – my rash was coming on. It was always worse in summer. He reached across the table for my hand and just held on to it for the longest time. As my stress levels dropped, my body cooled, with a comforting sweep of goosebumps.

‘Anyway,’ he said, fiddling with something under the table and pulling out a small turquoise box and a large white envelope. ‘This is for you. Just to say I love you to Pluto and back.’ He handed them to me.

I couldn’t hold back my smile. ‘Not the Moon?’

‘Pluto’s further away, innit?’ He stuffed the second half of his teacake in his mouth and grinned crumbily at me.

I set down the envelope and opened the box. Inside, on a crushed velvet bed, was a silver chain with a solid silver teddy pendant in the middle. ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous.’

‘Cos I gave you a teddy bear on our first date.’ He took the necklace from the box, coming round to my side of the table. The original bear was still on the shelf above my bed – a little koala he’d brought back from Australia after one of his many holidays.

I felt the cold chain graze my neck, and the even colder metal of the teddy bear slide and come to rest at the base of my throat. Max did up the clasp. I looked down to see it and moved the teddy’s little arms and legs. The box said ‘Tiffany’.

‘This looks expensive, Max.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Your dad gave you a loan, didn’t he?’ I said, unable to mask my disappointment.

‘Well, yeah – but when I start here next month, I can pay him back. It’s cool.’

Max was such a sponger where Neil was concerned. He never had to work for anything. He’d coasted through his GCSEs because Neil said he could just work for him at the garden centre. He was only doing A levels because I nagged him to. My dad said he could be so much more if he ‘applied himself’. The thing was, even when Max didn’t apply himself he got grades most kids would kill for. It was so annoying.

‘So it’s not actually from you, it’s from your dad, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Same as your driving lessons, your car, our Glastonbury tickets…’

‘Do you like it?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said, touching the teddy bear – a mistake, as he spotted my scabby knuckles.

‘Christ, what happened to your hands?’

I toyed with telling him the truth, but then thought better of it. ‘I fell over on the track a few days ago.’

‘How did you manage to fall on the backs of your hands?’ He lifted up my other one and looked at it, gently tracing his fingertips over the scabs. ‘This one’s even worse.’

‘I tripped. I think my new spikes are too big.’ I flexed my fingers – the deep ache was still there, but if I didn’t concentrate on it too much, it didn’t matter. Quickly, I diverted his attention back to the necklace. ‘This is beautiful. Thank you.’

I opened the envelope. Inside was an oversized card, covered in pictures of us. He must have spent ages sticking them down, shaking on glitter. There were pictures of us on swings. Our school Nativity, with me as Mary, with a cushion up my dress and Max as the innkeeper, with a scribbly black beard. Selfies in Starbucks. Selfies outside the arena in Cardiff waiting to see The Regulators. Selfies on bonfire night in woolly hats and scarves. Snuggly Duddlies in our Christmas onesies. There was one photo he hadn’t cropped – it was a day we’d spent on the island with some other kids we used to hang around with – Zane, Corey and Fallon. We all had wet hair and chocolate or jam around our mouths, and we were all laughing.

‘God, look at us,’ I said. My throat grew sore.

‘Yeah. I didn’t want to cut that one up,’ said Max. ‘I love that picture.’

‘Me too,’ I said, clearing my throat. I never saw them any more. Even though we’d all gone to the same school, walked the same streets, breathed the same salty air, we were virtual strangers now. Zane had turned out to be the world’s biggest bully, we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Fallon since the funeral, and though Corey still lived just down the road from me, we rarely spoke any more. Weird, wasn’t it? One day spending every second of the holidays together, the next barely acknowledging each other’s existence.

I opened the card. The message inside read: To my Ella Bella Boodles, who owns my heart and every beat in it. Love you always and 4 ever Maxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

I looked at the front again. At the picture of us all as kids. Me, Max, Zane, Fallon and Corey. ‘Do you remember going to the town carnival? Us all sitting in Zane’s mum’s hairdresser’s window, eating tomato soup?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘And watching the fireworks on the hill on Bonfire Night. And that time we went to the island and Corey got stuck up the tree and Zane had to talk him down. God, we’d spend whole days out there in the summer, wouldn’t we? Do you remember camping out?’

‘Ella…’

I’d have given anything for just five minutes back inside that photograph. Before the island had become this evil cancerous lump sticking out of the sea that I could barely look at. It used to be called Grebe Island. Supposedly formed thousands of years ago from a huge blast of debris the volcano spewed out. Another local legend says there’s precious stones buried there. When the council put it up for auction, Max told Neil about the stones and the next thing I knew, he’d bought it and renamed it Ella’s Island. The council and a few birdwatchers were up in arms about that. I hadn’t been back there for years.

Max was looking at me, all glassy-eyed and cheesy smiley.

‘What?’ I said, a mouthful of freezing-cold fruit.

‘I really love you, Estella Grace Newhall.’

I looked up at him. ‘I love you too, Maximus Decimus Meridius.’

‘Oi,’ he said, with a bat of eyelids. ‘I’m trying to be meaningful here.’

‘I love you too, Max Alexander Rittman.’ I couldn’t say anything else. Why did looking at that photograph make me pine so much? Me and Max weren’t even going out then, just friends; friends who knew there was buried treasure on that island, and spent years looking for it. Friends who gurned for photos, who ate chips not caring about what we weighed, not caring whether our tans were even. That’s why I loved Max, I guessed. Because of what he represented. I’d hung around with various Beckys or Laurens at school and I knew girls at the track who did the same distances, but none of them were Max. He was my constant.

‘Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but to remain part of my character, part of the good in me, part of the evil…’

I couldn’t help it – I laughed. I was glad for the break in the tension in my throat. ‘You did not just come up with that.’

‘No, it’s from Great Expectations. I memorised it.’

‘My dad named me after her from that book.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. We’re all named after Dickens characters. David, Oliver, then me. Apparently Estella’s a right bitch in the book too.’ I laughed an ugly laugh and I hated myself for it.

‘You’re always so hard on yourself.’

‘It’s the athlete in me. Nothing’s ever good enough. Everything can be improved.’

‘How come I didn’t know that about your name?’

I swallowed as tears stung my eyes. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice. ‘There’s lots of things you don’t know about me.’

Stroking my hand, he stared at me. There was meaning in that stare. I tensed up, flaring with realisation; tonight wasn’t just about ‘marking the occasion’. This was a prelude – he wanted us to try sex again. Here. Tonight. I pulled away.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ I scratched my arm. ‘My hives are up. I had a satsuma earlier, it’s probably that. I need to cool down. Do you fancy a dip in the pool?’

‘Sure.’ He blew out the Yankee Candle and we both scraped back our chairs on the hardwood floor and walked out of the café, through the sliding doors and into the night.

Hidden between all the rose beds and ferns, bronze statues, ceramic ladybirds and smirking Buddhas, lay the large rectangular pool with the statue in the middle; a laughing pearl fisherman, spouting water from his ears. It all looked so beautiful, lit by outdoor nightlights, making the water look as appealing as an icy blue cocktail on a hot beach. People had thrown coins in, and the bottom was green with algae in patches, but otherwise it was quite clear. A string of lights that looked like blue ice cubes hung around the edge of the pool.

Max had known me when I swam – in the days when my dad used to call me ‘Little Fish’ because I could hold my breath underwater for a whole minute. Now, I was ‘Volcano Girl’ – the Commonwealth Games hopeful with a county record for the 400 metres. In the days before dieting and 6 a.m. jogs got their claws into me, I’d loved to swim. But I didn’t even own a costume any more. And Dad hadn’t called me Little Fish for years.

‘Good idea, this,’ said Max, kicking off his trainers and ruffling his socks down over his feet. ‘I didn’t shower after football.’ He pulled his T-shirt up over his back. I took off my top and skirt, until I had on only my black sports bra and Snoopy knickers. It never used to bother me that my underwear didn’t match.

I got in as Max lowered himself beneath the surface. I watched his body shimmer through the blue water until he bobbed up in front of me with a smile, a dolphin expecting chum. He put his hands on the ledge, either side of me.

‘Hello,’ he said, droplets of water peppering his skin all over.

‘It’s colder than I thought.’ I shivered. His hair looked darker when it was wet.

‘Your rash any better?’

I looked down at my elbow creases. ‘Yeah.’

I hugged him towards me and we stayed like that until he pulled back and kissed me in a desperate smash of lips and tongues and teeth. I wanted to lie down with him and just kiss, stroking his bare back like I sometimes did. I liked the feel of his body against me, and I felt safe, holding him. That was all I wanted to do. But he wanted more. He was so ready. I’d thought that if I kissed him long enough I would be ready too—that I’d get the feeling. The hunger. The throb between my legs. But it wasn’t there. There was something in the way.

‘Come on,’ I said, and started moving away from him, climbing out of the pool.

‘Where are we going now?’ he said.

‘Where do you think?’ I said, reaching over for his hand.

He scrunched his face up. ‘I better stay here. Got a kind of – situation going on.’

‘It’s because of that. Come on.

We padded through to Garden Furnishings to grab some picnic blankets, and then back out between the foliage towards the sheds, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We chose a two-storey Wendy house with window boxes then we spread out the blankets on the floor and lay down. Our breaths were hot. Our skin was wet. He moved on top of me and kissed me all over my face, gentle as a moth bumping a light bulb.

‘You’re shaking like a jelly,’ he chuckled.

‘I’m fine. I’m just cold.’

Maybe it would be all right this time. It was no big deal. Everyone did it. I stroked across the span of his back, his skin as soft as catmint.

Before my brain could catch up with my body, I moved him away and reached down to peel off my wet Snoopy pants. I flung them outside the shed and they landed with a splat on the path. It would be all right.

‘Are you sure you want to?’ Smiling like Christmas had just arrived, he started wriggling out of his boxers.

‘Come on, quickly. Before I change my mind.’

I couldn’t have felt less in the mood than if he was measuring me up for my coffin.

‘Why do we have to be quick? We’ve got all night.’

‘Before I lose my nerve then,’ I laughed, and shuffled back underneath him. I didn’t want to think too much about it this time. I just wanted it done.

‘Ella, if you don’t want to . . .’

‘No I do, I do want to. Please. Come on.’

‘I haven’t got any condoms.’

‘I don’t care this time. Come on, please – quickly. Kiss me again.’

As we kissed, Max’s hands were in my hair, then at my neck, my side, around my hips and my bottom before one of them sneaked around the front. He was going ‘there’.

‘Kiss me again.’

I kept my eyes open. I wasn’t worried. This was Max and he loved me. I was safe in his arms. We both wanted this.

‘You smell so good.’

‘You do too,’ I said in breaths, even though the only thing I could smell was the intense spicy smell of the wooden shed. ‘Tell me you love me.’

His fingers were going deeper. ‘I love you so much, Ella. God, I want you.’ He un-clicked my sports bra and pulled it off. ‘I want you so badly.’

I held his head against my neck as my tears rolled down my cheeks into my ears. The necklace had slid down – the bear was resting on my sweaty shoulder, looking at me.

His tongue flicked inside my mouth. ‘I want you so much.’

I slid my hand into his hair and grabbed a tuft. Any second now, I’d want this too.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. Silently, a dragon roared in my belly. Max wriggled about, positioning himself so every inch of his naked body was against some naked part of mine. ‘Kinda need you to open your legs a bit though, Ells,’ he laughed.

I was lying like a corpse. ‘Oh sorry.’

Oh God, this was it. We were actually going to do it. I wasn’t going to be scared. I grabbed on to his back. I looked up through the roof of the Wendy house, and through a crack in the wood I saw starlight. I drew up my knees. He was going to put it inside me. Any second now. The starlight grew blurry in my eyes.

I closed my eyes and found a memory. Fallon and me, dancing on rocks, laughing so hard about something. Max and Zane were pulling at branches in the woods – making a den. Corey was sitting on a pebble beach, trying to catch a fish with a stick and some string. We were best friends who danced, built dens, fished, had picnics and swam whole summers away. And we had the best big sister to look after us and tell us stories.

‘Who wants to hear my new story? I just finished it.’

‘Me! Me! Me! I do! I do!’

‘Right, get over here, then.’

There weren’t always five of us. Sometimes, it had been six.

Then I realised where we were. We were on the island – the sea had swallowed the land. I looked around. I was alone. They’d all gone. I was stuck there, forever screaming.

‘Ella?’

With a jolt of panic, I was wrenched back to now, back to the hard shed floor, Max’s heavy body on top of me, waiting for the pain I knew was coming.

‘Ella?’

I was panting. ‘Just do it, Max. Do it, please. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.’

But I wasn’t ready. I was crying. The only thing I was ready to do at that moment was vomit. And just as he pulled away from me, a thick surge raced up my throat.

‘Oh God,’ I managed to squeak, lunging for the open shed door as everything I’d eaten that day erupted from my mouth before I’d reached the nearest bush.

How to Kill a Moment, by Estella Grace Newhall.

For the next minute, the only sound was me yacking into a yucca. When I was done, I looked behind me. Max was sitting on an upturned flowerpot. Naked and embarrassed, just like Adam. And there was I. Naked and embarrassed, just like Eve. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll get our clothes.’ He stood up, snatched up his sodden boxers from the path and walked back towards the pool.

I followed him. ‘I feel better now.’

He turned around, his eyes as sad as I’d ever seen them, and grabbed his trousers from a bronze giraffe’s ear, scrabbling them on. A plastic sachet fell out of his back pocket. I picked it up, but before I could look at it, he snatched it away.

‘What was that?’

He stashed the packet back in his jeans. ‘Condoms.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t have any?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I hate that I keep doing this to you.’

‘All you had to say was no!’ he yelled. ‘Have I ever pressured you? Why do you even lead me down the road if you can’t go there?’

‘I thought it would be OK this time.’

‘You thought that last time. And the time before that. And every time, we end up like this – having a massive barney.’ He trailed off and scratched his head on both sides, like he was trying to scratch his brain out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

He was so angry. He’d never been this angry before. I saw what I was doing to him, his strange fury, and I hated myself even more. I started gathering up my clothes. It wasn’t until I’d laced my trainers and he was sitting on the edge of the pool with a roll-up that he spoke again.

‘I Googled it,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘Genophobia. It’s a proper thing.’

I sat down next to him on the edge of the pool. ‘Is there a cure?’

He rubbed his mouth and reached for my hand. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘We’ll be OK though, won’t we?’

He surrounded me in a hug. ‘Yeah. ’Course we will.’

‘Did you talk to anyone about it?’

3

Thumping Good Fun

I didn’t want to talk about it, but I was finding it more difficult to keep it to myself. The relationship was becoming so one-sided. He started sexting me just before Christmas last year – this picture of him naked except for a bath towel, and a text saying Wanna see beneath, my beautiful? Wink wink.

I didn’t know how to reply. I’d seen his you-know-what a few times before but it was never something I wanted to see, and certainly not in an excited state. So I kept sending back jokey answers, like No you’re all right, I’ve just eaten. Wink wink.

Then he sent back I’m in bed, just thinkin bout my baby.

So I sent back I’m in bed trying to remember if I put the bins out.

So he stopped, just like that. I liked the kissing and the hugging. I loved tiny, insignificant things we did like playing Round and Round the Garden on each other’s palms. I loved us playing with each other’s hair and I loved how he always sent me text kisses first thing in the morning and last thing at night – but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want dicktures, I didn’t want sex aids he said he’d order me off the internet or him nibbling my neck or pressing against me. For me that was love with a grenade attached – it said I love you so much, I want to hurt you.

If things had been different, maybe it would have turned me on. Maybe we’d have booty-called each other from our beds, like he said his mates did with random women on Snapchat and Skype. But things weren’t different. Things were the way they were.

I had a bit of a meltdown about it at training the next morning.

‘Come on, don’t let me down, keep going, work through it, work through it…’

The sweltering sun attacked us like a baying crowd as we climbed the east-facing slope of Brynstan Hill. My body did as Pete was yelling at it to do, but my head was everywhere – on the white butterflies shimmering through the long grass, the sheep lying in the shade, the tractor ambling along in a faraway meadow. The distant cars. Hay bales wrapped in shiny black plastic, like large body bags.

‘Come on. Push it, Ella, push it! All the way now, all the way…’

Sweat streamed down my face, and the taste of tiny flies and hot hay clogged my nose and my throat. Pete pushed me harder and harder up the hill, until all my willpower left me and I stopped and bent over to grab my ankles and catch my breath.

‘What are you doing? We’re nowhere near the top yet,’ he panted.

‘I’ve had enough,’ I gasped, reaching behind me for the Evian in my rucksack.

‘Come on, just a bit further. You’ve got to punch through it.’

I shook my head, chugging down the cool water like I’d crossed a desert. ‘I don’t want to do any more today.’ I swigged again and bent over, every muscle torn up and my lungs aching when I breathed in or out. ‘I hate this damn hill.’

‘You have been keeping up with your diet, haven’t you?’

I said nothing, wiping my face on my T-shirt hem.

‘You’re sluggish today. Perhaps we should look at reeling back on the carbs.’

‘OK, I had a day off yesterday. My dad made me a bacon sandwich. It’s not a crime.’

Pete Hamlin had been our school’s Teacher You Most Want to Bang – they called him the Pied Piper, cos wherever he went there was always a line of girls following him. I wasn’t interested in him that way, but I could see that he was good-looking. He was twenty-five, with a big, happy smile, and he spoke with a posh accent, like he’d done ten years’ training with the Royal Shakespeare Company. We talked a lot. I knew he wanted to move back to London, that he liked going to see plays but hated the cinema, even that he still carried a picture of his ex-girlfriend in his wallet. We’d run up Brynstan Hill like coach and student, but we’d come back down as friends, chatting about music and books.

‘Come on then. Back at it.’

I shook my head. ‘This is as far as I want to go today.’

‘That’s not an athlete talking, Estella.’

I started undoing the Velcro on my running gloves but left them on. ‘Yeah well, maybe I don’t want to be an athlete today, Peter.’

‘This isn’t like you. Where’s my Volcano Girl?’

‘Extinct,’ I said, and started walking back down the hill.

The local paper had started the whole Volcano Girl thing, because of the way I ‘erupted’ out of the blocks on the track. I didn’t mind it. It was pretty apt if you think about it.

‘Ella, I’m being paid a lot of money to train you.’

‘Then what do you care?’ I stopped walking. ‘Why can’t we just say we ran, just for once? Why do we always have to bloody run everywhere?’

He laughed and started back down the hill to where I was standing. ‘Uh, well, there’s this little thing called the Commonwealth Games? And the fact that you’re the best runner in the county, probably the best runner in the South-West when you set your mind to it? That enough for you to be going on with? Come on, I’ll race you to the top.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘I’ll give you a head start.’

That was when I blew. ‘WHY DOESN’T ANYONE EVER LISTEN TO ME?’

I didn’t look at him. I marched back down the hill like a belligerent Grand Old Duke of York; my one man staying exactly where he was. For a while. Until I heard his footsteps coming up behind me.

‘Is it your dad? He’s still in remission, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah, my dad’s OK. Well, at the moment he is.’

‘Has your mum called again? Your brothers? You’re always fractious whenever they’ve been in touch.’

‘No.’ I sat down on the grass, narrowly avoiding a pat of dried sheep crap. I felt like crying so badly it was hurting my neck. I chugged back some more water to drown it.

He sat down next to me. ‘Is it leaving school? I know it’s a big step, sixth form, but you’ll be all right. You should be excited about it. I think you’ll do well.’

‘It’s not any of that.’

‘Tell me,’ he said, like he was settling in for a good movie. ‘Come on, we need to clear out your brain, otherwise you’re not going to get the most out of this. You may as well go home and eat twelve Krispy Kremes and a Nando’s for all the good it’s going to do.’

‘You can’t eat Nando’s at home,’ I said.

‘You can,’ he argued. ‘They’ve got it in Waitrose. I’ve tried their pervy sauce. Believe me, it is all the noms.’

A smile tore at my lips. ‘It’s peri-peri sauce. And don’t speak young. It sounds weird.’

He laughed. ‘Come on then, what’s the matter? Is it Max?’

Trying to form the sentence in my head was getting me nowhere. We sat in perfect silence, but for the buzzing in the grass around us. His eyes fixed on me.

‘Yeah,’ I said eventually. ‘He’s been my best friend since primary school. When we started going out together it was lovely, for a while. But he wants more now. And I don’t.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘It’s so difficult cos he’s my best friend. If I was going to kiss any boy, be with any boy, it would be him, no question. We make perfect sense. I miss him when he’s not around. Sometimes I miss him when he goes to the toilet. I know, I know. It’s so soppy.’

‘No, it isn’t. There’s nothing soppy about it. You love him.’

I nodded. ‘But I feel like I’m losing him.’

‘If he loves you as much as you love him, then you won’t lose him. He won’t let it come between you.’

‘It is coming between us. All his mates have these stunning girlfriends, and groupies who hang around the social club after his home games. Some are younger than me. Tight tops, all swigging cider. Any one of them would do it with him, I know they would. And then there’s Shelby.’

‘Who’s Shelby?’

‘His cousin, Shelby Gilmore. Well, step-cousin. His Auntie Manda’s daughter. She’s seventeen as well. They come over for Sunday lunch every single week. She’s a walking, talking reason never to look in a mirror again.’

‘So?’ said Pete. ‘That doesn’t mean anything will happen with her, does it?’

‘Maybe it already has happened, though. I don’t know. They really get on. And she flirts with him all the time. Flicking her hair back. Smiling at him. Always talking to him about stuff they’re both interested in but I’m not, like gaming and football. She’s gorgeous. And she’s so… experienced too. She’s had more boyfriends than I’ve done time trials.’

‘Have you tried getting to know her?’ said Pete. ‘You might have things in common.’

‘I’ve hate-liked a few of her status updates on Facebook. But no, not really.’

I slowly peeled off my running gloves to show him the scabs on my knuckles. ‘And then there’s this.’

He cringed and gently lifted my left hand to look at it. He reached for the other one and studied it. ‘How have you done this?’

‘We’ve got a stone pillar in our lounge. When I’m home alone, sometimes I punch it. I gaffer tape a cushion to it so it doesn’t hurt as much.’

Pete’s face creased. ‘How long have you been doing that?’

‘Only just recently. It just gets too much sometimes. You know what I was like when we started training. Running helped me. But just lately it hasn’t been enough.’

‘Ella, this isn’t right, what you’re doing to yourself. You don’t owe Max anything and you certainly shouldn’t blame yourself for not being ready to sleep with him.’

‘I do owe him though, don’t I?’ I said. ‘I’m his girlfriend. It’s what girlfriends do. He’s waited ages.’

Pete’s jaw dropped. ‘Where is that written? Is this some law I don’t know about?’

‘It’s just a fact.’

‘It most certainly is not,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘You don’t owe him sex for any reason whatsoever. Sex isn’t the prize you get for patience, Ella. The only reason to do it is because you want to. If he’s the kind of person who will have sex with a girl who doesn’t want to have sex with him, then ask yourself why would you want to be with a guy like that?’

‘No, he’s not, his… He’s not pressuring me,’ I said, scratching my shins. The fire was raging. Urticaria, our doctor called it – a completely random skin reaction to too much histamine in my blood. My training meant I couldn’t take my antihistamines because they made me drowsy. The wild grass was making it worse. ‘I just hate what we’ve turned into. And I don’t feel like we can go back to how we were. Just friends. I hate myself.’

‘How can you hate yourself? You’re an incredible girl. I’m so proud of you, how you’ve come through it all – your mum leaving, and your dad’s illness. You’ve stuck to your training plan, you’re nailing your PBs on a regular basis. You’re brilliant, Ella.’

‘Don’t give me compliments, Pete. You’re just throwing stones into a bottomless pit.’

‘You know, not talking about something that’s hurting you always makes it worse. It starts feeding on you, like a parasite. Once you let it out, it’s got nowhere else to go but away. Is there something else upsetting you? Other than the Max thing?’

The tractor in the far meadow had stopped baling. The sheep under the tree were looking our way. The whole world seemed to be waiting for me to say it out loud.

I shook my head. ‘No. I just need to work things out for myself, that’s all.’

‘By punching concrete?’ I didn’t answer that. ‘Will you at least recognise that it’s not good for you to keep doing this to yourself?’ I shrugged. I couldn’t promise. ‘OK, well, if you’re determined to punch for therapy, I can at least show you some proper technique.’

‘Can you?’

‘Yeah. I boxed a bit at university. It’s a great stress reliever. I still do a bit now and then. It’s great for stamina, too.’

‘Where do you do it?’

‘In my garage. Come on, let’s go back and have a cuppa and I’ll show you.’

We jogged back down the hill and walked across the churchyard into Church Lane, where Pete’s cottage was. His garage wasn’t like ours, with all Dad’s dusty boxes of rusty tools, doorknobs, foreign editions of his Jock of the Loch romance novels and Christmas trimmings. Or Neil Rittman’s immaculate garage, with the two luxury cars and giant speedboat. Pete’s was smaller, like a boutique gymnasium with a wall TV, a fridge of isotonic drinks, weight machines, a treadmill, dumb-bells, a bench and, swinging from one of the low slung beams on a chain, a large black-and-red punchbag. He reached for something on top of the fridge and unravelled it.

‘First we wrap your hands.’ He set about coiling a length of red bandage right around both my hands, like I was being mummified, then tied it off on a Velcro strip. Then he reached for a pair of boxing gloves, tied to a nail on the wall next to the first aid box. He put them on me. It felt like some grand occasion, like I was putting on a crown. ‘Right, relax your hand. Now make a fist. Keep your fingers all in there. Thumb on top but keep it in tight. OK, bounce on the balls of your feet. Keep everything relaxed but ready. Now, hit the bag.’

I did. Hard.

‘OK, again. Breathe out on the punch.’

I did it again. Harder.

‘Yep, good, exhale each time you let the punch fly. Don’t hold it in. Make a noise if you have to. Both fists, elbows in tight, that’s it, keep bouncing. Watch me. Don’t fling it forward, push it. Good. Breathe out. OK, let’s try some jabs. Keep breathing; let your breaths out, don’t hold them back. Relax when you’re bouncing, then let the punch fly and exhale. Good. Exhale. Good. Okay, cross. Upper cut.’

We stayed in his garage for the next hour – an hour when I should have been doing sprints and shuttle runs or burpees up on Brynstan Hill. Instead, I was Muhammad Ali. Strong and powerful and so angry. All bee – no butterfly.

‘Let’s try a few straight line punches. These’ll wear you out quicker but they pack the most power. Keep those wrists loose, don’t lock them. Keep those breaths coming out on each punch. Bounce. Jab jab jab. Quicker. Good. Now smash it! Lights out! You’ve picked it up quickly, Ella.’

My knuckles and wrists ached but there was no real pain, not like there was at home. By the end, the sweat was pouring from my face and arms. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. It was so fast. I was so ferocious. I loved it. I used my anger well in my running, Pete said, but I had too much of it, and had to burn some of it off.

‘Like bleeding a radiator. We’re just getting rid of your trapped wind, so you can function more efficiently.’

‘You better not be calling me windy!’ I carried on pummeling the bag.

He laughed. ‘Believe me, I’m not going to mess with you while you’re in this mood. That’s great, keep going. Find the rhythm.’

It felt like each punch had meaning. Pete was right. What I’d been doing at home was just battering myself. This felt like it was working something out of me. Every time I punched, a tiny puff of poison flew away. I felt exhausted, but electric all over.

‘OK, that’s enough for today,’ Pete laughed, holding the bag steady and starting to unlace my gloves. I was still bouncing on the balls of my feet, sweat sliding off me in rivers.

I folded up the hand wraps and put them back on the fridge. ‘Can we do this again?’

He scratched his stubble. ‘Neil Rittman’s paying me a lot of money to train you in running the four hundred metres, Ella. It’s not going to look great at Area Trials if you’re first out the starting blocks with an upper cut and a straight right left, is it?’

‘I know but just one more session doing this? Please? We don’t have to tell anyone. We can run for half the session and box for the other half or something. Can we? Please?’

‘Tell you what,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket. He pulled out a small set of keys, unhooked one attached to a Brynstan Academy fob and gave it to me. ‘How about we keep our training sessions to running, but any time you feel like punching the crap out of that pillar, you come here and use the bag and gloves. No more dry wall sessions on those fists.’

‘OK,’ I said, holding the key like it was a precious artefact. ‘Thanks.’

‘And you jog all the way here and all the way back, right?’

‘Right.’

He looked at me for a long time, then rubbed the outside of my arm. ‘And if you do want to talk, my door’s always open.’

I held up the key and smiled. ‘I won’t. But thanks.’

‘So, hang on, where does the missing cat come into it?’

4

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

Oh yeah, well it was the morning Max picked me up from training at Pete’s house, which he never ever did. He was leaning on his Audi across the road from Pete’s cottage when I emerged from the garage, fists shaking, sweat trickling down my forehead.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said, with an edge to my voice I hadn’t meant.

‘Oh that’s nice,’ he laughed. ‘I thought I’d pick you up, save you the jog back.’

‘I like the jog back.’

‘All right, I’ll go then, shall I?’

‘No,’ I said, wiping over my face again with my damp towel. ‘Sorry. Thank you.’ He was expecting a kiss, so I kissed him. Then I felt bad cos when he hugged me in to his chest, he rubbed my back like he did when we were kids and I was crying. I went round to open the passenger door.

Max got in too. ‘Sweated up a storm today,’ he commented. I didn’t answer. He didn’t switch the engine on either. He was just looking at me.

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘How was it?’ he asked. He wasn’t looking at my face, though. He was looking at my hands, red-tinged and shaking.

‘It’s just adrenaline. I only did a quick warm down today.’

He was looking at me funny, the way he did sometimes when he didn’t get something.

‘Pied Piper on form today, was he?’ He started up the engine.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know. Did he push you all the way?’

The car started off down Church Lane. ‘You don’t like Pete, do you?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Uh, cos I’ve met him? And cos he’s a dick?’ he said, stopping at the lights.

‘He’s not a dick.’

‘He’s posh.’

‘So are you when you’re not trying to sound like your dad.’

‘I am not!’

‘You so are, Max.’

‘Am not.’

‘So are.’

He stopped talking for at least a mile. Only when we came to the hospital roundabout just down the slope from my road did he open his mouth again.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my cock, is there?’

‘Where did that come from?’ I said, washed hot and cold with embarrassment.

‘I was just thinking about last night at Greenland. You would tell me if that was the problem, wouldn’t you? With us, I mean.’

I couldn’t help laughing, and the ice between us broke and melted away. He’d obviously been stewing on this all night.

‘The only thing wrong with you is you picked the wrong girlfriend.’

‘Never.’

I clicked off my seat belt and leaned across to kiss him back. ‘Thank you for picking me up. And for last night.’ I kissed him again. ‘And my card.’ And again. ‘And my necklace.’

He started doing Round and Round the Garden… on my neck with his fingertip and I cringed, remembering I wasn’t wearing it. ‘That tickles.’

‘Where is it?’ he said, looking at my neck where a pool of sweat had collected.

‘Where’s what?’

‘Your teddy necklace?’

‘Oh I can’t wear it for training cos it keeps hitting me in the face,’ I gabbled.’ I couldn’t actually remember taking it off.

‘What are you doing later? Do you wanna go into town or something? Or we could, I don’t know… Oh. You’ve got a visitor.’

I followed his eye line along the garden path towards our bungalow, where a figure sat crumpled in my doorway.

‘It’s Corey!’ I yanked open the car door and slammed it behind me, running up the path. ‘Corey? Are you OK?’

‘Ella?’ said Corey, un-crumpling. He was all bleary-eyed, and he had a noticeable scab on his eyebrow and a yellowing bruise on his chin. Old wounds.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was waiting for you.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

Another car door slammed and Max ran up the steps, two at a time. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’m still trying to find out,’ I said. Corey was getting to his feet, adjusting his glasses with one hand and clutching his skateboard with the other. ‘Why are you on my doorstep?’

‘No one answered.’

‘My dad’s gone to Manchester to do a book signing and see my brother. He’s just had a baby. What’s happened? Is something wrong?’

‘Ells,’ said Max, folding his arms across his chest and nodding. I followed his eye line towards the bottom of the road. A figure stood beneath a lamp post opposite Corey’s grandparents’ house; a stocky figure with a shaved head, wearing a rugby top and jeans.

‘Let’s go inside,’ I said, getting out my key and ushering both boys through the front door, keeping one eye on the distant stranger.

Me and Max had grown up with Corey Malinowski (his full name was Corneliusz, but we’d never called him that). We’d spent the summers together, us and him and Fallon and Zane. He’d gone to Brynstan Academy too, but he’d mostly been one of the school loners – he had a mild form of cerebral palsy, a hearing aid and two dead parents, so he was pretty much begging to be an outcast. But to us, he’d been vital. He was the reader of books, the architect of dens, darer of dares, encyclopedia of Harry Potter trivia (seriously, down to page numbers), and the only one who could get a fire going using just sticks. To the other kids, he was that skinny weirdo with the limp; to us, he was a genius.

He took off his tatty Converse by the pillar in our lounge and padded into the kitchen, standing in front of our French windows like they opened onto a long dark tunnel.

‘He’s gone,’ he said, turning to me.

I knew his granddad had a bad heart. ‘Oh, Corey, I’m sorry. Are you OK? How’s your nan coping?’

‘No, no,’ he said, correcting me. ‘Granddad and Nan are on their cruise to the Rhineland. For their anniversary.’ His voice was shaky, and before each sentence, he would sort of rev up to get going. I’d forgotten he did that. ‘No, it’s Mort.’

His cat! Phew. ‘What’s happened to him?’

Corey sat down on one of the heavy pine chairs at the breakfast table. I got some Diet Cokes from the fridge. Max shook his head when I offered him one and leaned against the wall, taking a roll-up out of his tobacco pouch.

‘Patio,’ I said, ordering him towards the French windows. ‘Go on, Corey.’

‘I was outside on my skateboard yesterday, and Mort got in my way.’

‘And you… ran him over?’

‘No,’ he said, his eyes creasing up. A single tear fell. ‘I put him on my board. I was gonna Instagram it.’

I bit both my cheeks to stop the laugh. Corey was always doing things like this. His nan sometimes saw my dad – they both did the sugar-craft class at the community centre – and she told him how much Corey got on her nerves with his ‘experiments’. Putting foil in the microwave, just to see. Trying to drive his granddad’s car out the garage, just to see. Asking out a supply teacher, just to see. Nothing ever ended well.

Max poked his head through the gap in the French windows. ‘Did I just hear right? You put your cat on your skateboard?’

I threw Max a death stare and turned back to Corey.

‘OK, so you put him on your board. Then what?’

‘The board went too fast. He got to the bottom of the close where there’s that hilly bit and then the kerb. And it flipped him up and he crashed into the wall.’

I felt bad for Corey, but not for Voldemort. I couldn’t stand that cat. It was always wailing outside our French windows, waiting for my dad to make a fuss of it. He even bought tuna for it – from the Finest range. I didn’t really like animals, anyway, and cats were the worst of all. And Mort was the worst of all cats. He hated me. His yellow eyes were full of it, like it was thinking, I know your secret.

‘Right. Well, we better go and scrape him up then. I’ll help you bury him.’

Corey pulled back, wiping his nose on his jumper sleeve. ‘No, he’s not dead,’ he said. ‘He got up straight away and ran off. I haven’t seen him since. But he could be injured, Ella. Dying somewhere. We need to look for him.’

‘Why didn’t you start looking?’ said Max, poking his head through again. ‘Why wait for Ella?’

Corey didn’t respond to that. ‘Can you help me, Ella? Please? I don’t know where to start. What if Zane’s found him? He might do something to him.’

Then I knew for sure who the figure was, standing under the lamp post. It had been Zane. I’d seen him a few times in our road, or thought I’d seen him. He didn’t live round here, though. He lived on the seafront.

‘OK, Corey, let’s get looking. We’ll find Mort, I promise.’

Corey leaned in for a hug. ‘I knew you’d help me,’ he said.

‘Max’ll help too,’ I said. ‘Won’t you, Max?’

Max rolled his eyes, but flicked his fag butt outside onto the flagstones. At once, I barged past him and went to stamp it out, just in case the world burned down.

‘Why did you feel like you had to help?’

5

An Old Friend One month earlier – 9 July

Corey’d had a crap life. Not only had he been born with a disability but his junkie dad died of an overdose when Corey was months old; his junkie mum killing herself a year later. He’d got lucky with his grandparents. They took him in, wrapped him in home knits, organised physio and speech therapists and treated him like a little prince. But at school, he was one of the loners; one of ‘those’ kids with an aura of stay-away about them. The last few years had leached something out of him. He looked like Kurt Cobain gone wrong, with his shaggy, dirty-blond hair, baggy jeans and cardigans. He had this low, almost apologetic voice. We’d barely spoken in months.

I still saw him around town, though; a headphone zombie skulking in doorways, sitting on walls eating pasties from a Greggs bag, or in the churchyard, reading comics and fantasy novels. He worked at the computer shop in town, had about six Twitter followers and idolized his cat, Mort. All his Instagram posts were pictures of Mort reaching up to paw at a toy mouse or wearing a little sombrero next to a stand-and-stuff taco.

Everyone knew what Zane was like with Corey. We’d seen the spit glistening in his hair, the bend in his glasses. I was afraid Zane had done something to Mort. And it would be my fault if he had. Our last day of school, I’d been in the girls’ changing rooms when I heard noises outside:

‘Please, please don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t, I swear, I promise. No! Pleeeeease!’

‘Go on, have it!’

Cough Cough. Nggghhhhhhhhh.

‘Do it!’ A burst of laughter.

Cough. Aaaarggghhh. Nggghhh.

It was coming from outside, by the wheelie bins, so I stood up on the bench and peeked through the top-opening window. There were three of them around Corey, who was on the ground, curled up like one of those little cellophane fish you get in Christmas crackers. His cries echoed off the bins – muffled, because he had a banana skin in his mouth. Zane Walker kicked him in the stomach. Then the other two joined in, and I felt every kick like it was ricocheting back onto me. A fire started to glow in my belly.

‘Streak of piss. You wet your pants yet? Let’s have a look,’ came Zane’s unmistakable Essex twang. One of his mates yanked down Corey’s trousers.

Without any more thinking, I grabbed a hockey stick from the pegs, ran to the fire exit and banged down on the bar, bursting through into the open air.

‘Get off him!’ I yelled, gripping the stick with both hands to stop them shaking.

Corey squirmed away to yank up his trousers as the other boys turned to me. Three pigs – Zane Walker, Danny Leech and Andrew Tanner. Danny Leech did rugby and was a good shot-putter. He was also a wuss. He ran off straightaway, sunshine bouncing off his highlights.

Andy Tanner’s mum was a receptionist at our GP surgery. I also happened to know her pet name for him; I’d heard her call him once.

‘Run along, Piglet. Unless you want me to call Mummy and rat you out?’

Tanner went violently puce in both cheeks, gobbing on Corey’s hair as a parting shot. ‘Hit me up when you’re done, Walks. See you in town.’ They fist-bumped and Piglet swaggered off, giving me a finger on each hand as he went.

And then there was Zane.

He was a big guy these days; all hench and shaven-headed with a scowl in his eyes that could shatter glass. But I knew all his weak points. Fear of horror stories, horror movies, bees. Fear of being fat. But he wasn’t afraid of me. He’d taken me out in our judo bouts on Max’s living room carpet a million times. And he was a superstar fly-half on the rugby team now. He looked me up, then down, and laughed. ‘What do you care, Estella?’

The fury took over, and I ran forward, ramming my whole body into him until his back hit the wall. I was strong, but I couldn’t hold him – he laughed, grabbing the stick and throwing it to the ground. Then he got right up in my face, so I could smell the Germolene on his zit scabs. Rage ran through my body like a bush fire. I got my stance, levelled my fists and swung my right arm back into a punch that I could hear sweeping the air. But I missed.

‘Ha! Try again, babe. You got a good action there.’

To my horror, I found myself doing the exact same thing.

‘You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,’ he said, killing himself laughing.

It was then that I saw the kitchen slop bucket by one of the bins.

‘And you’re lucky these are today’s leftovers.’ In one movement, I lunged across for the bucket and launched the contents straight over his head. In seconds, Zane was covered in a chunky, vomity goo of custard, mince, mash, soggy bread, chips, rice pudding, pasta and peas. The raging fire inside me fizzled into joy like popping candy.

‘Oh, you are DEAD,’ the Abominable Lunch Man roared, lunging after me. By the grace of God – and the vomity goo – he slipped as he came, landing hard on his backside.

‘Quick, come on!’ I said, grabbing the hockey stick and practically dragging Corey back through the fire exit before Zane dived after us.

We headed for the girls’ toilets, cuss words peppering the air behind us.

‘You’re dead! Both of you. Deceased!’

I locked the bathroom door behind us, barricading it with the hockey stick, then parked a shivering Corey on a toilet, his glasses hanging on his ear by one bent arm.

Within seconds, Zane was banging and kicking the door from the other side.

‘Get out here, bitch!’ Bang bang bang. ‘I’m gonna kill you!’

The door pulsed and rattled but I tried to take no notice, although really I was petrified. ‘He’ll go away in a minute.’

I grabbed the roll of loo paper from the cistern behind Corey and wound it around and around my hand, then rinsed it under the cold tap.

Bang bang bang. ‘I’ll have you, bitch, I’ll kill the pair of you! Get out here now!’

I crouched down beside Corey and inspected his face. Blood ran from his mouth.

‘Don’t worry, he won’t get in,’ I told him, dabbing with shaky hands. ‘Do you remember when he wet his pants in the middle of our Nativity? And that picnic, when he got stung by the bee? And Jessica telling us horror stories on sleepovers – Zane was the worst wuss. They had to call his mum once!’

Bang bang BANG BANG BANG. Corey winced.

‘Jessica told the best stories.’ He bowed his head. ‘The one about the Witch’s Pool was my favourite. Remember when she told that on Halloween night? I go through the graveyard and sit beside her sometimes. Stupid.’

‘It’s not stupid, Corey. I’ve done that too,’ I said. ‘I always felt like she was my sister as well as Max’s. I wished she was. Instead I’ve got two great big brothers who still think it’s funny to fart on my head.’

Corey smiled.

‘Oh, you think that’s funny, do you? Olly once put blue food colouring on my toothbrush. I had blue teeth all day. My mum went mental.’

Corey laughed properly at that, the sound taking me way back. It was only then I realised the banging outside had stopped. There were appalled voices outside. Teachers. Zane wasn’t about to admit a girl had thrown slops over him – he must have come up with an explanation for them. The voices died away into the distance.

‘See? Told you he’d go away,’ I said, holding the cold compress to Corey’s eyebrow.

‘I saw you at County Champs,’ he said. ‘You were amazing. Like Volcano Girl.’

‘That’s what they call me,’ I said, recalling the recent headline in the local paper.

‘No, the real Volcano Girl. She’s a superhero in one of my comics. She’s faster than Flash, and she’s got lava coming out of her heels.’

‘I’m not into comics.’ I dropped the wad of bloody paper and bundled up another one, ready to wet it.

Corey sucked his bottom lip, split where Zane had punched it. ‘I saw you erupt at your house, too. I was walking past and your lounge curtains were open. You were punching the pillar in your lounge.’

My cheeks burned. ‘You might have a scar. It’s going to look cool, though. Let’s check your vision. OK, how many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Three.’

‘Er—’

‘How many were you holding up?’

‘Almost three.’

There was a depressed silence.

‘I’ve never seen him go at anyone like he does with you,’ I said, returning to the toilet cubicle with another batch of wet compresses. ‘You used to be such good mates.’

‘It’s because I know his secret. He thinks I’ll tell everyone. But I haven’t. I wouldn’t.’

‘What secret?’ My phone buzzed in my pocket. Without looking, I knew it was a text from Max.

Corey shrugged. ‘I promised I wouldn’t tell.’

Automatically, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the message.

Are you done with education yet? Fancy coming over to mine? The olds are out. We’ve got all afternoon. Maxxx

I turned off my phone and looked back at Corey. ‘School’s over now. I don’t have anywhere to be. So what’s Zane’s secret?’

‘Did he tell you Zane’s secret?’

6

An Adventure Beckons

No, he wouldn’t tell me. He’d sworn to Zane that he would keep his secret, and he wasn’t going to budge. That was the kind of boy Corey was. If not for his condition, he’d have been perfect for the SAS; no way was anything going to break him. He was a much better person than me.

Zane had gone by the time we trooped down the hill on our quest for Mort. Thank God. He’d always been a bit weird as a kid – he ate too much, swore too much, he insisted on always challenging us to duels or fights. He had this stupid habit of hiding our things and making us look for them and he was also the stopper of sneezes – surely the most evil of all vices. But at school, these things had been amplified. He swore at teachers, shagged around, picked fights with any ‘poof’ who dared to argue with him. Corey was exactly the kind of geek a brainless beefcake like Zane Walker grown up would bully, but I still didn’t understand why you’d pick on someone who’d been one of your best friends.

We looked everywhere for Mort – all the Rittmans’ businesses, the pubs, up and down the High Street, the bins in the alley at the back of the seafront hotels, Tesco car park, and finally the pier. Corey went inside the kiosk to ask the manager if he’d seen him – sometimes cats went there for fish scraps. It was starting to drizzle, and Max rubbed his hands up and down my arms. The breeze from the sea was a cold one, and my cheeks were getting sore with wind chill. Max must have been freezing too. He only had his Street Reaper sleeveless hoody on,

‘He’s a bloody nightmare, isn’t he?’ he said, teeth beginning to chatter.

‘Dressed in a daydream,’ I added, moving his hair from his eyes and cuddling him in close. He looked good today. He was wearing the basketball vest I’d bought him for his birthday, skinny jeans and his new Vans. ‘You saw Zane hanging around, didn’t you? Opposite Corey’s house?’

‘Yeah, I did.’

‘I don’t want to leave him on his own today, Max. Just in case.’

Just then, Corey came out of the shop with a massive bag of sweets, crisps and cans.

‘For you guys,’ he said. ‘For helping me look for Mort.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But we should get back. Maybe Mort’s gone back to yours?’

Corey shook his head. ‘He won’t. He’s too scared.’ His face radiated terror. ‘Oh my God – what if Rosie’s got him?’

‘Why would she have him? She lives in the back of beyond. It’s a bit unlikely,’ I said, trying to head him off.

‘Ooh, I dunno,’ said Max, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘If a cat’s gone missing in suspicious circumstances, Roadkill Rosie’s got to be involved, hasn’t she? Old Witchy Woo herself.’

The Brynstan-on-Sea grapevine had declared years ago that Rosie Hayes was a witch. Any animal that went missing, Rosie was the prime suspect. Sometimes we’d seen her as kids, hanging out at the farm with Fallon, but more often than not she’d be out in the tractor, or just going somewhere in the ‘Torture Truck’. People said worse about them now: Fallon had been expelled for sleeping with a teaching assistant, and people said now she was some kind of prostitute. Rosie was a gypsy, possibly even a serial killer. They stole cattle, had bats in their cellar, fed their pigs on human remains. There was talk of skulls in the freezer, body parts left out for the bin men, even an amputated you-know-what in the kettle on her stove. You know how people talk – rumours appear like cracks in egg shells and before long giant eagles have taken to the air.

Neil had done a lot to help spread those rumours.

‘I reckon Mort’ll be in a pie by now,’ said Max. ‘Ooh, I’ve got a hell of a peck on for Mort ’n’ chips. Remember Rosie’s suspicious stews? You never saw the same cat twice round their house. And the stories Jess used to tell us about Witch’s Pond?’

‘Stop winding him up,’ I said. ‘All that stuff about the cannibalism and the Witch’s Pool is crap. We know Rosie – at least, we used to.’

But Corey wasn’t laughing. ‘She might have picked him up, just by accident. She does that – we know she does. The farm was always crawling with stray cats when we used to go there. Could we go out and look? Just to see?’

‘No way!’ said Max, the smile wiped off his face. ‘My dad would never forgive me.’

Corey looked confused so I filled him in. ‘It was because of Rose that they recorded an open verdict at Jessica’s inquest. Rose insisted she saw her walk in front of the bus. On purpose,’ I added, quietly.

‘Stupid cow,’ Max grumbled. ‘Mum’ll go loopy if she knows we’ve even thought of going out there.’

‘It’s unlikely Rosie picked up Mort anyway,’ I told Corey. ‘I vote we go back to yours.’

‘No! Please, we have to try. Missing animals always end up there.’

‘Corey, come on, be logical. Rosie never comes into town any more.’

‘But we’ve tried everywhere else. Please?’ This time, he was brimming tears, his eyes all huge behind his glasses. Going to Whitehouse Farm meant nudging a hornets’ nest, as I knew perfectly well, but I couldn’t talk him out of it. He seemed desperate.

‘Fine, we’ll go out to Rosie’s,’ I sighed. Max made an outraged noise at once. ‘We won’t stay long. Your parents won’t ever know we were there. You can drive us, can’t you?’

‘Uh, no,’ he scoffed. ‘My car’s only two months old. Some of the roads out that way are just dirt tracks.’

‘There’s a bus to Cloud that stops twice a day at the bottom of our road,’ Corey said. ‘I’ve seen it on the timetable. There’s one at lunch and one back at teatime. I’ll pay.’

‘Damn right you will,’ said Max.

Just then, a car rolled along the seafront and came to a stop next to us. The driver’s window rolled down. It was Neil, in his glimmering midnight-blue Jaguar.

‘Alright, son?’ He beamed, showing teeth whiter than the seagull slime on his windscreen. He always looked uglier, each time I saw him, despite the amount of surgery he’d had to fix his nose. Max beamed back at him, loping over to the car and leaning against the door frame.

‘Alright, Dad? What time’s the guy coming to pick it up?’

A Renault Clio beeped behind. Lazily, Neil threw a rude hand gesture as it overtook, gunning its engine.

‘About six he said, give or take. Got a brand new Porsche coming in a couple of weeks.’ He was telling me, more than anyone else.

‘What are you going to do till then?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer. Max had told me.

‘Garage is providing a hire car. Mercedes Sport. Just to tide me over. You coming round to see the Porsche when it arrives? Jo’s going to do a lunch. Get all the family over.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, unenthusiastically. ‘That’ll be nice.’

‘Good. What you up to now, then?’

Max spun Neil a yarn about how we were all going into town to look at some new phone as Corey hung back with me and we wandered over to the sea wall to watch the tide vomiting up clumps of seaweed and lager cans, leaving a trail of foamy spit on the steps.

‘He hasn’t changed then,’ said Corey.

‘Nope.’ I smiled. ‘Still a knob head.’

‘Do they still live in that massive bungalow overlooking the bay? The one that backs onto the dunes with the big black gates…’

‘… and panoramic views of Brynstan Bay and outdoor pool and three en suites and gold taps. JoNeille.’

Corey laughed. ‘Jo and Neil. How corny? I always envied Max though, having a garden that backed onto the beach. Well, the dunes, anyway. Ours backs onto a dog toilet.’

‘Don’t be fooled, Corey. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.’

‘Huh?’

‘Nothing. It’s just this stupid quote Dad’s got framed in his study.’

‘Max’ll inherit all that when they croak, won’t he?’

‘He’s not interested in the money,’ I said. ‘Not really. Max would be happier working for a living, I know he would. He just hasn’t got any incentive to at the moment. He’s certainly not arsed about all the businesses, the arcades and the garden centre and that.’

‘He owns the Pier now, doesn’t he?’

A salty breeze stung my eyes. ‘Yep. Yet another Rittman Inc property. It’s like a cancer in this town.’

‘Doesn’t Greenland sponsor your running? He can’t be that much of a knob head.’

‘Oh he is, believe me. And it’s only while I’m winning. He’s still a twat.’

‘Huge twat,’ Corey added.

‘Colossal.’

‘Mammoth.’

‘Gargantuan.’

‘Humungulous!’

We were laughing by the time Neil sped off down the seafront and Max returned to us.

‘What are you two giggling about?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Come on, we’ve got a cat to find.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, flinging an arm around me. ‘And a serial killer to ask about it.’

*

I don’t know why I didn’t try harder to talk Corey out of going to Whitehouse Farm. Maybe a part of me wanted to go back. A pretty sadistic part. Maybe I wanted to be reminded of a place I used to go as a child, before everything went wrong. I don’t know, I really don’t.

But anyway, we took the lunchtime bus to Cloud, the tiny village on the outskirts of Brynstan, where ‘Roadkill Rosie’ lived. It had been a while since any of us had been out there – Fallon had been the only reason. We’d befriended her in primary school, on the basis that she would do anything for a dare; ‘Don’t Dare Fallon’ became one of our catchphrases. Take your knickers off and throw them at that windscreen. Jump off Devil’s Rocks. Steal a Chocolate Orange. Flick a chip at that policeman. Go past the preaching Christians on the corner of the High Street singing that song about blow jobs. She’d do it all. She had no fear. She was also the kindest person I’d ever met.

The bus ride was endless, just like tomorrow seems like next year when you’re a kid. I drifted into a daydream of the past. We were in the lounge at JoNeille – me, Max, Fallon, Corey and Zane – and we’d made a den out of the dining chairs, with some king size bed sheets draped over the top. All around the inside were sofa cushions, and in the middle we’d got ourselves a midnight feast of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, crisps, Haribos and cans of cherry Tango. Suddenly, a head parted the flimsy wall, giving a terrible cry.

‘Wooooaoaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhh!’

‘Argh! Jessica, don’t scare us like that!’

‘Ha! What are you lot doing in here?’

‘Dad said we could make a den and sleep in here tonight.’

‘Have they gone out?’

‘Yeah. Some dinner dance thing. Where have you been?’

‘Just out, Beaky Boy.’

‘Can you tell us a story, Jess?’

‘Oh, not another story, Ella.’

‘Yeah, please, Jess. Tell us a really scary one.’

‘You can’t handle a scary one, Zane. We had to call your mum when I read you some Silence of the Lambs, remember?’

‘I won’t cry this time, I promise. Please.’

‘OK. Give me an idea, then, and I’ll tell you a scary story about it.’

‘Ummm…’

‘Cats!’

‘Cats? All right, then, Corey, cats it is. Hmm. Well, OK. There’s this Edgar Allan Poe story called ‘The Black Cat’. Have I told you that one before?’

‘No. Tell us now!’

‘OK, well, a long time ago, there once was this man who lived in this house with his wife and their cat—’

‘What was the cat called?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe Claude or something. Yeah, Claude. Anyway, Claude was black, black as night, and the couple who owned him loved him very much. Then, as time went on, the man started to drink way more than he should—’

‘Was he sad about something?’

‘Yeah, he’d probably lost his job or something or he hated being married, something like that. Anyway, he started taking out all his problems on the cat. When he was drunk he got moody, and the cat was always around, rubbing against his legs and meowing for food. And one day, this cat got on the man’s nerves so much that he took it out into his back garden…’

*

The bus dropped us off on the corner of Long Lane, and we walked the rest of the way until we came to the grubby sign for Whitehouse Farm, me with a gnawing throb of dread in my chest. Weirdly, it hadn’t changed at all in the years since we’d last been there. The mud-spattered jeep was still parked in a garage next door; the field opposite was still barricaded with three rusty shopping trolleys, linked end to end with rope. The sweet smells of hay and dung still hung in the air, and, despite my fear, I felt strangely happy to be back.

‘Go on then,’ said Max, nudging Corey forward. ‘Go and see if Mort’s there. Then we can go.’

Corey took one look back at the everlasting lane we had just walked down from the bus. I saw him take a deep breath. Then he led us inside, one by one.

‘Oh my GOD!’

FlapflapflapflapflutterflutterflutterScreeeeeech!

‘Get it off! Get it off me!’

‘AARGH!’

‘What the HELL is THAT?’

‘Jesus!’

Hell had been unleashed, and we were in the middle of it. Things squawked and screeched at me from branches, flapping about beneath the corrugated plastic roof. There were living things everywhere; creatures, birds, things crawling over my feet. Rabbits, ferrets, cats and an earless Jack Russell terrier brutally shagging a wig. Everywhere you looked were scruffy, eyeless or legless animals: a furry, flappy, feathery nightmare.

‘Shut the door, quick!’ a voice shouted, and Corey dived behind us to bang it shut.

All the way to Cloud, I’d held on to one hope – that Fallon Hayes might not be home. That we could just ask Rosie if she’d seen Mort, commiserate with Corey when she hadn’t, then walk back to the pub on the main road and call a cab back into town. But the curt instruction had come from a girl – a long-legged, green-eyed girl with slightly buck teeth, a platinum blonde confusion of hair, and thick make-up. She had once been my best friend.

I took a deep breath. ‘Hi, Fallon.’

‘Was it strange, being back there again?’

7

Back at Whitehouse Farm

That’s the weird thing. It was like the last four years hadn’t happened.

‘Oh, it’s you guys!’ she said, stroking a trembling white rabbit. ‘Hi, Ella!’

‘Yeah, hi.’ I nudged away a teacup Chihuahua in a sailor suit that was trying to piss on my trainers. ‘How are you, Fallon?’

She was smiling. A genuine smile, full of joy. She still had the same riot of freckles, like a leaf blower had blasted them to the four corners of her face. I hadn’t expected her to be quite so happy to see us.

‘I haven’t seen you for ages!’ The rabbit wriggled in her arms but she held it steady. ‘Wow – you got cute, Max!’ Max laughed and rubbed his mouth. ‘And Corey! This is brilliant! Zane’s not with you, is he?’

Max rose to the challenge of answering that one. ‘No. We don’t see him any more.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s almost like the old times, isn’t it?

‘It was only four years ago,’ said Corey.

The joy disappeared from her face as quickly as it had arrived. I knew she was thinking about the funeral – the last time she’d seen us. ‘How are you, Max? How’s your mum?’

‘OK, thanks. Well, she has her days – you know. Dad’s cool, though.’

‘And, Corey, how’s your nan and granddad? Have you still got all your Harry Potter stuff? How’s baby Voldemort?’

I cut in at that point. ‘Actually, Mort’s the reason we’re here. He’s gone missing, and we were wondering if you’d seen him?’

I flapped away a rogue canary, nudging Corey. ‘Has he got a collar on, Corey?’

‘Yeah, a blue one. It’s brand new,’ he said, stepping behind me, cheeks so red I thought his head might explode. I’d forgotten he’d had a crush on Fallon four years ago. By the look of him, it had resurfaced.

‘No, I would have recognised Voldy.’

‘Mort,’ Corey corrected.

‘Actually, we haven’t seen any gingers lately,’ she pondered. ‘We had one come in with one eye. That was gingerish. You can have one of the tortoiseshells. Got loads of them.’

‘No,’ said Corey. ‘His collar says “Malinowski” and it’s got my number on it.’

‘Can’t you just take that one?’ said Max, pointing to a scrawny black cat licking its backside on an upturned bucket.

‘You can’t have Esmerelda,’ said Fallon. ‘She’s ours. Mum might have some more on the truck that she’s picked up this morning, but she’s not back yet. She shouldn’t be too long though, if you want to wait?’

Max and Corey failed to answer – they were both in a trance, looking at her bottom as she bent over to put the rabbit down. She looked quite fat, under her frilly white vest, tiny denim shorts and mud-speckled moon boots. She started back up the steps to the farmhouse. ‘You can wait for Mum inside, if you like. She should be back soon. We’ve got Sprite.’

Obediently, we all traipsed into the farmhouse behind Fallon, as if Sprite was the most golden carrot she could dangle. Cobwebs drooped in the corners of the kitchenette like forgotten Halloween decorations; the room opened up onto the same dingy lounge area, with the same tired leather three-piece and walls seemingly made from stacks of old newspapers. The shelving all around the top of the room was packed with ornaments, stuffed birds and woodland animals in small glass cases and clean white animal skulls acting as bookends and paperweights. The only light in the room came from two small windows and a box beside the fireplace with a nightlight inside, illuminating photos of Kate Middleton.

A little bird fluttered in from the lean-to and landed on a beam above our heads.

‘Don’t mind the mounts,’ said Fallon, having seen Max staring up at the shelves of stuffed animals. ‘They all died naturally.’

She retrieved three jam jars from a kitchen cupboard and put them on the breakfast bar. Not trendy jam jars like in some upmarket shabby chic restaurant either – actual old jam jars with the labels still glued on.

‘Where’s your mum gone?’ I asked, moving aside a broken hamster cage to sit on a stool. Max stood beside me, hands still in his pockets.

‘Gone to collect some pigs who died in the night. Sudden Pig Death Syndrome.’

‘What does she do, exactly?’ asked Max. ‘I mean, I know she’s a farmer or summing.’

Fallon turned to the fridge to get the Sprite and poured it out into the empty jam jars, handing them to us. ‘She used to be a farmer. She had to disintegrate, cos supermarkets are bastards with milk prices.’

Corey smiled. ‘Do you mean diversify?’

‘Yeah, that’s it. We sold off most of our livestock; kept a couple back for milk and wool. Nowadays she’s an ARS. Makes quite good money from that.’

‘A what?’

‘Animal Rescue Specialist. We look after sick animals, nurse them back to health. Kinda like vets, but a lot cheaper. We euthanise too, and cremate, all at cut-price. People report dead sheep or horses or large roadkill to Mum and she’ll go out to them and pick them up. We’ve got a furnace out the back where we burn ’em, if they’re no good for meat or black pudding.’

‘Gross,’ said Corey.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Fallon. ‘It’s a good business. I help out when I can, but it’s a bit difficult at the moment.’ She looked at me and smiled again, so genuine it was kind of unnerving. A three-legged white cat, wearing a small plastic tiara, limped across the worktops, stopping by the stove to nuzzle the kettle; the kettle, potentially, with the you-know-what in it. A guinea pig ventured in and Fallon picked up a broken tennis racket and lightly tapped its tangly little arse back down the steps. While she was gone, Max moved over to the stove, prized off the lid of the kettle and peeked inside. Corey looked at him expectantly but he shook his head

After we’d gulped down the jam-jar Sprite and some stale smoky bacon Mini Cheddars, Rosie still wasn’t back, so Fallon said she’d take us round the farm.

It was sad, really. The fantastic playground the farm used to be – giant tractors, rope swings, creeks, orchards, haunted corners and woods to ride our bikes through at breakneck speed – it was all still there, but we could see it now for what it was. Just a small, downtrodden smallholding in the middle of nowhere, housing dead or dumped animals, full of rust and mud. As kids, we saw the magic there. We saw magic in everything. Something about growing up kicks that out of you without you even realising it’s happening.

‘It’s a shame Zane’s not here,’ said Fallon. ‘Do you remember when those boys chased us at the swimming pool, Ella? We told them to get lost, but they kept on trying to kiss us.’

It was a memory I’d forgotten until Fallon unlocked it. ‘God, yeah, I do.’

‘Zane saw them off. He hated anything like that. His dad used to beat up his mum.’

‘I never knew that,’ said Max.

‘Yeah,’ said Fallon. ‘They split up. Zane still lives in that ground floor flat on the seafront with her.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked her.

‘I’ve seen him a few times since the – funeral,’ she said, guiltily. ‘I’m so sorry about what Mum said at Jessica’s inquest, Max. She really didn’t mean any harm, I promise you.’

There was a brief silence and awkward looks all round. Then:

‘Where are we going, exactly?’ asked Corey, bringing us back to the matter in hand.

‘We could go down as far as the old railway line if you want,’ said Fallon, as we crossed the road to the field gated by the three shopping trolleys. ‘Nine times out of ten, if someone’s lost a cat, that’s where they’ll be. Get loads of mice down there, cos loads of rubbish gets dumped. Mum’s had to go down a few times cos of a fallen cow.’

So we headed across the lane to the fields and orchard, in the direction of the old railway line – a long road cut into the hillside, leading from Brynstan Bay through the interconnecting villages, and on towards Bristol. We used to race our bikes down there as kids. The big attraction was the Witch’s Pool but you had to go miles down the track to get to it. There was an old railway tunnel halfway along the Cloud section of the line; we used to race through it at top speed, pretending a witch lived in the darkest part. If we went too slowly, there was a danger she’d reach out her bony fingers and grab us, dragging us screaming to our deaths. Zane was the most scared of all of us – I’d never seen anyone ride a bike as fast as him.

Past a chicken coop and a pen where four silky black goats were chomping on large heads of lettuce, we came to a rickety barn. Inside it, behind a mountain of hay bales, was a stash of small brown bottles. Each had a label on the front that read ‘Acid Rain’.

‘Mum’s home brew,’ said Fallon. ‘We’ve got a ton of the stuff. Help yourselves.’

Max grabbed four bottles, and Corey put two in his bag of sweets from the Pier. I didn’t take any, and Fallon said she preferred Capri-Suns. I couldn’t work out if she was joking.

Fallon had grown up in a different way to us three. She hadn’t grown up in the town like we had, so she was quite oblivious to a lot of the things we said, some of our slang. I almost envied her, a child wearing teenage skin that was never going to fit. I wanted to ask her if she had kept my secret, but I couldn’t with the boys around. It was too much to hope she’d forgotten all about it.

Max pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Along with it came a small see-through bag, with a clump of what looked like dried grass. I’d seen it before. He’d dropped it at the garden centre the other night. I was first to reach it this time.

‘What’s this?’ I said, handing it back to him.

‘Nothing. Just a bit of weed.’

‘Weed? You mean, drugs?’

‘Keep your voice down, or they’ll want some.’

Still processing his answer, I followed Fallon through the orchard and across a field into the mottled darkness of the forest, making our way down a dirt track veined with tree roots. On either side of the track, the forest grew thinner and the pale yellow fields grew thicker. I scratched my now burning neck all over. I hadn’t realised how annoyed I’d become.

‘Can’t you take a pill or summing?’ said Max.

‘Like you, you mean?’ I snipped.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh, I get it. You’re pissed I didn’t tell you about the weed.’

‘Yeah, all right, I am. I know everything about you, Max. I know that still sleep with the same Buddy Bear that your nan bought you when you were born.’

‘Ssh,’ he said, looking back for the others, but they were way behind us now.

‘I know you love tomatoes but hate ketchup. I know where you got every single bracelet on your wrist, cos I was with you when you got them all. I know you still use the peach shampoo Jessica used to like. I even know why that little tuft of hair won’t grow at the base of your neck. So why don’t I know you do drugs?’

‘It’s not like it’s heroin, Ells; just a bit of skunk. It’s no big deal.’

‘You said weed, now it’s skunk? Isn’t that the strongest one?’

‘Nah, it’s cool. It relaxes me. Seriously. Don’t sweat it.’

‘But people have gone mad on that, Max. Like, proper schiz. Are you high right now?’

‘Stop making such a big deal out of it! It’s nothing. I just didn’t tell you cos I knew you’d get a hair up your ass about it.’

‘How often?’ I asked.

He was getting antsy. ‘Just a few spliffs now and again.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, just now and again, all right? A couple of spliffs in the morning. A shottie or summing before I go to bed. It helps me sleep.’

I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I was waiting for him to smile and say he was joking. But he didn’t.

‘You should try it. Might loosen you up a bit.’ He swigged from his Acid Rain bottle – the final straw.

‘God, you are being the biggest arsehole today!’

‘No, I just meant to relax you. I didn’t mean…’

As I barged past him, he threw me a look like I’d taken his Buddy Bear and given him a bundle of barbed wire to cuddle.

The descent through the long grasses stopped at thick walls of leaves, and the long grey road of the Strawberry Line. The trains that used to run along there had taken strawberries and cheese to Bristol, and beyond. Now the tracks were gone and all the way along was an overgrown archway of trees and hedges, broken up in one direction by a huge black arc – the tunnel. A jogger huffed past and two cyclists were mere dots on the horizon. Apart from a dog walker with four elderly shih-tzus, we four were alone. We started walking, Fallon and Corey chattering away like old friends. Max was swigging Acid Rain, and I was ignoring him.

‘Pete jogs down here,’ I said. There was a definite eye roll from Max but I didn’t draw attention to it. ‘I’ve done some sprints along here too, at West Brynstan where the bend is.’

‘Who’s faster, you or Pete?’ asked Corey,

‘Oh Pete of course,’ Max butted in. ‘Pete’s good at everything. You should see him curing lepers.’ He sniggered and swigged at his bottle. I gave him the stink eye but he was ignoring me this time.

The air became colder as we reached the mouth of the tunnel; the smell of the limestone took me straight back in time. The slimy feel of the walls at the darkest point – the drip of rock water on my hair – all gave me a familiar thrill.

A little way along, Corey called out ‘Oh my God’ and it echoed around us. He’d seen a group of cats, all crowded around the carcass of a dead rabbit. As soon as they saw the torch, they began to scatter; some running back the way we’d come, others straight on into the tunnel.

‘I told you there were cats down here,’ said Fallon. ‘Was any of them Mort, Corey?’

‘No,’ he called back, his voice sounding strangled.

‘You really love Mort, don’t you?’

Corey sniffed. ‘He means a lot to me. I found him in a skip. He was only a few days old. I took him home and stayed up all night, giving him milk, keeping him warm. Granddad said I could only keep him if I laid out for all his food. So I did. He was my reason.’

None of us asked what Corey meant by that. I think we all just knew.

All of a sudden, there was chaos behind us. We looked back into the darkness to see four figures on bikes, all hollering. As they got nearer, I realised they were just kids. But they were shouting abuse – mostly at Fallon.

I couldn’t make out all of what they were shouting, but the odd phrase was clear. All right, retard? How’s your goats doing, Fallon? Hey, ugly girl! Butterface! Two boys and two girls, all younger than us. The eldest boy, no more than twelve, waggled his tongue at her as his bike sailed past. It was all over in seconds.

‘Who were they?’ said Max as the whoops died away in the distance.

‘Oh, just the Shaws. The boys go to that posh private school over in the next village. They’re idiots. They shaved a couple of our goats over Easter. And they write things on the farmhouse walls sometimes. They think Mum’s a witch who kills and skins people. You must have heard the rumours.’

None of us could deny it. We’d all heard the things people in Brynstan said about Rosie. The things we had all said. Things we’d laughed at.

‘Can we go and see the Witch’s Pool?’ asked Corey. ‘Just for old time’s sake?’

‘Uh yeah, if you like,’ said Fallon. ‘I doubt there will be any cats up there though. Never seen any animals round there at all.’

We were all looking at Max, as though it was up to him to decide whether or not we should go. He shrugged. So we carried on walking.

What had seemed like miles when I was a kid, actually took about ten minutes. Fallon suddenly veered off to the left where there was a weather-beaten sign saying Wit Po and she mounted the bank where some makeshift steps had been carved in the red earth. Max glanced at me then followed on behind her and Corey picked up the rear.

‘Do people still come here?’ I asked, as Fallon parted the overhanging branches to reveal a large overgrown meadow.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘The car park’s just through those trees on the other side and it’s all overgrown and people just tend to use it to dump old mattresses and oil drums. I don’t even think the sign’s on the main road any more. It’s hardly a tourist attraction now.’

I felt uneasy as we walked through those long grasses. I wasn’t actually scared – I guess it was a fear left over from childhood. A habit I hadn’t grown out of. I had no reason to be afraid of it now. And once we had reached it, I could see the place for what it was – an algae-covered, pear-shaped lake with a small broken bridge at one end. The rockery, over which used to flow the fastest little waterfall, was now just a pile of slimy green rocks. But for the midges clouding over the surface, all was still.

‘Is it really bottomless?’ asked Corey, peering over the edge to look into the murk.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Max, nudging him forwards, making him stumble and grab for the ground. I pulled Corey back up, throwing Max eye-daggers.

‘No, it’s not bottomless,’ I said. ‘It was just a story.’

‘It’s based on truth, Ella,’ said Fallon. ‘Don’t you remember Jess telling us about it?’

‘I do,’ said Corey. ‘Well, some of it. I remember it was Halloween and we were sorting out all our sweets in the shed at Max’s.’

‘Ahem, you mean my compact private members club pirate den?’ Max corrected.

‘Yeah, and Jessica came to the window and yelled boo!’ said Fallon. ‘She couldn’t get inside with us because she was too tall. Oh and something about some guy in a black hat?’

‘I remember it,’ said Max.

‘So do I,’ I said. ‘Every word.’

*

BOO!

Jessica! Don’t do that!

Come on then, share out your spoils. Whatcha get? Ooh, Scream Eggs, my favourite.

Where have you been? Mum said you were staying in tonight.

Dad made me work late at the garden centre. Did you have fun trick or treating? I love the outfits. What are you supposed to be?

I’m a Pirate Zombie, Ella’s my Pirate Zombie Wife, Fallon’s the witch from Wizard of Oz, Zane’s Thor and Corey’s Hedwig.

Oh you are a very cute Hedwig, Corey. Look at those little cheeks!

Can you tell us a story, Jess? A spooky one.

Another spooky one? You still haven’t got over the last one, Zane. You just can’t handle the scandal, baby.

Aww, please! Please, I promise I won’t wet myself this time.

Yeah go on, Jess. Just a quick one. Tell us one about a witch!

A witch? Hmm, let me think. You live out near the Witch’s Pool don’t you, Fallon?

Yeah, but there aren’t real witches there.

Oh but there were. A long time ago. See in the old days, like the mid-1600s, there used to be a Witchfinder who stalked through these parts looking for witches to put to trial and death.

Why?

Well people just didn’t like witches. They thought they were evil. Any woman caught doing sorcery or something that couldn’t be explained, it meant they were probably a witch. And so people like the Witchfinder General who was this big tall man in a wide black hat and cloak, used to round up these supposed witches, put them into cages on the back of his wagon, and take them out to places like the Witch’s Pool at Cloud and test them in front of a crowd of witnesses, usually villagers and members of the church.

How did he test if they were witches?

He’d test their honesty. He’d tie a woman up inside a sack and attach a rope to it, then he’d throw her off the bridge into the water. If she bobbed back up to the surface, it meant she was a witch and so she was hauled out and burned alive or hanged. If she was struggling, he would realise she was telling the truth – she wasn’t a witch so she could go free.

Didn’t it just mean they were good swimmers if they came to the top?

Probably. Witchfinders didn’t really bother with little things like common sense.

Did any of them just drown accidentally?

Oh yes. Lots of them did. The Witch’s Pool is said to be bottomless, and many of the drowned ones were never found. That lake is said to be full of female skeletons. Their ghosts haunt it at night.

Zane’s scared.

I’m not, Fallon. You’re lying.

So if somebody’s lying, does that mean they float on water?

So the Witchfinder said, yeah. Why, Ella? You’re not lying about anything, are you?

No.

Are you sure?

Yeah. I always tell the truth.

Better not jump in the pool then or else we’ll find out, won’t we? Liars always float to the top.

*

It was a throwaway comment that hadn’t meant anything, I realise that now. But I remember my face went bright red. And, after that, I never went swimming again, just in case.

It was magic hour by the time we’d walked the length and breadth of the old railway line, searching for Mort but there was no sign of him. We decided to head back to the farm and see if Rosie was home – our last hope was finding him in the day’s truck haul of stray animals. My legs were tired as we crossed the last paddock and arrived back at the field with the trolleys at the entrance. The scorch had gone out of the day, and there was a warm, peachy sweep across the sky. The four of us walked in a line. And though Max hadn’t reached for my hand all afternoon, I kind of didn’t need him to with Corey and Fallon there. It felt like it used to.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. ‘What time was the second bus?’

‘There isn’t one,’ said Corey.

Dread filled my chest. ‘What? You said there were two buses a day. One at lunch and one at tea-time.’

‘Yeah, but not on a Sunday. Reduced timetable.’

‘How are we supposed to get back?’ said Max. ‘And we still haven’t found his cat.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Fallon. ‘You can all stay at mine tonight.’

‘No, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll get a taxi back.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Fallon, flapping her hand. ‘There’s tons of sleeping bags and duvets. You don’t have anything to get back for, do you?’ She seemed slightly desperate.

We actually didn’t. Corey’s grandparents were still on holiday and my dad wouldn’t be back for another couple of days.

‘My parents will go spasmodic if they know I’m out here,’ said Max, all twisty-face. ‘I should get back.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘we don’t have any of our stuff. Toothbrushes. We need to go.’

‘Oh please stay,’ Fallon begged. ‘We’ve got spare toothbrushes somewhere. And blankets and sleeping bags. And more alcohol.’

‘I could text them and say I’m staying at your house, Ells,’ Max suggested.

‘Yeah!’ said Fallon. ‘And we could get a takeaway too. I think the pizza place delivers out here, though I’ve never tried it. We get the leaflet though. We could have a picnic in the lounge and play Monopoly like we used to, what do you say?’ Then she turned to me, all serious-faced for a moment. ‘I’m always the boot though.’

‘Very Famous Five,’ I said. ‘Apart from the booze.’

‘Yeah! Do you remember Jessica reading the stories to us? She gave me all her books the last… time I saw her.’

Max smiled. ‘She knew how much you loved them.’

‘I always thought we were just like them,’ she said with more than a note of sadness in her voice, ‘the five of us. Max was like Julian, the eldest and wisest.’

I snorted. ‘I didn’t know Julian was a pot head.’

‘Ella was George, the tomboy. Zane was Timmy the dog, strong and reliable. I was probably Anne.’

Max laughed. ‘Yeah, and Corey must be Dick.’

If Corey was offended by Max’s remark, he didn’t say. ‘Jessica called us the Fearless Five. That was our name.’

‘Hey, he’s right!’ said Max. ‘I’d forgotten that. Christ, that’s a blast from the past.’

‘Yeah well,’ I said, ‘we’ve all grown up a lot since then.’ I almost felt insulted by it. We weren’t little kids any more – we couldn’t play those kinds of games now. She was dangling memories before my eyes like gold stars I couldn’t reach.

‘We could be the Fearless Five again, now,’ said Fallon. ‘Only we’re four. We don’t have Zane.’ We looked at each other and smiled secretly, not knowing if she was joking.

‘I know!’ she cried. ‘The baby can be Timmy! Then there’s five of us again! Yay!’

‘What baby?’ said Corey.

‘My baby,’ she said. And that was the moment Fallon lifted up her vest to reveal a small, but definite, bump.

‘So that’s when you found out about Fallon being pregnant?’

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