All The Lonely People - David Owen Page 0,25

If they were going after Tinker, there was no way she could just ignore it.

Kat looked again at Wesley, squirming in the other boy’s grip. Had he been a part of the campaign against her? They hardly knew each other, might never even have spoken. She had given him no reason to come after her so fiercely.

‘Sorry, yeah, it’s cool,’ said Wesley. ‘I’ll look out for the email.’

They let him go, laughing, children playing at being bad guys. Kat watched them go their separate ways, and knew with a startling certainty that she had to stop whatever they were up to.

9

Us and Them

The nursery was only five minutes from home, and Wesley hoped they wouldn’t have called Mum because he was late. It sat behind a doctor’s surgery, a short driveway leading around to a low-fenced playground and a colourful bestiary of animal-shaped climbing frames. The walls of the nursery building itself were a chaos of finger paintings. It was a good place, and no matter how much it stretched their budget Wesley was proud they could send Evie there a few times a week.

A woman spattered in a miscellany of stains came out to meet him, leading Evie – dressed as Princess Elsa – by the hand.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Wesley.

The woman – he had forgotten her name again – frowned. ‘She fell and tore her dress today.’

‘I didn’t fall over,’ said Evie, taking Wesley’s hand. ‘I was using ice powers and slipped on the ice.’

‘I bet you didn’t cry, either,’ said Wesley.

Her face scrunched up in disgust at the very idea, and Wesley ruffled her hair until she burst out laughing. On the walk home she detailed the mixed results of her ice power summoning, and insisted she’d have to watch Frozen again to perfect her technique.

The day had taken a couple of unexpected turns, and Wesley could practically hear his brain turning it all over. He had expected to find Kat, return her MacBook, and confirm that she was okay. Instead he had discovered that in all likelihood the things he had done against her had caused her to literally fade from existence. Craziest of all was that he believed it.

And there would be an email arriving from Luke and Justin. Nerves seemed to be boring a hole through his stomach.

A train was rattling over the bridge when they reached home. Parked underneath their flat was a long, silver Jaguar. Several neighbours hung out of their windows for a better look.

‘He’s such a flash git,’ Wesley muttered under his breath.

‘Git!’ mimicked Evie.

‘Don’t tell him I said that.’

‘Git! Git!’

They had a practised routine of going up the stairs together, Wesley swinging her around the turns on the end of his arm. He was already talking when he opened the front door.

‘You’ve got about three more minutes before that car gets . . .’

The words died in his throat. Mum was by the front window, Dave holding her around the shoulders like she would fall without his support. Beyond them, standing inside the kitchen door, was Jordan.

‘All right, bro?’ he said.

Behind him, Wesley felt Evie shelter against his legs.

‘Git?’ she said quietly.

It was habit for Kat to avoid the second and eighth stairs, the ones that creaked like seaside piers in the wind, and she wasn’t going to stop now. She could hear Dad setting up for the night in the front room. After everything she had heard that afternoon she still didn’t have the courage to see if the fade had removed her from his life for good.

She bolted her bedroom door and leaned against it, looking around the walls at her posters and books and collectibles.

‘I love this stuff,’ she said.

Crossing to the ceiling-high shelves behind her bed, she plucked a knitted Totoro from the middle shelf and cuddled it into her chest. With her free hand she ran her fingers along the spines of her DVDs, books and games, arranged in colour order to form a makeshift rainbow from left to right.

‘I don’t think I want to become somebody else,’ she told Totoro.

It had taken years to collect it all, and she had always felt proud at every new addition, like she was adding bricks to a podium on which she could proudly stand tall. She had never been ashamed of any of it, even though she knew it had kept her separate from everybody at school. Even when Suzy had called her Queen of the Nerds and told her to enjoy dying a virgin. This