He’s walking fast, hunched over, hands in pockets, raggedy hair swinging.
‘Dunno.’ I frown. ‘On an errand?’
But Paul cuts across the courtyard and unchains the zebra-striped bike. ‘What’s he doing?’ asks Joey.
I drop my wooden spoon into the dye bath. ‘Miss Quinn? Could I go to the loo, please?’
‘Sure,’ Miss Quinn says. ‘Don’t be long.’
I take the stairs two steps at a time, sprinting out into the courtyard just as Paul pedals by. I run in front of the zebra-striped bike and he stops short, refusing to look me in the eye.
‘You should be in class,’ I tell him.
‘And?’ says Paul.
‘So why aren’t you? Did something happen?’
‘I walked out,’ he says softly. ‘Kit and Murphy were hassling me again. Messing with my school bag, kicking my chair, flicking bits of pastry dough left over from HE. No big deal. But they’ve taken my sketchbook.’
He picks absently at a patch of grey pastry dough stuck to his black combats.
‘So?’I push him. ‘We can get it back.’
‘Hannah, you don’t understand,’ Paul says. ‘I’ve had enough. Game over.’
‘What d’you mean, game over?’ I ask, alarmed.
Paul shrugs. ‘It’s over. It happened, I couldn’t deal with it and now it’s over. It’s over because I give up, OK?’
‘Paul, I want you to tell Miss Quinn what’s going on,’ I say. ‘Come up with me now. She’ll find somewhere quiet to talk to you. She’ll listen; she’ll believe you. You can’t keep this quiet any more, you just can’t.’
‘OK,’ Paul says. ‘Suppose I tell. Do you know what’ll happen? Miss Quinn will tell Jed and Eva, and they’ll tell my social workers – they’d have to. They’ll talk to the school and talk to the Donovans and decide that this placement isn’t working out, and I’ll be back in Glasgow before you know it, stuck in some new care home.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I argue.
‘Hannah, I do. It’s happened before,’ he says sadly. Just let me deal with this my own way. I’m gonna ride around a bit, think things through.’
‘Want a passenger?’ I ask lightly.
‘No, Hannah. Not today.’
He turns the zebra-striped bike and pedals away, past the science block and right out through the main gates.
There’s a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a churning, dragging ache that says there’s something very wrong. Sunshine beats down across the courtyard, but I’m as cold as ice.
CHAPTER 23
My mobile rings at half eight, just as dusk falls headlong into darkness. It’s Joey, asking if I’ve seen Paul.
‘I told Eva he’d just be at yours,’ she says, ‘watching TV or drawing or drinking Cherryade, whatever. You know how she worries.’
‘He’s not here, Joey,’ I tell her.
‘Oh. Well, he’s probably still riding around on that loopy bike, then, thinking,’ Joey decides. ‘He wanted to be on his own, didn’t he?’
‘It’s dark,’ I say, stating the obvious.
‘I know, but it’s not late or anything,’ Joey reasons. ‘He’ll be OK, won’t he? Is Kit at home?’
‘No, he’s out with the lads.’
‘You don’t suppose…’
‘Joey, don’t stress,’ I scold her. ‘You’re getting as bad as Eva. Paul wanted some time alone, to think. He’ll be back soon.’
I press the button to end the call, but that sick feeling is back. I tell myself to be calm, to keep working, get the school stuff out of the way like I always do on Fridays, so I can relax and enjoy the weekend. I can’t. I flop down on to the bed, flip open my phone again and punch out Kit’s mobile number.
There’s a whole lot of crashing and rumbling in the background, so I guess he’s at the skatepark.
‘Kit,’ I say.
‘Hannah. What do you want?’ he asks rudely.
‘Is Paul with you?’
‘Why would that loser be with me?’. Kit demands. ‘He’s not exactly my best mate, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Oh, I’d noticed all right,’ I tell him. ‘He hasn’t been home. I wondered if you and your little gang of heavies had seen him, that’s all.’
‘Not since he stormed out of geography class this afternoon,’ Kit laughs. ‘He has no sense of humour. Wimp, or what?’
‘Well, thank you for your kind words, Kit,’ I say. ‘I feel so much better for talking to you.’
‘Get lost, Hannah,’ he snaps, and the phone goes dead.
I walk over to the window, lift the curtain and press my face against the glass. Paul is out there, somewhere. He’s cycling around in the dark on a bike with no lights, thinking about how come he’s messed up again. A new school, a new start, new friends – but some things never change. Paul carries his bad luck around with him, like an invisible cloud.
My breath has steamed up the glass, and I trace his name in the condensation. ‘Come back,’ I whisper. ‘Please.’
But no matter how hard I stare into the darkness, there’s nobody there. I switch the light out and lie on my bed in the dark, waiting for the squeak of a home-made bike on the pathway outside. Instead, I hear the phone ringing downstairs, and Dad’s voice in the hallway talking to the caller. ‘Hannah?’ he shouts up to me. ‘Can you come down a minute?’
I drift out to the top of the stairs.
‘Have you seen Paul?’ Dad asks me. ‘It’s Eva, He hasn’t been home for tea and they’re getting worried. Did he say anything to you about where he might be?’
I come down the stairs, sink down on the bottom step just across from Dad. He hands me the phone.
Eva’s voice is frantic. ‘It’s not like him,’ she tells me. ‘He always tells us where he’s going. He’s never been this late. Have you seen him, Hannah? Has he said anything to you?’
Game over, he said to me. I give up.
‘No, no, not really,’ I say.
‘Was he OK earlier?’ Eva presses. ‘At school?’
‘Er… I think so,’ I bluff.
Dad is giving me a frowny, serious look that makes his forehead all lined and wrinkly. ‘If you know anything, tell her,’ he whispers. ‘They’re going to call the police if he’s not. in by ten.’
The police?
‘He wanted to be alone,’ I say to Eva. ‘He had a rough day at school. He said he was just going to ride his bike around and think. I asked if he wanted company, but he didn’t. I’m sorry, Eva, that’s all I know.’
‘What do you mean, a rough day?’ Eva questions. ‘Paul is happy at school. He’s settled in well. Hasn’t he?’
I can’t answer her. I hold out the phone to Dad.
‘Good luck, Eva,’ I hear him say. ‘Call us if you hear anything, or if there’s anything we can do. Anything at all.’
I sit by the phone, willing it to ring again, but there’s no more news. Kit comes in at half ten, and Dad sits him down and quizzes him about Paul.
‘Why would I know anything?’ he says, scowling.
‘No reason,’ I shoot back, and he flushes red.
‘It’s not as if I even liked the guy,’ he snaps. ‘He’s a total weirdo.’
‘Kit!’ Dad roars. ‘The lad has had a very tough time. He’s lost his mum, been taken into care, passed around from pillar to post. Is it any wonder he’s a bit troubled? Show some respect!’
‘Sorr-ee!’
‘Eva is worried sick,’ Mum chips in. ‘They’re getting the police in, and I don’t blame them. The Donovans can’t think of any reason why he’d just disappear like that. Can you?’
‘No, I told you,’ says Kit. ‘I haven’t seen him since school. He walked out of geography and Mr Worrall reported him to McKenzie. He’s in big trouble. He’s probably scared to face Jed and Eva, thinks he can run away or something. He’ll turn up.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Mum sighs. ‘You two had best get to bed. I expect it’ll all be sorted out by morning.’
/>
We go upstairs. On the landing, I turn to face Kit. ‘You’d better tell me if you know anything,’ I hiss. ‘If you or your bonehead mates have been hassling him again, if you’ve touched him…’
‘We haven’t!’ protests Kit. ‘Like I said, the last I saw him was in geography. We were only having a laugh – we didn’t mean any harm. It’s not my fault he can’t take a joke!’
‘Nothing’s ever your fault, is it?’ I snap.
Kit looks angry, but scared too. ‘Hannah, you have to keep quiet about all this stuff at school,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing serious. There’s no point raking it up, getting us into trouble, not with the police poking around. OK? Keep your mouth shut.’
‘Why should I?’
My brother reaches out a hand in the dark, touches my arm. His fingers are trembling.
‘Please?’ he says.
CHAPTER 24
It’s like being in the middle of a nightmare. We sit round the table at Beachcomber Cottage, sipping tea that’s too stewed and too sweet, listening for the phone. The phone stays silent.
Paul has been missing since yesterday afternoon, and now it is nine fifteen on Saturday morning. They found the zebra-striped bike on the coast road down by the headland, abandoned by the side of the road. So where is Paul?
A policewoman, who looks too young and too chirpy to be dealing with this case, tells us she is confident they’ll have a lead before too long, but can any of us kids remember anything that could explain why Paul might want to disappear? Anything at all?
‘Son?’ Dad prompts. ‘You said something about Paul walking out of class yesterday. Perhaps he’s worried he might be in trouble for that?’
‘He walked out of geography,’ Kit says dully. ‘He just got up, grabbed his rucksack and walked out of the door. Mr Worrall went after him and asked him what he was playing at, and Paul just said he’d had enough.’
‘Enough of what?’ the policewoman wonders, scribbling rapidly.
‘Haven’t a clue,’ says Kit.
Mikey drifts off from the table, teasing Itchy and Scratchy with a wisp of tinsel tied to a string. They leap and swipe at it, and Mikey lies down on the floor with them, rolling, laughing. It could be any other day at Beachcomber Cottage, but it’s not. It’s today, the worst day of my life.
‘Paul’s happy here,’ Eva is saying. ‘He likes school. He has friends. We know there’ve been problems in the past, but he is settled here, isn’t he, Joey?’
Joey looks at me uneasily. We made a promise, but it’s one that’s getting harder and harder to keep.
‘I think so,’ she mutters.
‘Not really,’ I say at the same time, and everyone turns to look at me. Jed and Eva are wide-eyed and anxious, Dad is frowning, Kit is fizzing, but Joey shrugs and nods as if to tell me I’m doing the right thing.
Krusty shifts around in my lap, blinking at me with dark eyes that give nothing away I run my hand over her fur, feel the rattle of her purr.
‘Hannah?’ Dad says, touching my sleeve. ‘Tell us what you mean.’
So I tell them about Paul. I tell them about how the lads started to tease him, and how the teasing got worse and worse until it was just about every minute of every day.
‘Just little things,’ I explain. ‘A football kicked at him hard, on purpose. Bubblegum flicked into his hair. A push when he was on the stairs. And worse things too. Paul had no friends, apart from me and Joey. He hated school.’
Kit squirms around in his chair, unable to meet my eye.
‘Why didn’t he tell us?’ Eva cries. ‘Why didn’t he say? We could have stopped it! We could have sorted it!’
‘He made us promise,’ says Joey. ‘He said that if the social workers got to hear, he’d be taken away again, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to stay, Eva, that’s why he kept quiet.’
‘Oh, God!’ Eva says. Jed puts an arm round her.
There’s a long silence, and then there’s a shrill ringtone and the policewoman snaps open her mobile. We watch her nodding, listening, making one-word answers. We watch the smile slide off her face.
My heart is thumping as she shuts the mobile and walks over to Jed and Eva.
‘This may be nothing,’ she says, ‘but we’d like you to come down to the beach at the far end of the bay. We may have found Paul’s bag, and a black sweater and a pair of black baseball boots…’
Eva makes a low, moaning sound like an animal in pain.
‘We don’t know anything yet, not for sure, the policewoman says. ‘He could be anywhere.’
‘But you found his shoes,’ Jed says raggedly.
‘Let’s get you down there, make sure they are Paul’s shoes, before we start jumping to conclusions,’ the policewoman says.
Everyone is jumping to conclusions anyway. Eva is sobbing, and Jed has buried his face in his hands. They think Paul has drowned.
‘What’s wrong with you all?’ I burst out. ‘Stop thinking he’s dead! Paul wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He never swims in the sea. He says it’s too dangerous!’
Jed stands up, rubbing at his forehead as if to make the bad thoughts disappear. ‘Paul’s fascinated by the sea, but he’s afraid of it too,’ he whispers. ‘Because of what happened to his mother.’
‘She went away,’ I whisper. ‘She left him.’
‘No, Hannah,’ says Jed. ‘Is that what he told you? That’s not what happened. Paul’s mum was ill with depression. She didn’t go away – she drowned. She left her clothes and shoes in a pile on the beach and walked into the sea.’
‘She killed herself,’ Kit breathes. ‘No way.’
All the bones in my body turn to water. I sit down heavily on a driftwood chair, my stomach soured with a sick, hollow ache. My head is a tangle of pictures I don’t want to see. A cat called Splodge, a message in a bottle, a little boy who sat at home for hours, maybe days, waiting for his mum to come home.
‘Let’s go and take a look at those clothes,’ the policewoman says into the silence. She ushers Jed and Eva outside. Dad, the only adult left, jumps up and starts to clear the table, rinsing mugs under the tap.
‘No news is good news,’ he says brightly. But he’s not kidding anyone. Itchy and Scratchy slink silently on to the tabletop, mopping up biscuit crumbs, and nobody cares enough to chase them away.
‘Play football?’ Mikey asks, tugging Kit’s hoodie, but Kit is slumped at the table, his face white.
‘I’ll give you a game, mate,’ Dad says, and he bundles Mikey out into the garden, leaving Joey, Kit and me alone in the kitchen. Nobody can find a single word to say.
‘I didn’t know,’ Kit chokes out eventually. ‘I didn’t realize.’
Joey turns on him, her eyes blazing. ‘Didn’t care, more like,’ she rages. ‘You couldn’t leave him alone, could you? You and your stupid mates.’
Kit reaches into his jacket and brings out a small, black book. ‘It was only meant to be a joke,’ he says. ‘Murphy was showing it round the class, having a laugh. I thought he’d give it back, but he didn’t, he chucked it in the bins on the way out of school. I got it back for him. Tell Paul that, yeah?’
‘If I ever see him again,’ Joey snaps.
I pick up the little black book, flick through pages that are stained, now, with drips of cola and leaky biro.
Inside the back cover are pages of drawings of me, Joey and Kit, vivid, scribbled sketches like the ones we saw of Kit in Paul’s other sketchbook, the day of the snow war. The day it all went wrong. They weren’t stalky, weirdo sketches, the way Kit thought. They were roughs for the three cat characters in Paul’s story.
At the front of the book is the story I glimpsed that day on the beach – a comic-strip story about a sad-eyed boy and three cat-heroes. KoolKat, that’s Kit. KrazyKat, that’s Joey. And KittenKat, me.
The sad-eyed boy – well, that’s Paul, of course.
He came from the land beyond the sea, Paul has written. His feet and fingers were webbed, his skin was silver with scales, his ha
ir was made of soft, green seaweed…
I flick further and find cruel, dog-faced characters who look like Murphy, Tom and Fergus. Later in the book, KoolKat turns traitor and joins them. The book isn’t finished. The last drawing shows the dog-faced kids chasing Paul towards the sea, but it’s just a rough sketch, mapped out with light pencil lines. You can’t tell what’s going to happen.
I look again at the pictures of me. I’ve seen that little cat face before, on a torn bit of tracing paper, a home-made tattoo. And on a black envelope too, covered in stars and spirals in Joey’s silver pen – but it wasn’t from Joey, of course. It was from Paul. The valentine was for me. He even bought another KitKat for me, because Kit snaffled the first one.
‘I can’t stand this,’ Joey bursts out, staring out of the window. ‘What’s he playing at, leaving his clothes on the beach? What are we meant to think?’
‘He’s a strong swimmer,’ Kit says.
‘Not that strong. Besides, where would he swim to?’
There is nowhere to swim to. Once you’re past Seal Island, there’s nothing but miles and miles of empty ocean, shining and sparkling under an open sky as the earth tilts westwards.
Seal Island. Paul once called it the land beyond the sea. He told me that seals were the spirits of those who had drowned in the ocean…
‘Seal Island!’ I say. ‘He’s gone to Seal Island!’
‘What?’ Joey asks. ‘How do you…?’
‘I just know, OK? We have to tell the police. We have to find him. Quick!’
Krusty leaps down as I jump up from the table. We don’t stop to tell Dad and Mikey; we don’t stop to think. We run outside and out across the field to the beach. There’s a little knot of police officers huddled with Jed and Eva at the far end, beneath the little headland, and we stumble over the dunes and down on to the wet sand, running towards them.
‘These are his boots,’ Eva is saying as we skid to a halt beside them. ‘This is his stuff. Definitely.’
Paul’s wrecked old baseball boots are lying on a rock just above the tideline, his black sweater and school bag piled up alongside. In the damp sand nearby, there’s a circle of gull feathers with one perfect, tiny piece of driftwood in the centre. It’s fragile and angular, spattered with patches of brown like a miniature snake.
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