All The Lonely People - David Owen Page 0,66

Kat hadn’t bothered to come here in years, and the greasy spoon cafe she’d always stopped at with Mum was now an artisan crêpery.

‘Should we try and get something to eat?’ asked Safa.

‘Just show me.’

Along the high street, they passed phone shops and estate agents and upmarket clothes stores. A banner strung between lamp posts was advertising a Halloween market, whatever that meant. First the shops went fancy, then they tried to lure you out to them with extravagant events. It would be happening at home soon.

Safa led her to a Greek fast food place Kat hadn’t known was there, though the stuttering light in its sign and the peeling letters in its window suggested it had been there a while.

‘I told you I’m not hungry.’

‘No, look inside.’

Past lunchtime, it was quiet inside the restaurant. The only customers at the white plastic tables were a balding man biting into a kebab and a young woman sitting close to the counter.

‘What?’

Safa pointed to the woman. ‘She’s my Cradle.’

‘We weren’t together long, but I think we’d liked each other for a while,’ said Selena, frowning as if she had to haul the memory across a great distance. ‘He was the real reason I broke up with Gabriel because, you know, Aaron didn’t treat me like shit.’

Wesley was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that anybody could have been with Selena and been unhappy with their life.

‘When everything with the hashtag started to get out of control, Aaron told me he couldn’t take it any more.’ The group watched in silence while Selena pondered this. ‘I couldn’t blame him, you know? But at the same time it was me dealing with all this abuse. Nobody knew about us, and it wasn’t like I had the option of just walking away from it all. It would have meant a lot if he had stood by me.’

Across the cafe, Selena’s bodyguard watched them closely. Wesley pressed a fist into his restless leg. He wanted to tell her what he knew about the campaign against her, the small part he had played within it. But what good would it do now? It couldn’t change what had happened, and it might keep him from learning information that could save Kat.

‘Do you know what happened to him?’ asked Robbie.

She thought about this for a long moment. ‘I knew he was gone, and I guess I never stopped to ask where. It was just the truth, you know? I used to think about him all the time, whether I was hating him or missing him like crazy. It got really intense one day, and then it just . . . stopped.’

Wesley leaned forward. ‘But you didn’t forget him?’

‘How could I?’ she said. ‘After the message he left me.’

The young woman was reading a thick book propped up against the wall and making notes on a pad, a lock of dark, curly hair escaping her bun and falling across her eyes. A cup of coffee steamed beside her.

‘You’re going to choose her?’ said Kat. ‘After you fade for good?’

The woman glanced up at them and they both pretended to be studying the menu in the window, before remembering that it didn’t matter.

‘It’s not just because she’s gorgeous,’ said Safa. ‘The restaurant is family-owned and from what I can tell they all get on really well. She works here sometimes to help out, but she’s studying full-time to become a therapist.’

Oh, the irony.

‘How many times have you been here?’ said Kat. ‘To learn all this?’

Safa smiled. ‘Thankfully I love souvlaki.’

It sounded too good to be true, and Kat thought of the suppressed something else she had felt when she inhabited the boy at the march. The rainforest inside him had not been as perfect as it seemed.

‘You can’t really know anything about her – not enough to become part of her for ever.’

‘I know she’s more than I’ll ever be.’

Kat turned on her. ‘You don’t know that!’

‘You wanted to know what triggered the fade in me,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t any big moment. It happened the morning I woke up and knew – knew – that I couldn’t go on as myself.’

There was an eerie calm about Safa now, as if being this close to her intended washed away any doubt. As if most of her was already gone. She checked her watch and looked away along the high street. Another young woman, big earrings jangling and an Afro like a halo around her head, was striding towards