First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Nicola Skinner 2020

Illustrations copyright © Flavia Sorrentino 2020

Cover illustrations copyright © Flavia Sorrentino 2020

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Nicola Skinner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008295325

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008295349

Version: 2020-03-17

All of this book is dedicated to Ben and Polly. Except for a few chapters towards the end, which are for Meg and Saul.

Poltergeist: a type of ghost or spirit responsible for loud, chaotic and destructive disturbances. A noisy ghost.

From the German poltern (to make sound) and geist (ghost).

Some people think we don’t exist.

They’re wrong.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part 1

1. A Bit Eggy

2. My Birth Story

3. Buzzes

4. Freak Earthquake

5. A Dying Art

6. I Could Have Handled This Better

7. A Bad Batch of Hot Chocolate

8. They May Be Injured

9. Family Photo

10. The Truth

11. Human Flesh is Yuck

12. Not Very Proud of Myself

13. Life’s Tricky When You’re Dead

14. Thieving Gurnards, Ships in the Night

15. Get on Board, Duckie

16. A Manufacturing Snag

17. Legs and Other Problems

18. Later that Evening

Part 2

19. Sometime Later

20. Look Out for Rats

21. Shoes in the Hallway

22. Mysterious Signs, Disturbed Foxes

23. Bats in the Dark

24. Something Fishy This Way Comes

25. Make Yourself at Home

26. You’re Here!

27. Your Information Pack

28. The Calm Before the Storm

29. When They Took the Ropes Away

30. The Boy

31. There’s Only So Much a Dead Girl Can Take

32. The Face in the Doorway

33. ‘Poltergeist’

34. The Chat

35. Did I Get it all Wrong?

36. An Understanding, of Sorts

37. Friendship and Riddles

38. A Lullaby

39. Shining Eyes, Smashing Glass

Part 3

40. Where am I?

41. It’s Where We Live

42. Scanlon’s Secret

43. The Thing in the Woods

44. There are Others

45. People in Cans

46. Crawler Lane

47. The Icing on the Cake

48. Someone at the Door

49. Crawler’s Special Cocktail

50. Will does Some Counting

51. Temptation

52. Switch it on, Switch it off

53. Go and Do Your Thing

54. Wild Success and Dancing Monkeys

55. Birthday Surprise

56. What are We Doing?

57. An Unwanted Present

58. Party Tricks and Birthday Cake

59. Package D

60. Haven’t you Grown, Scanlon?

61. Not Just me, not Just you

62. Like Father, Like Son

63. Defective

64. Scanlon’s Plan

65. Jill the Death Guardian

66. Who am I? Who are you?

67. All This Will Fade Away

68. We Need to Practise our Moves

69. Final Act

70. Curtain Call

71. Let the Light in

72. I’m Ready

Thanks to

Keep Reading …

Books by Nicola Skinner

About the Publisher

WHEN YOU’RE BORN, you’re a baby. That’s something we can all agree on. But you’re not just a baby. No.

You’re a story.

A beautiful, bouncing, gurgling story.

A tale to be treasured.

And not just one story either. You’re all of the stories, all of the time. You’re an adventure, a love story, a thriller, occasionally a horror – yes, I am looking at you, you naughty little scamp – all rolled into one. And every day is story time now you’ve arrived.

Basically, babies are page-turners, and will only get more fascinating with each passing day. Or that’s what their parents think anyway.

Even if no one else does.

Parents love talking about their children, don’t they? Stick around any school gate long enough and all you’ll hear is: ‘my treasure this’ and ‘my darling that’. And what do they love to talk about the most?

Our beginning.

Also known as the Birth.

This part is special.

It is sacred.

It is long.

Have a look around. Go on.

Are there parents nearby? Is their conversation turning towards childbirth? Do any of them have a funny misty-eyed look on their face? Is anyone – this is the clincher – clearing their throat?

If the answer to any of that is yes, then I ask you this. Have you got an escape route? If you have, run to it. Now.

If not, tough luck. Did you have something planned for the day? Not any more you don’t. Because when a parent breaks into a birth story, it takes a while and there’s nowhere to hide.

You will hear:

a. When the contractions started.

b. Which hospital they decided to drive to.

c. What song was on the radio in the car.

d. Whether that glitchy traffic light had been fixed.

Not to mention:

a. How much the parking cost.

b. Whether that was reasonable.

c. What pain relief was available.

d. And how much the baby weighed.

(This last bit captivates them all, for some mysterious reason. Like farmers and their prize-winning turnips, parents are obsessed with how much their babies weigh. Why? Who knows? Ask them, if you don’t mind waving goodbye to another day of your life.)

Anyway, you’d better pay attention. Make sure you listen closely and nod thoughtfully in all the right places, as if you’re having a fantastic time. If you don’t listen hard enough, they’ll somehow know, with that uncanny parental sixth sense, and start all over again from the top. Then it will be YOU asking for pain relief.

For your ears.

And I’ll tell you another thing. For your entire life, how you were born will be used to explain you. Why you are how you are. Parents will say stuff like ‘Oh, it’s no wonder our Jasper is so good at ballroom dancing – after all, he was born on a Tuesday just after I’d had a ham sandwich’ or ‘Well, of course Deidre’s a dawdler – she was born just shy of the M25!’, and all the other parents will nod solemnly like this makes total sense, pour themselves another cup of tea, and say, ‘Tell me again what she weighed.’

Mine were the same. They’d bring up the way I was born at the drop of a hat. Especially when I was cross. And they’d always say the same thing: ‘Well, that’s what happens when you’re born in a storm.’

This, of course, would only make things worse. I mean, it’s very difficult to discuss the injustice of the recycling rota when your parents just keep bringing up the weather.

From eleven years ago.

It didn’t end there either. Once they started, there was no stopping them. My birth story was so well rehearsed in our house it was like a duet. My parents had their lines and they knew them well.

That’s how Dad would start. ‘Salty from the get-go, you were.’ (Frances Frida Ripley is me by the way. Hi. Except I’d rather you didn’t call me Frances, if that’s okay. Frankie’s fine.)

Then Mum would interrupt. ‘Well, love, that’s not completely true. Frankie was a very peaceful baby girl. A little wet, a bit cold, perhaps, but so calm. So still. You looked as if you didn’t have a care in the world.’

That would have been the hypothermia kicking in, Mum.

‘Yeah, you were peaceful, for all of a second,’ Dad would add. ‘Right up until the moment you took your first breath.’ Tiny smiles would fly between them, like birds swooping home. ‘That was when you started raging. And you haven’t really stopped since.’ Then, at a look from Mum, he’d mutter, ‘But we wouldn’t have you any other way, of course’ and lope off towards his painting shed.

But here’s my take on it: what did they expect? Of course I lost my temper when I was born. I mean, they were the ones who decided to have a baby on a freezing beach! On top of some pebbles! In the middle of winter! In a storm! No wonder I got a bit eggy. Any sensible baby would.

ANYWAY, IT WASN’T my fault. It was their idea to head down to the beach that day, even though Mum was heavily pregnant with me. Even after they saw the thick black storm clouds circling our small village.

They could have done something sensible instead, like driving to the nearest hospital on a test run, making a careful note of how much the parking cost and whether that was reasonable. Perhaps then I would have turned into a very different child and this would be a very different story.

But they weren’t practical people.

‘I wanted to paint the storm,’ Dad said. ‘Stand inside it. See its colours.’

Dad said stuff like this regularly. He was an artist. He was nuts about colours. For his day job, he painted pet portraits. Didn’t matter if they were scaly, hairy, sweet or scary, if you had £275 to splash out on a nine-inch by twelve-inch painting of your pet (unframed) then Dad, also known as Dougie Ripley, also known as –

– was your man.

In his spare time though, he painted the sea.

‘I’ll never get close to showing the sea the way she looks in my head,’ he’d say to us – us being me and Birdie (my six-year-old sister).

‘Why paint it then?’ we’d ask.

In reply he’d tap the side of his nose and smile his wonky smile. ‘It’s the pull of it,’ he’d say then. ‘You can’t deny the pull of it.’

Whatever that meant.

And don’t even get me started on Mum. She was practically nine months pregnant on the day of the storm. She could have sat about on the sofa complaining about her swollen ankles, like any normal pregnant woman. She could have said, ‘No, Douglas Ripley, we are not going to the beach in the middle of a hurricane, not on your nelly. Now drive me to the nearest hospital so I can have this baby, and put the radio on because apparently that’s important.’

But she didn’t.

‘I was sick of staring at our four walls, Frankie, and I thought the sea air would make me feel better. You weren’t due for another week anyway, so you can take that look off your face for starters.’

Here’s what they didn’t take:

1. A phone.

2. A car.

3. Anything practical in case one of them gave birth.

Here’s what they took:

a. A moth-eaten picnic blanket.

b. Mum’s favourite coral lipstick.

c. Dad’s easel and paints.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, Mum went into labour just after they got to the shingle beach down by the harbour. No one else was around, what with it being January. And the storm. And having normal brains.

And without 1, 2 and 3, it finally dawned on Mum and Dad that I was going to be born right on top of a. The moth-eaten picnic blanket. So they threw it on top of some lumpy pebbles and hoped for the best. Which was completely against NHS guidelines at the time, especially under the bit called ‘Good Places to Have a Baby’.

I was not swaddled in a comfy hospital blanket and cooed over by nurses. Instead I was bundled into a damp hoodie and seagulls squawked over my head. To cap it all off, I opened my mouth for some milk but got a mouthful of salt spray instead. And that was my first taste of the world:

According to Mum, it moulded me for ever. ‘You changed, right then and there,’ she’d say. ‘I watched the storm come over you, as sudden as a fever. You clenched your tiny fist and you raged up at the sky, like you were having a competition about who could be louder.’

A coral smile would flash on her lips, quick as a fish. ‘And sometimes I think a bit of that storm’s been stuck inside you ever since.’

Then she’d wander off in the direction of her study, stopping on the way to make her one billionth coffee of the day. Then, just as I’d begin to think I’d got away with it, she’d say, ‘Oh, and don’t forget to put the recycling out.’

And that was my birth story.

But here’s an inescapable fact about being born. You might live until you’re 101, experience wild success and mountain peaks and dancing monkeys, but however you live and whatever you do, the story of your life will end with a death.

Yours.

That’s the deal. Because the thing about human stories is: they all finish more or less the same way. On the final page. The end.

But because you’re dead you never normally hear that bit. Normally.

THAT LAST CHRISTMAS – our last Christmas – I grew strange to myself. My emotions felt wilder, my moods harder to control. I’d slam doors and cry for weird reasons.

‘Hormones,’ Mum would sigh to Dad when she thought I couldn’t hear.

I’d heard about those. I wasn’t completely sure what they looked like, but I had a feeling they weren’t good. Like dark things flapping about inside me. Like the massive wasps’ nest we’d found behind the wall in Birdie’s bedroom once.

Recently I’d been wondering if there was just a thin wall between me and my hormones too. That if you peeled back my skin there’d be an angry, quivering nest deep within my bones and all my words would turn to buzzes

that

no one

understood.

Other words I heard a lot: Hot-tempered. Temperamental. Moody. Volatile. Quite bolshie, for an eleven-year-old. They were written in my school reports. They were uttered in parent meetings. They were said about me so often that sometimes I didn’t know where I ended and those words began.

And I’m not saying that to excuse all of this – I’m just saying it. In the interests of a balanced debate.

It was the last day of the Christmas holidays. I was in Mum’s study. My best friend Ivy was on the phone.

‘Can you come for lunch at the Crab Pot?’ she asked.

The Crab Pot was the new restaurant down by the harbour. I’d never actually been inside, but I’d heard good things. Its white chocolate cheesecake was the talk of the village. Ivy said it was delicious.

So did Thea Thrubwell.

Thea Thrubwell had been hanging around us for an entire term. She looked like she was angling to become Ivy’s best friend instead of me. I felt like I’d been signed up for an invisible competition that no one was talking about, but which I was frankly losing.

Thea was in Ivy’s Guides group, and I wasn’t.

(I’d been thrown out because of a disagreement with my Guides leader. Well, I called it a disagreement – she called it arson. But I never meant to start a fire during the annual Scouts and Guides fundraiser disco. It was those tea lights that were faulty and, like I told the investigating officer at the time, you didn’t need a Fire Safety Badge to see that.)

Thea had a pony.

Thea had shiny brown hair that didn’t go frizzy in the rain.

Thea hadn’t burnt down any buildings.

Allegedly.

‘Oh, and Thea Thrubwell is coming too. Is that okay?’ said Ivy.

Obviously, it was not okay.

‘I guess that’s okay,’ I said.

Thea Thrubwell was bringing her family too, which was just great.

‘Our mums get on really well,’ said Ivy. ‘They do yoga together in the hall. Well, they did, until it was shut for the refurb—’

‘Mmm.’

‘Okay. See you at See Pee then.’

‘Where?’

Ivy laughed. ‘It’s just what we call it. It’s the initials for Crab Pot. CP?’

‘Oh, yeah. Great. See you at the Pot. That’s just what we call it, me and, er, them.’

I put the phone down and took a few deep breaths. Then I walked to the sitting room.

Arthur Christmas was on the telly for what felt like the hundredth time. Birdie was doing her new jigsaw puzzle. Mum was flicking through a magazine with one eye on the screen. (And the only yoga she was doing was stretching for the bottle of Prosecco by her feet and pouring it into her chipped QUEEN MUM mug.) Dad was fiddling about with paper and kindling in the fireplace.

‘Can we go to the Crab Pot for lunch?’ I said.

‘That pricey place in the harbour?’ Dad looked as enthusiastic as if I’d suggested grabbing a bite at the local crematorium. ‘I guess. One day.’

‘No, can we go today? Ivy’s going with her family and invited us along too. I said we’d go.’

‘You should have checked with us first,’ said Dad, lighting a ball of newspaper in the grate.

‘I’m checking with you now.’

Mum and Dad looked at each other.

‘It’s a nice idea, love,’ said Mum, lifting my hopes, only to dash them again by adding, ‘but we need more notice than that. Also, there’s no point eating out when we’ve got so many leftovers. All that turkey isn’t going to eat itself. Another time.’

‘But if you want a fancy lunch out,’ said Dad, missing the point entirely, ‘how about an al-fresco lunch in the garden? It’s got the best view in the village, and it’s totally free – you can’t argue with that.’

He really did think everything was brilliant if you did it in terrible weather. Even then, he was staring outside at the drizzly rain and churning ocean as if it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Our house was called Sea View for a reason. A three-hundred-year-old, small fisherman’s cottage built at the top of the highest hill behind Cliffstones, it offered panoramic views of – you guessed it – the sea, from every single room at the back of the house. When Mum and Dad had bought it, it hadn’t had any electricity or running water. As they were fond of reminding us, our house was a labour of love. They’d spent almost every evening and weekend doing it up. Dad had been up on the roof the day of their wedding, and they spent their honeymoon putting in window frames.

And although Dad often talked about it like it was the greatest masterpiece he’d ever done, to be honest with you, I didn’t think it was completely finished. It was rickety. It was rackety. It was freezing in the winter if we ran out of gas or wood. The roof was always leaking somewhere. And it wasn’t that clean and tidy either. According to Ivy’s parents, Mum and Dad were ‘free spirits’. Now, I don’t know what free spirits do elsewhere, but in my house, they stayed up late listening to terrible folk music, took us camping in woods with no toilets, and were generally allergic to housework.

Those coffee cups dotted on every surface in Mum’s study would sit there for weeks, quietly growing little personalities of their own, until she decided to do something radical about them, like take them to the kitchen. The piles of paperwork on her desk were so layered they could qualify for their own archaeological dig.

Dad wasn’t much better: he wore the same jeans until they fell apart, had permanently grubby fingernails, and trailed a smell of paint, turps and rollie cigarettes wherever he went. And, as you’ve just seen, he had very random ideas about what we should do with our spare time, and it wasn’t eating lunch at the Crab Pot. According to him, if you wanted to do something cool, all you had to do was paint in a storm, give birth somewhere inappropriate or (and this was scraping the barrel) literally look out of a window.

‘Drink in the colours, girls!’ was the rallying cry in our house. ‘Take in those views!’

As you can imagine, this could get annoying. As far as I could tell, the sea came in three different colours: blue, green and grey. It was like being told to constantly admire a bruise.

I RENEWED MY efforts in the Crab Pot Campaign. ‘But I haven’t seen Ivy for ages!’ I said. ‘Not for the entire holidays! Please can we go? Please?’

‘You’ll see her tomorrow,’ said Mum, ‘when the new term starts.’

I glanced around the room in desperation and saw, above the Christmas cards on the mantelpiece, someone equally unimpressed. Me. Glaring back at me from the mirror.

Mum always said I’d grow into my face, but that was easy for her to say. Her jaw and mouth seemed to get on with each other, and even though her hair was also a mass of tight curls, just like mine, hers never went frizzy.

Dad told me to embrace my uniqueness. I was unconvinced. It was all right for him to have thick black eyebrows that almost met in the middle, ruddy cheeks and a strong wide jaw that shoved everything else out of the way so it could bask in the spotlight all by itself. He spent most of his life in his shed in the garden, plus he could grow a beard.

I’d definitely got the dregs of the gene pool, no question. Birdie looked more like Mum, with her hazelnut eyes and silky hair that in no way looked as if it had been accidentally electrocuted.

Dad shuffled the pages of his newspaper. I caught a glimpse of the headline. FREAK EARTHQUAKE ON COA—

Mum sipped from her mug and wiggled her toes. ‘It’s special, the last day of a holiday, isn’t it? All of us, at home, nowhere we have to be.’

‘It’s not that special when you’ve been at home all week,’ I muttered.

Dad shot me a warning, disappointed glance. In our house, you could lose your socks and homework, you could even lose your book bag at least once a week, mentioning no names, but hi, Birdie – but you could never, ever, lose your temper.

‘Shouting creates negative energy and harmful interpersonal toxicity,’ Dad would say. ‘Plus it does our heads in.’

‘Frankie,’ he said now, once.

Birdie’s face creased with worry. She patted the carpet. ‘Do my puzzle with me, Frankie,’ she offered. ‘It’s got sunflowers on. Look.’

She gave me a little smile.

My brain flickered like the lights on the tree.

On.

Off.

On …

Off.

Where it would end up was anyone’s guess.

Perhaps I will sit down. Perhaps I will do that puzzle. Perhaps Mum’s right, and today’s a day for family, and family only.

But then I remembered that easy way Ivy had said, ‘It’s just what we call it. The CP?’

She and Thea were so tight now, they were a ‘we’. She didn’t even have to say her name. Me and Ivy had been like that once. If I missed this lunch, would she ever invite me again? Would Thea Thrubwell speed ahead to the finishing line in our invisible competition for ever?

I rotated my scowl back towards my parents and regarded them with frustration. There was something they weren’t saying. This wasn’t about leftovers. This wasn’t about sacred family time. This was about money. My bones went

And – I’ve had some time to think about this, so am fairly confident with this theory – that’s when things began to go horribly wrong.

DAD’S OUTPUT WASN’T being consumed in line with current market trends, according to his bank manager. Or as Dad put it, pet portraiture was a noble, misunderstood and dying art. Or as Mum put it, we were broke.

Because, for some mystifying reason, not enough people in our village – or any village, actually – were gazing at their pets and thinking: Do you know what I’d love to do, oh sweet guinea pig of mine? Immortalise you in paint, and fiddlesticks to the cost.

Dad blamed the internet. For just £9.99, people could upload a photo of their pet from any battered mobile and a mere two days later receive a tea towel, T-shirt and key ring printed with that pet’s face. Getting all of that for under a tenner seemed, to most of the British public, a better deal than the £275 Dad charged for one painting. Which took him a month to paint, not two days.

And he wouldn’t even change the price to £274.99, for crying out loud.

‘Mum?’ I turned pleading eyes on her. Mum worked in catering recruitment and found work for chefs and waitresses. ‘You had a bumper month in December, you said!’

But she was shaking her head. ‘Well, yes, technically, but we’ve set aside my commission to spend on stuff that keeps us alive, like food and heating—’

‘Which doesn’t even work—’

‘Oi,’ said Dad. ‘Lower your voice. The energy fields in this room literally just died. I felt it inside me. Very sad.’

I rolled my eyes as loudly as I could.

‘I heard that,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, please stop,’ wailed Birdie.

‘Yes, pack it in,’ said Mum. ‘My favourite film is starting in a minute—’

I snapped.

‘That’s enough.’ Dad made some vague sweeping gestures around the room, as if he was trying to shoo the energy fields out of harm’s way. ‘Go away, Frankie,’ he said, ‘until you’ve calmed down.’

‘But—’

‘Now.’

I glared at him, realised there was no point, and stomped up the stairs towards my bedroom, those words in my mouth writhing with frustration. What happens to strong emotions if you’re not allowed to feel them? Where do they go?

Because adults are always at it, aren’t they? Sorting out and tidying up our feelings, squishing them into other shapes if they don’t like the look of them, as if they’re made of Play-Doh or something, right from the moment we’re born. ‘Hush Little Baby, Don’t You Cry’ is essentially just one long lecture about keeping quiet, but set to music. Then when we get older, it’s always ‘Don’t be cross!’, ‘Calm down!’, ‘Buck up’ and

‘Do not set fire to the

village hall,

even

if it

is by

accident.’

If we’re sad, we’re told to be happy, but if we laugh, it’s a bit too loud. If we’re excited, we’re told to be quiet. And then they say, ‘Everything all right? You’re very quiet.’ It’s a losing game all right.

No one ever says: ‘You know that big, bad, loud feeling you’re experiencing? Well, you go right ahead. Feel away. Don’t let us stop you. Look at you, clever girl, expressing your wonderfully complex personality by shouting, going bright red and slamming doors. We admire your efforts to be so in tune with your inner self and applaud your enthusiasm in this area. Here, have a trophy.’

No. They don’t. Trust me. I did my research in the field, put it that way.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, there was a knock on my bedroom door.

‘What?’ I said.

Mum poked her head round. Her cheeks were flushed from the fire Dad had lit downstairs, and her mid-morning Prosecco.

‘I do know how important friends are, Frankie. Especially at your age. And me and Dad both recognise that you need opportunities to enjoy peer-to-peer interactions.’

I nodded, not entirely sure what she was talking about, but encouraged anyway.

‘And your birthday is coming up …’ she added, smiling.

‘Seven sleeps.’

‘So if it means that much to you, as an early birthday treat, we’ll go to the Crack Bot for lunch. I mean the Crat Pop. The Crab thingy.’

She looked at me in a meaningful way. ‘But it’s not because you shouted at us. I know, underneath it all, you’re trying to control your temper. We know it’s a challenge for you, and I love you for making an effort, I do. But honestly, Frankie, sometimes I wish you’d find something more important to get angry about.’

I leapt off my bed and hugged her. ‘Thank you,’ I muttered into her woodsmoke curls.

She paused for a moment, as if she wanted to say something else. After a while, she hugged me back. ‘Now go and say sorry to Birdie, please, because she hates it when you get cross, and then let’s get dressed for our posh lunch.’ She glanced out of my window and smiled. ‘It’s stopped raining. Looks like the sun’s trying to come out.’

So I went and made amends. It wasn’t a good apology. I was desperate to get going. I mumbled out ‘Sorry’ and ‘Didn’t mean it’. But Birdie didn’t seem to mind. She just said, ‘It’s all right’ in that husky voice of hers and hugged me tightly, because that’s what she was like. Hopeless at bearing grudges. It was hard to believe we were sisters sometimes.

I had to prise her arms away in the end, saying I needed to get dressed. When she asked if I would put a braid in her hair, I said, ‘Not now’ and ran to my room to get changed.

Not, admittedly, my best moment as her big sister. If I’d known how things were going to turn out, I’d have done it all differently. I’d have cuddled her back as tightly as I could. Plaited her hair for hours. Told her how much I loved her, and why.

Then I’d have stood at the front door and said, ‘I’ve changed my mind! Let’s not go anywhere near the harbour. We’ll stay at home all day – what a great idea. Consider yourselves under house arrest!’

But I didn’t say any of that. Instead I stood in the porch with a face on, and said, ‘What’s taking you all so long?’

I hurried them.

Me. I did that.

Me.

We walked up and down Legkiller Road so much back then I could have navigated it blindfold. It was our path to school, to the harbour and the village. Its real name was Kegmiller Road, but everyone called it Legkiller because of how steep it was. Its other distinguishing features were nettles, brambles, cow pats and potholes, and to reach it you had to cross a rutted field with a scary bull in it called Alan.

But I was so happy about lunch that it might as well have been paved with candyfloss. I practically skipped down it. Within minutes, we crested the hill, and began the slow descent down to the village.

‘It’s so quiet,’ Dad muttered. ‘Can’t even hear the birds singing.’

It was true. The silence around us felt heavy. There was a weird pressure on my eardrums, and by the look of pain on Birdie’s face as she rubbed her ears, I wasn’t the only one. And when we got down to Harbour Street, which was packed with people enjoying the weak winter sun, all its usual sounds felt muffled. Even the screaming gulls and jangling boat masts that provided a noisy soundtrack to every harbour visit were subdued. It felt like Cliffstones was holding its breath.

We went into the restaurant. The others were already sitting at a table by the window.

‘You made it!’ said Ivy, giving me a hug.

‘Course.’ Over Ivy’s shoulder, I gave Thea Thrubwell a big beaming smile, a real face-stretcher, and was rewarded by a baffled stare back. Not the cosy twosome you were expecting, Thrubwell?

‘Sorry it’s rather dark,’ said the waiter as he took our coats. ‘There’s just been a power cut.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mum.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he added. ‘Be up and running in a jiffy.’

‘Well, as long as the Prosecco doesn’t get dangerously warm,’ she said.

Outside, a small white terrier by the harbour wall began to bark.

‘Sea looks odd, doesn’t it?’ said Dad, settling himself into his chair.

The dog’s yapping grew more frantic. It kept turning around in frenzied circles, then snarling at the sea. The teenager holding its lead looked confused.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Thrubwell. ‘Glassy.’

‘Heard about the earthquake?’ said someone. ‘France, wasn’t it?’

‘Only saw the headlines,’ said Dad. ‘Didn’t realise it was—’

‘Yes. Not too far away from us either, as the crow flies.’

The little white dog was almost beside itself by now.

The teenager had stopped laughing at it in confusion and was trying to drag it away from the harbour wall. Some people were pointing at the horizon and their mouths were open and their eyes were wide.

‘What’s everyone looking at?’ muttered Mum, squinting into the sunshine.

‘Is it dolphins?’ gasped Birdie, jumping out of her seat. She had a thing about dolphins.

I looked.

It

wasn’t

dolphins.

THERE’S BEEN AN accident.

My bed was wet. Oh no. That hadn’t happened in a while. Not since I was five, at least. I was soaking in it. And not just in my pyjama bottoms either. It was everywhere.

My cheeks. My hair.

My eyelashes. Wait – I had wee in my actual eyelashes? How is that even possible? I had literally sprayed myself with my own wee overnight. Did I drink too much hot chocolate last night, when we came back from …

For a scary, sucked-out moment, my brain went blank … The Crab Pot? Course. Must have drunk too much hot chocolate when we got home. Although – had we got home?

I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t scrape together any memory of saying goodbye, or walking back up Legkiller. What had we had for lunch, even? How had the cheesecake tasted? Nothing was there.

Wait.

No.

I did remember something. There had been a dog. Barking. Is that really the only thing you remember? said a voice inside my head.

I frowned and fidgeted uncomfortably in my puddle of wee. No. There were other bits and pieces. Not very nice.

Running?

‘Faster, faster.’ Mum’s voice, hollow, black.

Why had we been running? I waited, holding my breath, to see if anything else would unspool. But nothing. My mind felt like a field at dusk, filled with secrets I couldn’t see, things that rustled in the grasses.

I reached up to dab the wee out of my eyelashes. That’s when I noticed my hands. They were in a bad shape, badly scratched. All my fingernails had been ripped off.

I felt the first nudge of fear touch me then. Cold wet nose, sniffing me out, not in any rush. Hi there. Just wanted to let you know I’m around.

Fortunately, not everything was terrible. I could hear the reassuring sound of someone mowing the lawn. Nothing can ever be that bad when someone is mowing the lawn. This is a scientific fact.

Although why was Dad cutting the grass in January? Just before school? Also, since when had our lawnmower been that loud? And – an unrelated issue, but still worth considering – what was that gritty coating on my gums?

I stuck my finger into my mouth to investigate and it came out dusted in sand.

Wee in my eyelashes. Sand in my mouth.

That was when I first knew, I think. That something quite bad had happened. It jumped through those long grasses in my skull so quickly I couldn’t see its shape and didn’t know its name. But it was there all right.

‘Mum? Dad? Birdie? Anyone?’

I pushed myself to a sitting position on the bed. Another nasty surprise. I wasn’t in my pyjamas. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday. And they looked awful.

My blue jeans looked like they’d been put through the paper shredder in Mum’s office, and just hung off my legs in strips. One of my trainers was missing, while the other was hanging off my feet, barely clinging on. And my new sparkly Christmas jumper, the one I’d been so excited about wearing to lunch, was damp, stretched and shapeless, with rips across both arms.

How had that happened? Had I fallen out of bed? Had my clothes caught on something? Or could I have ripped them myself, in my sleep?

That hot chocolate must have been a bad batch.

A very bad batch.

Someone should write and complain.

Exhausted, I let my head droop, and stared in confusion at my lap.

There were lots of tiny white things sticking out of my thighs, visible through the rips in my jeans. With battered fingers I tried to pull one out, noticing my skin had gone all pale and rubbery, like old yoghurt.

But maybe that’s just what happens to your skin when you sleep in your own wee for a whole night?

After a few seconds of effort, one of the white things came out with a sucking pop and I held it in my hand.

It was a shell.

THERE WERE LOADS of them, embedded into my skin, sticking out from my thighs. My legs were like those oranges studded with cloves hanging from our Christmas tree downstairs. And you’d think something like that would hurt, but it didn’t.

That’s because I’m numb with shock though, right?

‘Mum? Dad? Birdie?’ I shouted.

There was no reply.

They must all be outside, admiring that noisy new lawnmower. I ran to my bedroom window – vaguely aware I hadn’t closed my curtains last night, weird – and looked outside.

But Dad wasn’t in our garden, mowing the lawn.

Instead it was three helicopters making that roaring sound, slicing through a sky the colour of wet slate. Their beam lights flickered across the clouds.

I ran into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Empty.

I went into Birdie’s bedroom. Empty.

I drew closer to her wonky, sea-facing window. The view outside was different. The sea looked like an overcrowded bath, filled with damaged toys. There were buildings in the sea. I saw the roof of Birdie’s primary school. At least seven white caravans were in there too, moving up and down in the waves. Here and there were red and yellow boats, snapped in half like crayons broken by a petulant child.

I hurried downstairs, my gait lopsided from running with one shredded trainer and one bare foot.

‘Mum? Dad? BIRDIE?’

I yelled for them in the kitchen, the sitting room and Mum’s study. But they didn’t come.

After searching the cottage three times, I had to face facts.

They’re not here. They’re missing.

I’ll tell you something else that was missing. Their winter jackets and wellies – they weren’t in the porch. My parka was also missing. The one I’d put on yesterday.

Had they gone out for a walk before school? Without me, but with my parka? WHY?

And how quiet it was. Mornings at home were usually noisy, pop songs blaring out from the radio competing with Birdie shouting that she couldn’t find her book bag, and the ancient coffee machine grinding through its first cycle of the day. But this morning, our house was more like an empty beach than a home. A beach at the end of the day – footprints washed clean by the tide, human existence rubbed away.

Then someone knocked on the front door.

Phew.

I skidded on the floorboards in my rush to get there, and then stopped. Why were they knocking anyway? They had keys.

‘Hello?’ boomed Mum.

‘Anyone there?’ roared Dad.

‘Anyone hurt?’ said a third deep voice.

They did not sound like themselves at all.

Unsure, I took a few steps away, in the direction of the staircase, and then sank down on to its bottom step. I wrapped my arms around myself. The door went RATTLE RATTLE and a few seconds later broke apart in a pile of large wooden splinters and a tall man who was definitely Not Dad pushed his way through its remains.

Behind him came a woman who was definitely Not Mum and a shorter man who was definitely Not Birdie. These Nots wore padded waterproof trousers, the ones that make a swishy noise when you move, big fluorescent jackets and hard hats with the words Coastal Rescue on them. I felt a mixture of relief and fear. They didn’t look like thieving murderers. On the other hand, they had just kicked our door in.

The three of them stood, gathered before me. The grey light that filled the unlit hallway cast shadows on their faces, making it harder for me to see their eyes. I shivered slightly.

‘Hello?’ said the woman.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Anyone here?’ she said, throwing anxious, quick glances around the hallway.

‘I’m here,’ I said from my step. ‘But my parents and sister aren’t. Can you help me find them?’

‘Okay,’ said the woman firmly, and I gave her a grateful smile. ‘There’s a car in the drive, so it’s possible the residents are still at home. I spotted a child’s bicycle in the garden so we could be searching for minors. It’s possible they can’t get to the door, so they may be injured. Let’s find some visual ID so we know who we’re looking for.’

The two men nodded.

‘Right,’ said the woman. ‘Ed, find the fuse box and switch everything off.’

‘Got it,’ said Not Dad, the tall man.

The woman turned to the shorter man. ‘Let’s check downstairs first.’

‘But I’ve looked everywhere,’ I said. ‘Three times at least. They’re definitely not here.’

In spite of that, they hurried off in the direction of the sitting room.

They’re double-checking, I thought, getting up from my step to follow them. That’s nice, I suppose.

Off we went.

ME AND THE three strangers regarded the jumble of blankets and cushions on the sofa, the overturned mugs on the floor, Dad’s newspaper sprawled out on the carpet. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, hoping they couldn’t smell the wee on me.

‘I have already checked in here,’ I reminded them, as gently as I could.

The man and woman said nothing.

Would it hurt them to reply? I mean, what happened to basic manners?

On the other hand, grown-ups could get that way when they were concentrating. It was like the sound of children’s voices stopped their brains from working properly, so they’d demand silence when confronted with a knotty problem.

This happened quite often at school, and whenever our parents were trying to drive to a new campsite and had forgotten a map again. What I was dealing with here was a case of Grown-ups Needing Total Quiet for Their Thinking Time.

The fairy lights on the Christmas tree went dark.

The tall man appeared in the sitting room. ‘Circuit’s off,’ he said. He walked up to the fireplace in his heavy black boots and began to rifle through the Christmas cards.

Hold on a minute!

On top of being ignored by the other two, this was too much. My throat went all scratchy. ‘Those are private.’

His hand paused for a moment. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said.

The three of them went very still, as if straining to catch a far-off sound.

‘Very funny,’ I muttered. ‘Point taken.’

Again, this was nothing new. What I was experiencing here was that old chestnut, Let’s Pretend Our Ears Don’t Work to Teach a Child Some Manners. It was boring, it wasn’t funny, but it was clearly rather popular among the elderly.

‘No,’ said the woman, ‘but check the kitchen.’

Two of them ran off while I stared at the man nosing around our mantelpiece. There were deep shadows under his bloodshot eyes, as if he’d been on the go all night without any sleep.

Now I thought about it, the others looked pretty bad too. The way they moved had a heavy feel. They needed a couple of early nights if you asked me.

Tall Man lifted something off the mantelpiece. ‘Come and have a look,’ he shouted.

The other two ran back, all signs of exhaustion gone, and gazed down at the photo frame in his hands. I smiled when I realised what it was. Our one decent family photo.

It shows the four of us at a wedding. We’re sitting in a row along a hay bale; me and Birdie in the middle, Mum and Dad on either side. We’re flushed, catching our breath between dancing. Mum’s looking straight at the camera and laughing. She’s wearing that emerald-green dress she bought at the flea market in Swanage, red nail polish on her dirty bare feet, eyes all bright and shining.

The exceptional wonkiness of Dad’s smile, always a handy barometer in letting us know how happy he is, is dialled all the way up to ten. He’s gazing over my head and Birdie’s at Mum, and looks quite handsome, his teeth white in a tanned face, his unruly hair sort of combed for once. Birdie and I have our arms around each other. There are cornflowers braided into our hair. They look like blue stars. Birdie’s eyes are closed and she’s got the goofiest grin on as she nestles into me.

The three strangers stared at that photo a bit too long. We’re just regular human beings, guys. Seriously. You should see all our other family albums – I look dreadful in those. This was a total fluke.

And then I realised none of them was smiling. Just like that, the whole house changed. Like a drop of paint falling into water, sadness stained the room.

The woman pressed her lips tightly before releasing them again. ‘We might be looking for a family then. One man, one woman and two young girls.’

‘Er, you don’t need to find two,’ I said. ‘Just one? I’m right here. It’s my little sister

that’s miss—’

And then

my voice

tailed off.

Because I’d finally realised.

Although you guessed a few chapters back, didn’t you?

THE TRUTH DANCED in front of my eyes like it was written by a sparkler on Bonfire Night, teasingly incomplete, almost too bright to look at, fading to nothing at the end.

But could it really be true? I mean, what were the chances?

The three Coastal Rescue people ran upstairs, calling out in quick, clipped voices.

I staggered after them in a daze, as my brain began to sift through things. To test my theory, I sneaked up behind them on the upstairs landing and screamed as loud as I could.

Nothing.

Zip. Zilch. Not so much as a shudder.

The shorter man went into Birdie’s bedroom.

‘This might hurt,’ I said, and tried to kick him on his backside.

He needn’t have worried. My foot stopped just short of his swishy trousers, as if some invisible barrier protected him. He didn’t even turn around.

Gasping, I ran to the upstairs bathroom and stared at the mirror above the sink. Staring back was something stormy, strong and tempestuous – but it wasn’t me. It was one of Dad’s seascapes that hung on the wall opposite.

I waved my battered hand in front of the mirror. Nothing.

One final test.

Taking a deep breath, I hurled myself down the stairs, making sure to bang my head against the banisters on the way. Didn’t feel a thing.

I sat at the bottom of the staircase and dealt with the facts. I hadn’t woken up in wee. I had woken up in seawater.

Now I remembered what that dog had barked at so desperately. What we’d tried to run from. Suddenly, in one dreadful moment, it all came flooding back to me. As it were.

At the beginning, when we saw the wave from our window table, the fear had come in quite slyly, like it was stapled on to the end of a joke. The wave was still quite far away, just by the end of the jetty, and that was surely as close as it would come.

Plus people in Cliffstones moved slowly; nothing was done in a rush. That was the Dorset way.

So at first, we didn’t even think about escaping.

We’d just looked for a while. Gazed, while it gathered itself together, quietly, stealthily. We’d watched it. What we hadn’t realised, of course, was that it was also watching us.

Glossy as a blackberry, the sea had pleated and rippled against itself, and then it had risen, a sea monster made of the actual sea, and as it built itself up into this new, nightmarish height, it seemed to say, ‘Bet you didn’t think I could do this!’ And then it no longer looked anything like the sea I’d known all my life – the paddling, running in and squealing sea, the bright blue crabbing sea, the postcard sea of our summers.

This was a different, alien sea. This was the sea beneath. The one that made you shudder and snatch your hand out when you glimpsed it from a boat.

It was only when the wave went over the jetty, instead of around it, and tipped the people right into itself in a horrible gathering, like a malevolent mother folding children into her skirt, that the stampede inside the restaurant began, even though it had been too late by then, of course.

Mum and Dad reached for us and we ran to the door but there was too much of a crush. Dad picked up a chair and threw it at the window and we’d scrambled out of that, cutting ourselves on the glass in our rush to escape.

I looked at the nicks on my hands. Ah.

But even when we were scrabbling out of the Crab Pot, even then, some disbelief lingered. The sea – our sea, our friend – would surely realise its mistake? Would drop back down to a less threatening height? And somehow it would stop oozing towards us, would slink back, shrink back, to a safe spot beyond the harbour wall, back where it belonged, saying in a watery and very sorry way, ‘Whoops! My bad! Don’t know what I was thinking of! Here’s the people I swallowed earlier – do have them back, and let’s pretend this never happened, shall we?’ and we’d all gasp with relief and go about our day.

That was going to happen, any second.

Any second.

Once the four of us had struggled out of the broken window, we ran.

Dad, grey with fear, attempted to gather up Birdie in his arms as we stumbled along the pavement, trying to dodge the scrum around us, but it wasn’t a smooth movement and she bobbed awkwardly in his arms, her face one terrified question mark. Over Dad’s shoulder, her eyes met mine and I tried to say sorry, but my mouth was all twisted, and the wave was so close and so loud she wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

Mum gripped my hand in hers as we ran, making strange sobbing noises.

The wave was now just outside the harbour wall, just a few paces away.

It will turn back, I thought.

But it didn’t turn back. It charged.

Leapt over the wall with greedy, outstretched, frothing, white fingers. Shut the little dog up for ever. Ripped hands out of hands, people from people. And that had been that. The bruise I’d always been told to admire had turned into a bruiser and finished us right off.

I couldn’t remember coming back from the Crab Pot because I hadn’t come back.

Not alive anyway.

I was dead. I had drowned.

I held my fingernails up to my face. I hadn’t bitten them off. They’d been ripped off. I took in my ragged clothes, shredded trainers, those shells sticking out of my legs. Now they made sense. Born by the sea, died by the sea. Exit: me.

And if Dad had been with me right then and there, he’d probably have made it all about Art, by saying something meaningful in that philosophical way he had. Something like: ‘Well, Franks, really that’s got a bittersweet symmetry when you think about it’ or ‘Maybe we do always return to the source of our own beginnings.’ But he wasn’t with me and anyway he’d have been wrong.

I wasn’t a work of art. I wasn’t a thought-provoking allegory.

I was dead.

Well, technically, I was dead-ish.

I WAS DOING pretty well for myself, as far as death went. This was death with added features. I could still walk. Talk. Waggle my fingers in front of my face. The only thing I couldn’t do, apparently, was communicate with the living. Or feel physical pain where pain should be. It was a strange sensation, not having to breathe. My lungs didn’t work. My chest didn’t rise. I was just rawness, stunned with bright shock.

I closed my eyes and listened, numb, as my brain whispered questions. Questions like: Why had only I come back? Was I a ghost? A spirit? A ghoul? If I was dead, was I meant to call my body a corpse now? I stared down at myself and shuddered. And then thought: Does it matter what I call it? I had died. We had died. The shock of it shrieked through me like a forest fire. My brain whispered: What happens now?

But, most importantly of all, where were the rest of my family? And how was I meant to fill in the time until they came back?

Because they were coming back, right?

Right?

After a while, the rescue crew appeared at the top of the staircase. I automatically moved to the side of the step I was sitting on, but then a dreadful thing happened. The woman walked straight through me.

It was a sickening sensation. It was like being squished and shoved by a herd of water buffaloes. As her body moved through mine, everything I thought should remain in one place, like my lungs and kidneys and all those other delicate organs that shouldn’t, as a rule, be messed about with, shifted to the side to accommodate her. I felt like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed.

And worse than all of that was the flavour it left in my mouth. Urgh, the taste.

Have you ever tasted human flesh?

Actually, don’t answer that. Let’s just assume the answer is no. Long story short, it’s nothing like chicken. It’s disgusting. I tasted muscle and fat and blood and also some hastily digested bacon and eggs that were roughly twelve hours old. A mouthful of body.

I tasted other things too. Emotions. Traces of thoughts. Sorrow and grief and fatigue. It was like something wet and cold crawling across my tongue.

She emerged out of me with a small but audible squelch. And then, because I hadn’t moved from the step, it happened AGAIN.

And then ONCE MORE JUST FOR FUN.

Once they’d all had a go, I wanted to be sick. The sour aftertaste of three humans mingled on my tongue.

The three of them gathered in the hallway. They looked shattered.

Not Mum looked into the faces of the others. ‘I’m calling it. Agreed?’

After a pause, the other Nots nodded.

She reached for her walkie-talkie. ‘This is Rescue, over,’ she said.

The device in her hands gave out a blare of static.

Someone said, ‘What’s the report, over?’

‘No survivors found. House checked thoroughly. We presume the family perished down in the harbour. There are no coats or boots in the porch and the house is empty. Over.’

Over.

There was a pause, then the static voice said, ‘We’ll circle back. Get ready to leave in approximately twelve minutes, over.’

They moved towards our broken front door. Tall Man rubbed his eyes and hung back. Not Mum touched his shoulder.

‘Ed,’ she said gently, ‘we’ve done all we can. There’s no one here.’

He sighed. ‘I just … keep feeling like we’ve missed something, you know? I have the strongest feeling that someone’s still here.’

Is he talking about me? Can he … somehow sense me?

‘Let me check downstairs again.’

In the sitting room, I gave it my all. I shouted until my throat ached. But although he heard something – that much was clear from the way he repeatedly stopped and cocked his head – I couldn’t get through. He was plainly a sensitive type – he could feel that I was around, but that was all.

Something made him stop. He picked up the newspaper on the floor. The one Dad had been trying to read until I …

Until I …

What, you want me to tell you twice? It was hard enough the first time.

He rifled through the paper and threw it on the floor again, looking crestfallen.

I hurried over. It had fallen open at a double spread. The headline read:

FREAK EARTHQUAKE ON COAST OF FRANCE KILLS HUNDREDS AND MAY NOT BE DONE YET, EXPERTS WARN.

I peered at it. Next to the headline was a map showing exactly where in France the earthquake had struck: a little town called Omonville-la-Petite. Cliffstones was almost directly opposite it. Only a matter of miles, really, across the English Channel. My eyes flicked back to the headline.

MAY NOT BE DONE

Back in the hallway, Tall Man rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s tragic, really. They had the facts at their fingertips. If only they’d realised what that earthquake would do—’

‘Stop,’ said the other man gently. ‘No use thinking like that. Lots of things should have been done differently. Experts should have issued a warning earlier. It didn’t help that there was a power cut just before it struck, and there’s so little connection here, I doubt anyone would have seen the alerts on their mobiles in time anyway. It’s just horrible bad luck.’

The sound of the helicopter, growling in the sky, grew louder.

Tall Man sighed. ‘It’s just so desperately sad that this family drowned when they lived in the safest place in the entire village. If they’d stayed, they’d have lived. And then the village wouldn’t have been wiped out completely.’

Silently, the woman touched his arm, tilted her head in the direction of the door. The three stepped out of the broken doorway into the roar of the helicopter outside.

I sank on to the hall floor, my thoughts scattering like a flock of seagulls. The full realisation of what he’d said – what I’d done – sluiced over me, just as cold, just as deathly, as the wave.

No survivors. Wiped out completely, he said.

But if we’d stayed at home, we’d have lived.

But we didn’t get a chance to stay at home, did we?

No.

And whose fault was that?

Yep.

Little old me.

THIS IS ALL my fault. None of my family had wanted to go out for lunch! They’d wanted to stay at home by the fire! They only came out to please me, because they were kind and loving. And I’d repaid that love by leading them right into the mouth of a monster that had swallowed us up as casually as a sweet.

I cupped my head in my hands. My battered fingers explored my new dead face. They discovered the open wound next to my right eyebrow, the cut on my nose, grazes down both cheeks: the result of being dragged along the seabed for a couple of hours.

Oh, do you like my makeover? Yeah, I got it from the universe. Why? Well, I fancied a spot of lunch with my best friend, to stop her becoming best friends with someone else, and basically murdered my entire family. You get the face you deserve, so here’s mine, messed up and nasty, just like my HEART.

Guilt, like a million tiny fish hooks, twisted and caught inside me.

A good cry will make you feel better – that was what Mum always said, and I tried to get one going, but proper tears wouldn’t come, because: a) I didn’t deserve to feel better and b) my tear ducts were dealing with a permanent shutdown, because c) I was dead.

The booming helicopters grew quieter, then faded completely. The only sounds in the house were my ragged, dry sobs. I pulled each name out of me with an awful cold sorrow, like counting marbles out of a bag.

Mum.

Dad.

Birdie.

Me.

Ivy, and her family, and my teachers and my classmates, and the woman at the fish-and-chip shop, and the nice man who sang sea shanties on the bench by the boathouse every Saturday afternoon.

Birdie’s best friend, little Emma, who always had slightly crusty nostrils, but we all loved her anyway and …

The man who dropped the milk off and …

Our school hamster.

The white dog who’d tried to warn us.

Everyone. Everyone I’d ever known. My village. My entire life.

When I closed my eyes I saw terrible things, frightened faces and outstretched hands caught for ever like insects in amber.

I was desperate to breathe, to swim to the surface of my grief and take a deep, juddering intake of air, escape the pain. But the sea had stolen my last breath. Instead my mouth opened and shut hopelessly, like a fish that knew its time was up.

Hours passed. I sat in a damp heap on the hallway rug, my clothes still wet, my skin still wrinkly, as the sky darkened.

The gently flickering fairy lights strung on the stairway banisters spluttered until their batteries ran out and then the gloom of the house wrapped its arms around me. And still I sat, and waited for Mum and Dad and Birdie. I was desperate to see them and say sorry. I yearned to hug them, to look into their faces and be scolded, then forgiven. And my brain clung desperately to this flicker of hope, like a raft.

They won’t be much longer. They won’t. They’ll be back. Any minute now.

Any.

Minute.

Now.

MOONSHINE HAD BEGUN to struggle through the clouds beyond the door. Still no one came. What were they doing, coming back via the scenic route?

I peeled myself off the floor, leaving a damp patch behind. There was a wet sheen of moisture on my skin and the salt tang was still in my mouth. I had that horrible wet chill you get if you’ve worn a damp wetsuit too long. Was that normal? Was I always going to look and feel as I did at my moment of death? Wet and battered and coated with sea salt? Studded with shells like a trinket box from a seaside gift shop?

Oh, what was taking them so long? Did they need a sign I was here, waiting for them?

I ran to the kitchen. A torch was what I wanted. I’d flash out some Morse code from our back garden. If they were in the waves, they’d read my message and come back.

There was just the tiniest problem. I didn’t know any Morse code.

Make that two problems.

I couldn’t open any of the kitchen drawers to find a torch in the first place. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, my fingers slid off their surfaces. I remembered how my attempts to connect with that man’s backside had failed – my foot had just darted off at the last minute, like the wrong end of a magnet resisting another.

Yet I was able to touch my own body. I could pull shells out of my rubbery dead skin and run a hand through my matted salty hair, lucky me. But I couldn’t physically touch anyone that was alive.

And, it appeared, the same rule applied to physical stuff – bits, glass and wood and metal and other people. Anything outside me, essentially.

I glared at the drawer. Our torch was inside it. I tried to hit the handle as hard as I could, scrabbled at it, banged it with frustration, even resorted to growling at it, but no dice. Getting any kind of grip on the handle remained impossible.

So: I could sit on a step but I couldn’t open a drawer. I could walk up and down the staircase and move through rooms but I couldn’t open a door. I could hear and see people that were alive, but I couldn’t make them see and hear me. Things could happen to me, but I couldn’t make things happen.

So far, being dead wasn’t what I’d call an empowering experience.

Maybe there was one thing. If I was dead, could I …

… fly?

I did try hard. I gave it a good go. By which I mean, I hopped about a bit, flapped my battered arms and hands around, leant forward and strained, frowning, into space. Nothing.

Flightless as an emu.

There was literally nothing cool about being dead at all.

I slapped a hand to my forehead.

None of this mattered.

Why was I getting distracted? I needed to contact Mum, Dad and Birdie before they spent another night out – I glanced through the study window and shivered involuntarily – there. Whether or not I could move through a door or fly was totally insignificant compared to that.

Luckily the front door was still open – swinging off its hinges from being kicked in earlier by the rescue crew. I ran through it and then circled round the house, towards the back garden that faced the sea.

‘MUM! DAD! BIRDIE!’

The night swallowed my words up silently.

I cast them out again.

‘I’M HERE! FRANKIE! I’M AT HOME! PLEASE – COME BACK!’

In the dark, the sea smiled its treacherous wet smile, replete from its feast.

‘I’M SO SORRY WE’RE ALL DEAD! REALLY, REALLY SORRY!’

Out of the silver clouds came a cry. Was it Birdie, calling my name? I held myself still, like a quivering arrow, desperate to hear her again.

But it was just a stupid gull, saying, EEEE, EEEE.

What else could I do to find them? Shouting into the darkness wasn’t enough.

I had to go to the place where it happened.

To the harbour. Right away. Not a moment to lose.

FIRST OFF, BETTER get my coat. I turned back to the house, then stopped. I’d never need to think about putting on my parka again, which was probably just as well. I must have lost it in that giant wave. Some fish was probably wearing it; a gurnard, most likely. They always looked like they were after something.

I ran into Alan the bull’s field. He looked alarmed, his ears pricked up, and then he reared up on his hind legs and went charging off into the distance. It was sort of gratifying and, on this dreadful day, I would take any comfort I could get. Not such a big scary boy now, are you?

I’d just reached the stile at the opposite end when the clouds peeled back, and what remained of Cliffstones was bathed in the moon’s merciless light.

Nothing familiar remained – not the playground, or the half-built village hall, or the little rows of fishermen’s cottages. The wave had slithered over it and smashed it in its wake. And as the gleaming light crept over the village’s remains, I couldn’t help but shiver. I’d perished down there. And now I was planning to go back?

What are you afraid of, Frankie Ripley – dying?

With a bleak grin, I hopped over the stile.

And then something odd happened. As soon as I reached Legkiller Road, my legs stopped working. Instead of walking, they just jerked back and forwards, like a toy running out of battery.

Confusion filled me on the quiet dark road. Would my body begin to shut down now? Perhaps the last twenty-four hours had been an accidental blip of consciousness on my way to proper deadness. Maybe I was like one of those chickens who ran about a bit after their head was chopped off – and if so, how much longer did I have before I died properly?

As these questions ran through me, a large pair of mustard eyes glowed in the darkness, accompanied by a rusty squeaking sound.

I frowned into the shadows. Terror drummed away inside my busted heart. Something was moving up Legkiller Road. Something large. Something crusty and pitted. And it – whatever it was – was heading right towards me.

When it was just a few metres away, the clouds parted again and bathed the huge object in a silvery light.

It was a shipwreck. Dripping wet, festooned with strings of seaweed, covered with a bumpy skin of molluscs. From its rusting hulk came the briny smell of saltwater and decay.

Oh God.

Had death come for me at last? Had the wave finally realised it was missing a body from its terrible haul and sent this ship to hunt me down and drag me back?

I frowned at the sopping vessel as it came nearer.

Oh.

It wasn’t a ship.

It was a bus.

But it was definitely still a wreck. A double-decker bus wreck. The glass in all its windows had long gone and, despite its creaky yet undeniably forward propulsion, all four wheels were flat. It didn’t even look like there was anyone at the wheel.

And as it lurched its way towards me, like a tipsy grown-up at one of my parents’ parties, I heard, faintly but unmistakably, the sound of children crying and wailing coming from its belly.

Which was obviously, as you can imagine, a really lovely, reassuring sound.

ALL I COULD do was stand and stare as the bus creaked towards me. The moon picked out every unsavoury detail. Its wheels were flaps of shredded rubber that looked like they’d last been inflated sometime around doomsday. There was a row of crabs clinging to the top of the bus, clacking their claws threateningly like stern Spanish dancers. Most of its side panels were clinging on by a nail. All it would take to blow it apart would be one windy day.

And on each deck, like eggs in a box, was a clutch of faces, all turned in my direction.

The wind howled around us.

I gulped. Should I shout for help?

But who would hear me? No one’s left.

The sound of slow, determined footsteps rang out from inside the wreck. A few seconds later, the warped front door flew open with a squeak and a bang. And in the doorway, bathed in the ashen January moonlight, stood a middle-aged woman in a shapeless beige suit, carrying a clipboard. She wore the biggest pair of glasses I had ever seen.

She glanced at the clipboard in her hands and stared at me.

I straightened my shoulders and returned her gaze.

Somewhere, an owl hooted.

A polite cough. ‘Perished in the Cliffstones tsunami of January the third?’ she enquired delicately.

‘Pardon?’

‘Perished in the Cliffstones tsunami of January the third?’

‘Was that what it was?’ I said. ‘A tsunami?’

She sighed. ‘Did you, or did you not, die in the Cliffstones tsunami of January the third?’

A bat slipped out of the mangled roof and shot into the night.

‘I guess?’ I said.

This answer seemed to satisfy her and she put a tick on her clipboard. ‘Frances Frida Ripley?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How’d you know that? Can you help me find my fam—’

‘You’re my last pick-up,’ she said. ‘Time to get on board.’

I stared at her. ‘What?’

Through her glasses two leached, drained eyes regarded me.

‘On board the bus, duckie. For the Afterlife Club,’ she said. Her voice was as flat as the tyres on the bus.

‘The Afterlife Club?’

‘Yes, dear.’ She pointed to the front of the bus. ‘Read.’

The faded destination sign said: The Afterlife Club, for ages twelve and under. Enjoy death with friends, games and endless days out!

I’ve always been suspicious of exclamation marks and that one was the most desperate I’d ever seen. I eyed it warily, then glanced at the woman. ‘I don’t … understand … What?’

‘According to our records, you drowned when you were eleven years old, so this is the bus for you.’

But I had questions, starting with the faces visible through the windows. ‘Who else is on that bus?’

‘Lots of other children like you, picked up over the years,’ the woman said. ‘We’re quite full now, on account of the tsunami. Had to go down to the seabed for an unscheduled detour. Picked up quite a few new passengers. Bit inconvenient you weren’t down there, as a matter of fact,’ she added, pursing her lips in a way that reminded me of most of my teachers.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Sorry?’

‘Quite unusual, your corpse wandering away from the site of death. Doesn’t happen very often. Only with the most difficult children, I’ve noticed. Bit of a troublemaker, are you?’ She looked at me thoughtfully.

I was only half listening, too busy with my own thoughts. If she’d been down on the seabed, trawling for Cliffstones children under the age of twelve, then …

‘Is my sister on there?’ I yelled.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Birdie. Well, her name’s Bridget, but we call her Birdie, because she’s constantly whistling. Bridget Ripley?’

My mouth was dry as the woman checked her clipboard.

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said finally. ‘No one of that name on the bus. She must have died properly. Younger, was she? Less … trouble?’

I nodded, unable to speak.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said quite kindly.

I took a deep breath and waited for the pain to subside. My thoughts rattled like an out-of-control slot machine. If we were all dead, then …

‘Is this … heaven?’ I asked.

The woman turned and contemplated the barnacled wreck behind her.

From the top deck came the sound of shouting and arguing. Several snotty children in the lower deck had begun to whine.

‘Does it look like heaven?’ she said finally.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Not much.’

She sniffed. ‘You’ve got a funny idea of heaven, Frances, if you think it’s carting a disintegrating rust bucket around the world looking after a bunch of kids who never learnt any real manners while they were alive and apparently believe it’s too late to start now. Some death chaperones get to circumnavigate the globe with Patrick Swayze – now that would have been my idea of heaven – but oh no, old Jill from Canvey Island gets lumbered with the under-twelves, which most definitely is not a place of eternal peace, believe you me.’

‘But … why? If this isn’t … why am I still around? I can walk, talk, think …’

Blinking several times, she fixed me with those tired eyes. ‘This all gets covered on the bus. There’s a slideshow. I can sit down. Can’t you just get on and watch it?’

I jutted my chin out. ‘I don’t know anything about you. You’re stranger danger.’

Jill sighed. ‘Please?’

‘I’m not getting on that bus until I know more.’

She closed her eyes and her shoulders slumped. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

‘WELL THEN?’ I said.

Jill pushed her glasses up her nose and they slid back down again.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There are lots of reasons why people don’t properly die. But the most common one is that there’s a toodoo.’

I almost laughed. ‘Pardon?’

‘A toodoo. Hanging over you.’

‘Say it one more time.’

‘You’ve got unfinished business,’ she said firmly.

‘Huh?’

‘There’s something you haven’t done yet that you have to do. Hence, a —’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘A To Do.’

‘That’s what I said,’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘Gordon Bennett, Frances, how am I supposed to know? It might not be a big thing. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who forget to turn their kitchen appliances off. Have you left the gas on?’

‘I’m eleven years old.’

‘Oh. In that case, any homework you forgot to hand in?’

I thought for a while. From the top deck of the bus, I saw a boy I recognised from Year Ten. We waved at each other.

‘Maybe?’

The strange woman in front of me sighed. ‘Right, well, you think about that. Because the moment you do it, you can die properly.’

‘What if I can’t think of a To Do? What if there isn’t one? What if I’m an All Done?’

‘Well, another possible reason you’re still around could be that you’re a Difficult Button.’

‘Difficult Button?’

‘The ones that are too stubborn to totally pass over to the other side. Very common in this age group, actually.’

She threw a frustrated glance behind her, barked ‘QUIET!’ at the fierce row blossoming on the top deck over whose turn it was to sit next to the window, and flicked an eye-roll at me.

‘It’s all in the slideshow,’ she said hopefully.

‘Nope.’

Her eyes revealed a great deal of inner suffering. ‘Think of yourself as a button.’

‘Button?’ I said helpfully.

‘Now, think of Life as a shirt, and all the buttonholes as Death.’

‘Er,’ I said.

‘Now, normally, when a button – sorry, human – dies, they pass through the buttonhole easily enough, slip right through, and they come out the other side, and they’re properly dead. Or what we in the trade call “dead dead”. Everything’s gone: consciousness, spirit, soul, the whole shebang. They’re buried, there’s a funeral, everyone has a cry, then there are sandwiches, right? The normal way. The proper way.’

‘Okay.’

‘But if you’re a Difficult Button, what happens is, you don’t quite get through the buttonhole. You’re stuck in the midway point – one foot in death, one foot in life – causing an administrative headache. Anyway, it’s normally the stubborn, hard-headed, challenging types …’ she gave me a loaded look I didn’t appreciate, ‘who don’t die properly. They don’t fully surrender to death. In other words …’

I remembered, for a moment, how I’d told myself that the wave would turn back, that it wouldn’t really break over the harbour wall. Even as the water ripped Mum’s hand out of mine, there’d been a tiny part of me insisting, This isn’t happening, this isn’t—

‘… they resist. At the very point it matters most, Difficult Buttons do not accept death, and their consciousness somehow drags them into this sort of halfway house. An existence, without a proper life attached.’ The woman shook her head. ‘Therefore they’re stuck in the buttonhole. Honestly, why they don’t cover this in schools is beyond me.’

‘So, which one am I? A To Do, or a Difficult Button?’

Jill squinted at her clipboard and then back at me. ‘It’s not clear yet. You might be both. Between you and me, these files they send from the back office aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I’m sure it will all be sorted out eventually. In the meantime, you need to get on the bus. You’re an unaccompanied minor, which means you’re not permitted to be dead by yourself. You need a guardian, and that is me, and you need a new place of abode, and that is the bus.’

‘I can’t be dead by myself? Says who?’

‘Says the ones in charge.’ Her voice was matter of fact yet also firm. ‘We’ve got a strict code of conduct to abide by, rules and re-ghoulations. You might be dead, Frances, but there’s no need to be reckless.’

I had another disturbing thought. ‘Are you … God then? Or …’ I swallowed, ‘the other one?’

It seemed for a moment that her pupils had grown oddly yellow, like the headlights on the bus. Yet her smile was kind and wise. Or was that just the moonlight rippling over her face?

My thoughts grew electric and wild, as if I’d started flicking through a private diary that I had no business in, and I was afraid. She regarded me a minute, and coughed slightly. Now she just looked like a middle-aged woman in a shapeless suit again, and I was surprised at how much of a relief that was.

‘Calm yourself. I’m Jill. I’m a death guardian. No one important, just an employee. Thirty-three years of service, thank you very much, ever since lung cancer did for me. Cigarettes …’ she fixed me with a longing look, ‘do kill you, as it turns out.’

‘So … where does the bus go?’

‘Everywhere,’ said Jill simply. ‘Well, anywhere there’s a children’s attraction, at any rate. This bus will take you around the world – not in style, admittedly.’ She shot it a rueful look. ‘But it does the job. We make a lot of scheduled stops on the way – lots of chances to get off and stretch your legs, and of course plenty of chances to go on rides completely free of charge. Theme parks, water slides, and of course the Harry Potter studios are very popular—’

‘How long’s the trip?’

‘It can be as little as a couple of months if you meet the obligations of your To Do, or a lot longer if you’re a Difficult Button and take a while to accept death. Spirits can take much longer to decompose than bodies. Whoever came up with the human race really didn’t think this part through and I’m sure this manufacturing snag is a matter of deep personal regret to them, even now. Now, how about getting on, duckie?’

I glanced at the mangled remains of the bus. Peered past it, towards what was left of the village in the moonlight. If my sister wasn’t on the bus, then there was only one other place she could be.

‘No.’

She looked at me wearily. Glanced down at her clipboard. Pushed her glasses back up her nose and fixed me with her eerie stare.

‘Honestly, Frances, I do hope you weren’t like this when you were alive. It’s exhausting.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.