We’d not made it as far as the top floor when we had come before, so hadn’t known that it consisted of a series of rooms, one with a substantial amount of old furniture in it – shelves, tables, chairs – and I made a note of it. There were now at least places to hide if need be and a door to the roof that would take me to the staircase down the outside of the building if I needed to escape. With that settled, I began to make my way through the rest of the rooms, all of which were as grimy and neglected as the first one, the dust making me cough.

  I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I heard the voices. The realisation that other people were in the mill came as a shock and I switched off the torch and crept to the door of the room I was in, to make sure. I thought they must be on the floor below, but it was difficult to tell because of the way sound travelled in this old building. I didn’t move, and waited till my eyes and ears adjusted and whoever it was began talking again, in the hope that I could figure out how many of them there were and their location.

  There was a shout which sounded like, ‘Over here!’

  My heart landed in my throat as I realised that the voice was getting closer. I slowly and carefully tiptoed back to the room with the door leading to the roof, climbing the short flight of stairs that led up there, with the intention of using the wrought-iron staircase on the outside to get back down again.

  The cold air hit me first. The evening was settling in, and the dark sky was filled with stars glittering icily down on the now snow-covered flat roof of the mill. It might have been a beautiful sight if I wasn’t so eager to get away.

  I lit up the roof with my torch, seeking out the entrance to the staircase, only to discover it had been blocked off with large, hammered-in planks of wood. I sank down beside them, ignoring the wet floor and hugging my knees to me, praying that whoever was in the mill wouldn’t come onto the roof. There was nowhere to hide out here, and no way down apart from the way I had come.

  I was just beginning to breathe again when the door to the roof opened and a boy’s head emerged, his dark, floppy hair falling into his eyes.

  ‘She’s here!’ he shouted back to his companions.

  It was Paul.

  I slowly stood up, looking at his face, unable to find any words. He kept his eyes on me too, neither of us breaking contact until two other people appeared. Sharon and Ishtiaq. Sharon ran straight to me, holding me tight as I stood there, arms rigid to my sides at first, then melting into her embrace.

  ‘We were worried,’ she said. ‘Me and Ishtiaq bumped into Paul after school and realised that you’d not told us the truth. I couldn’t understand where you would’ve gone, but then I realised. I knew you’d be here, I knew it.’ She held me even closer. ‘It’s the only thing left on the list,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m so glad we’ve found you,’ Ishtiaq said.

  Paul had stepped back when Sharon ran to me, but he stepped forward now.

  ‘I knew there was something wrong when I saw you earlier,’ he said. ‘Why did you lie?’

  I shook my head. There was too much to say and no words with which to say it.

  ‘We should go home,’ said Sharon. ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘Can we lie here – just for a minute?’ I said. ‘Watch the stars?’

  They all looked at each other, their faces seeming to say, indulge her , and we lay down together like snow angels, looking up into the sky, all four of us. Our heads were touching, damp hair intermingling in the snow, and the only sounds were of our breathing. I felt the warmth of acceptance override the cold.

  After a while Sharon spoke into the silence.

  ‘We should go back to the list,’ she said firmly. ‘You never know, we might catch him.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ said Ishtiaq.

  ‘And me,’ added Paul. Sharon had clearly told them both what we’d been up to.

  We were all sitting now, and I was about to tell them about my latest investigations when the sound of a door banging nearby silenced us.

  ‘Shhh, did you hear that?’ Paul said.

  ‘Hear what?’ Sharon and I said together, then laughed at each other.

  ‘Jinx.’

  When the door to the roof opened, we all turned towards it to see two more familiar people appear. Reece Carlton and Neil Callaghan.

  ‘What you lot up to?’ Reece said. ‘Some sort of weirdos’ gathering?’ He walked towards us with a swagger, one arm behind his back. Neil trailed behind him, a sneer on his face. Paul got to his feet, brushing down his jeans, and Ishtiaq stood too, then the rest of us.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Paul said, to my shock. I had never imagined him swearing.

  Reece laughed, a low chuckle that stirred something deep inside me. The same instinct that had told me to run from Mr Andrews kicked in. In that moment I knew he was dangerous, far more than I had recognised before.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, go on, back to your sad little lives,’ Reece said. ‘Oh, except this one.’

  He pointed to Sharon with the arm he had been holding behind him. In it was a large metal pipe. Sharon looked down at her shoes.

  ‘She can stay here and hang out with us.’

  At the sight of the weapon, we all stood stock-still, the fog of our breathing floating off into the sky.

  ‘Yeah. Oh, on second thoughts though, have you been snogging him?’ said Neil, his sneer changing to a look of distaste. He nodded his head towards Ishtiaq. ‘I don’t want to catch anything.’

  ‘I bet she has. Slag,’ said Reece, staring at Sharon with half-closed eyes.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Sharon replied and took a step towards the door. Reece pushed her back using the pipe.

  ‘Don’t. You. Touch. Her!’ said a voice I barely recognised as Ishtiaq’s. I looked to see his hands quivering – with fear or rage, I wasn’t sure. Paul stepped in front of him. Reece threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘And what exactly do you think you are going to do to stop me?’

  He moved forward and touched Sharon’s hair with his free hand, running his fingers through it.

  ‘You should stay with your own kind.’ He spat the words at her. ‘You’re wasted on the likes of him.’

  Sharon shook her head to remove his hand and took a step backwards. As Paul and Ishtiaq both stepped forward, Reece pushed Paul out of the way and shoved Ishtiaq hard. He stumbled, going over on his ankle, and reached out to steady himself. Paul and I went to grab him. While we did so, Reece reached for Sharon again. She jerked back as he took another step towards her, holding the pipe up, threateningly. Things seemed to move in slow motion as Ishtiaq, having regained his balance, tried to get hold of the pipe, but Reece swung it at us wildly, causing us all to step back and duck out of the way, arms over our heads.

  I hadn’t noticed how close we all were to the edge until Ishtiaq’s strangled cry rang out, cutting through me.

  ‘No!’ he screamed, and I realised that Sharon wasn’t there any more. For a moment we all stood there in shock, then I heard a voice scream, ‘Sharon!’ over and over again, and it took me a few seconds to realise it was mine.

  Ishtiaq was by my side, holding on to me, as I looked over the edge of the roof. With shaking hands, my heart thumping in my chest, I shone my torch into the darkness. Nothing.

  ‘We need to get down there,’ Paul said. I moved the torch in his direction, his pale face reflecting the light back. Even Neil and Reece looked frozen in horror.

  All of us headed from the roof back down the stairs inside the mill, using the torch to light the way. I almost tripped over my feet in my haste and slowly lost the feeling in both my hands and feet, from the cold, or shock, or both. The only sound was our footsteps echoing on the metal staircase and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. At the bottom, Reece and Neil ran off into the night while Ishtiaq, Paul and I paused for a moment at the entrance to the mill.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Paul, panting as he caught his breath. ‘Me and Ishtiaq will go.’

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ and I headed out first into the dark, swinging the torch in all directions. We slowly made our way around the mill, calling Sharon’s name as we went, my voice becoming hoarse in the freezing air. I sensed rather than saw her body as we came upon it, and slowed. It looked like her, but at the same time it didn’t, like a mannequin or a waxwork.

  Her face seemed peaceful except for the blood running out of her nose and the grey colour of her skin.

  ‘I’m going to get help,’ Paul said, and ran off into the night, the thud of his shoes disappearing until we were left in stunned silence.

  I knelt beside my friend, holding her pale hand in mine. The cold of the night seeped into my very bones and my teeth began to chatter so hard it felt like my whole body was vibrating.

  ‘She’ll catch her death,’ I said. ‘We should cover her up.’

  I wriggled out of my coat and placed it over Sharon.

  ‘There, there,’ I said, patting her shoulder as if talking to one of the dolls we used to play with only a short while ago. ‘You know how Aunty Jean always tells us to keep warm.’

  I got up again, looking at her face, tracing every familiar freckle, while Ishtiaq stood beside me, shoulder to shoulder, the only sound his quiet, heartbroken sobs. I held his hand in mine.

  It seemed like a lifetime before Paul came back with Hazel and DS Lister, closely followed by the sirens of an ambulance. Hazel enveloped us all in a hug, tears streaming down her face, which was stricken with shock.

  DS Lister spoke on the radio in his car and drove us to the hospital behind the ambulance, putting his own blue light on the roof – something that would have been beyond exciting were it not for the horror of the situation. Within what felt like moments, I found myself sitting on a hard plastic chair in a waiting room, staring at people coming and going. I watched as Ruby ran in, closely followed by Malcolm. I watched as Mr Bashir came in and took Ish into his arms.

  I only noticed I was shaking uncontrollably when a blanket was placed around my shoulders and my stunned brain registered an unexpected voice.

  ‘Miv. My Miv. My poor Mavis. They said a girl had been hurt. And I thought it was you. I thought it was you.’

  As she reached for me, the tears finally began to fall.

  It was my mum.

  50

  Helen

  At the news there had been an accident at the mill and Ishtiaq was involved, but unhurt as far as the police were aware, Omar had crumpled, the rage of the previous minutes gone in an instant. Jim had immediately moved into practical mode, working out the best way to go to the hospital to manage the falling snow, while Helen held Omar’s hand briefly, wanting to say so many things to him, hoping to convey multitudes through her touch, mostly the hope that his boy would be OK.

  Jim had insisted that he drive Omar to the hospital, and they left almost immediately. After a few minutes of fretting anxiously together, Helen and Arthur decided to go too, and she slowly eased herself from the camp bed and let her dad dress her, like he had when she was a child, while she cried.

  ‘They’ll be all right,’ said Arthur, once they were in the car, moving his hand from the gearstick to pat her knee. Her thoughts immediately went back to the children. She wondered who had been hurt, and how.

  By the time they got to Casualty, Omar and Ishtiaq were sat next to each other on orange plastic chairs, Ishtiaq’s arms around his father, clinging to him. You couldn’t tell where one of them started and the other began. Her body almost sagged with relief for Omar. He looked up, and they exchanged the smallest of smiles.

  Jim was on one side of them and Miv was on the other. Her dad and Jean were there too, and Helen nodded at them. Jean’s eyes were glassy with tears as she nodded back. Miv was sitting next to someone she didn’t recognise, a pale, slight woman who looked as though she hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time and would simply float away if you tried to touch her. The woman was stroking Miv’s hair. She looked up and their eyes locked.

  Was this Miv’s mum?

  There was no sign of Sharon or her mum and dad. Presumably they were all together somewhere. Helen shuddered, not wanting to imagine where. A nurse appeared briefly in the doorway, as if looking for someone, her eyes tired and her skin grey. Miv and Ishtiaq jumped straight up.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Is there news?’

  The nurse looked at them both, compassion in her pained, weary expression.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my loves.’

  It was then that Miv began to scream.

  THE AFTERMATH

  1

  Miv

  I don’t remember that Christmas.

  The weeks following the funeral were a blur. I was carried through it all by Mum. It was as if she were a light that had been switched back on; she handled all the practicalities of life as though she had never been away. The light dimmed every now and then, and I would sense it, my grief replaced by worry, but it never lasted long. She was back to stay.

  Aunty Jean carried Ruby.

  One of the few times I emerged from my own darkness was to watch the three of them make rounds and rounds of potted-meat sandwiches for after the funeral, quietly murmuring to each other as they did so, working as the most unexpected team, united in their grief and pain. As I watched Aunty Jean, it felt as if her hard edges had softened.

  Mr Spencer led the service, and I was momentarily shocked to see him up there, in the pulpit. It was as though I’d forgotten him, and the fact he had been on the list, entirely. He talked about Sharon with such love and tenderness, almost as if he had been her best friend, but I wasn’t cross about that. It felt like that was how it should be.

  I watched him closely while he spoke. He was stood straight, his eyes clear and bright; he looked almost handsome. I remembered how he had been that day after the concert, and I realised, just for a moment, that it was possible to come back from the worst thing that had ever happened to you.

  After the funeral it felt as though life had shrunk, so that I could only see the day in front of me, and sometimes only the hour. That’s how I got through it. One of the things I found the hardest to reconcile was the fact that in death I could see Sharon more clearly than in life, and I wanted more than anything to tell her the things I appreciated now, which I hadn’t then: her choosing to be my friend, when others didn’t; her strength of character in standing up for others, like Stephen and Ish; her joining me in almost every scheme I thought up, whether she wanted to or not, just to support me.

  But above all I realised that I had always thought of her as a ‘type’ – one of the pretty ones, one of the lucky ones – and she was so much more than that. She was like the kaleidoscope she once got for her birthday that we played with endlessly: she was full of colour, never stuck in one pattern, always moving, changing, but always landing somewhere beautiful.

  The thing about having a best friend is that somewhere along the line they become part of you. Like an extra limb. And if you lose them, you have to learn to do everything again without that limb. Learning to live without Sharon was like learning to walk again. Some days I couldn’t get up. Some days I could take a few steps. Some days I kept losing my balance and falling, falling, falling. But before I knew it, those days had turned into weeks and then months.

  And life carried on.

  At school I began to observe Ish, like I had before. I watched him in class, where sometimes he would sit, reading or writing, with tears streaming down his face. And he would talk about her all the time, to anyone who would listen.

  ‘How do you know to do that?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’ve done it before,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Had my heart broken and lived.’

  I learned how to grieve from him.

  Every weekend he and Paul would come and call for me, whether I was up for going out or not. Most days we would wrap ourselves in coats and scarves and gloves and just walk the streets of our town, as though we could walk away the grief. I took them to all the places the list had taken us, and told them the stories of our investigations. It helped.

  I started to write some of the stories down, along with my memories of Sharon, until one day I went to Mr Bashir’s new shop and bought another notebook. This one was prettier than the last one, the cover made up of swirls and patterns in a kaleidoscope of colours; it reminded me of Sharon. In my best writing I began a new list. A list of wonderful things. A list of all the things I loved about her and all the adventures we had had, and all the ways in which I could be more like her. When I got to how she’d helped Stephen Crowther with his running, my words blurred into the patterns and swirls on the cover as my tears dropped onto the page.

  I put my first notebook away and kept this new one by my side.

  There were days when the guilt was too much.

  No one said it to me, but I knew they must be thinking it was all my fault. I thought it was all my fault. All that time I had been avoiding feeling the pain on my doorstep by looking for someone else, and I had ended up bringing pain to our doorstep in the worst of ways.

  On those days, I took life a minute at a time and curled up in my bed, alternating between reading and sleeping. On those days, I would sometimes wake up and find Dad sat on my dressing-table chair, reading the paper or drinking a cup of tea. He was around all the time then. He’d stopped going to the pub. One day, I woke up to him sat there, and before I knew it the words came out of my mouth.

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Can I talk to you about something? Something important?’

  He looked at me, surprised. ‘Course you can. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I saw you. The night before it happened. With Ruby.’

  His face turned pale, then quickly flushed a deep red.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. ‘When? What are you on about?’

 

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