All The Lonely People - David Owen Page 0,81

across the main road. What looked like a back entrance was just opposite, but it was too busy for any car to stop. Kat looked further, across the junction to a row of shops and takeaway restaurants. There was a delivery track between them, and there, poking out as far as it could without conspicuously blocking the pavement, was the front of a silver BMW.

They spread across the pavement to cut Joseph off before he could pretend not to see them and keep walking. He stopped in front of them and sighed.

‘All right, but not here.’

Away from the school, back towards Wesley’s house, they followed him in silence.

Finally, he said, ‘So you’ve figured it out.’

‘You should have just told us.’

Joseph kept walking, but more slowly now, as if he needed the steps to keep his brain working. ‘How could I tell anybody? The whole thing is so strange, and there was no way I could know for sure. All I have is the feeling that he’s here.’

The group gathered closer to him, almost tripping over each other’s feet, as if they might somehow sense Aaron there. Maybe they needed to see – really see – this thing they had all thought they desperately wanted.

‘Everyone else has forgotten him, or come as close to it as possible. But I can’t forget him.’ Joseph lifted a hand to his chest. ‘At first I did whatever I could to keep his memory alive, but whenever I made Mum remember she got so upset. It’s better if everybody else forgets. It’s not like he’s ever coming back. I just have to miss him by myself.’

‘We remember,’ said Aoife.

‘Soon you won’t, not now you don’t need him any more.’

They were still walking, drawing closer to Wesley’s home, but the strange tugging on his body had shifted away from there, felt as if it was trying to lead him somewhere else. He did his best to ignore it.

‘Here,’ he said, handing back the family portrait he had taken from their house. ‘I’m sorry I took it.’

Joseph looked at the photograph, rested his fingers against his brother’s smiling face.

‘Can you speak to him?’ Wesley asked.

‘It’s not like he’s inside my head pulling levers and pressing buttons to move me around,’ said Joseph. ‘I just know he’s there, resting, not really a part of the world any more. He regretted letting this happen to him, so he went for the person that was most like him. And all I’m doing is letting him down. I mean, I’m glad he’s not totally gone, but it’s not fair either. I couldn’t save him, and now I’m supposed to give him the kind of life he thought he was missing. I have to carry that burden because Aaron couldn’t.’

Wesley thought of Kat, even now going alone to stop the attack. He had left her with that responsibility, but it was for her own sake. It was the only way to save her, to give her what Aaron couldn’t find.

They stopped just short of the railway bridge that ran beside Wesley’s block of flats. ‘He appeared to me, at the end,’ said Joseph.

Everybody gathered close. ‘He did?’

‘I think when he chose me, it meant I could see him. There was hardly anything left. He was . . . less than a ghost. Almost completely invisible. He tried to take my hand, but I just passed right through him. He didn’t even have physical form any more.’

The tug on Wesley’s body grew stronger, as if somebody was calling him from afar. He thought of the message Aaron had left for Selena, written in messily spilled food instead of with the pens that were right beside it. If the fade gradually took away their physical form, it would mean they were no longer able to hold anything, able to assert any will on the world. That’s why he would have been unable to grip a pen, take his brother’s hand one last time.

It would mean Kat would have no way to save Tinker.

Although the sight of the car made the beast in her chest thrash weakly – perhaps it too was fading out – it also made her angry. Their plan was so basic. They were nobodies, pathetic little boys playing vigilante for an empty cause propagated by more pathetic little boys behind their keyboards.

And it would work, if she couldn’t do something to stop it.

Kat looked across the road again, and saw another car pulling up as close to the back entrance as