C.J. SKUSE is the author of the YA novels PRETTY BAD THINGS, ROCKOHOLIC and DEAD ROMANTIC. She was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, England. She has First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Children and, aside from writing novels, lectures in Writing for Children at Bath Spa University where she is planning to do her PhD. THE DEVIANTS is her fifth novel.
For my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Roy Snead,
Thank you for the days, those sacred days you gave me.
Contents
2. Moonlight Adventure Saturday, 1 August
4. The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat
5. An Old Friend One month earlier – 9 July
9. A Little Upset
10. A Horrid Shock
11. A Smashing Time and a Piece of Advice
12. Ella Thinks Up a Plan
13. Up To Mischief Tuesday, 4 August
14. A Shock for Max
15. A Rather Unpleasant Meeting
16. Junior Springs a Surprise!
17. Five Go Adventuring
18. Curious Discoveries
19. A Rather Splendid Party Friday night, 21st August
20. A Mystery is Solved
21. Mostly About Ella
22. Back to the Island
23. A Nasty Surprise
24. Discoveries at the Witch’s Pool
25. Several Things Happen
26. One Goes Down to the Sea
27. A Shock for All
28. Away on Their Own
29. Five Have a Wonderful Time
Acknowledgments
I’m sitting beside the café window when I see the man running up the beach and I instantly know it’s washed ashore. The sand flicks up behind him as he sprints. And he’s screaming.
His face is alive with fear. He’s running so hard to get away from it, what he’s found. In those brief moments, I am the only person in the café to see him. But, within seconds, the quiet crumbles into chaos.
‘Somebody! Help!’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Did he say a body?’
Someone calls my name, but I don’t turn around. I keep walking, out of the café, into the morning air, along the Esplanade, down the steps and onto the wet sand, like the sea is a magnet and I am metal.
People overtake me. Someone shouts, ‘Call the police.’ Thudding footsteps, snatches of breath. The sand’s covered in a billion worm hills and tiny white shells. A group of crows squawks nearby. They’re all clustered around an object, pecking at it.
‘Let the police handle it.’
‘Don’t look. Don’t look.’
I keep walking towards the mound, until I can see for myself what the man was running from. Until I can see for myself what I have done.
‘Tell me everything. Start with what was happening between you and Max.’
Moonlight Adventure Saturday, 1 August
It’s like those really old paintings you see in art galleries – if you look at them from a distance, they’re beautiful. A quick glance, it’s a masterpiece. But as you get closer, you start to see all the cracks. We were a masterpiece, me and Max. We’d known each other for ever. We had the same taste in music. We finished each other’s sentences. We ate Carte d’Or watching Botched Up Bodies and he’d pretend not to wince. We watched romantic comedies and he’d pretend not to cry. And he had these marvellous arms and always wore sleeveless hoodies in summer.
But close up, there were problems. And these problems were becoming harder to ignore. I was snipping at him more and he took nothing seriously.
He could still impress me though. This one night, he arranged a big surprise for me at the garden centre. I had no idea what the occasion was.
‘You don’t remember, do you?’
There had to be a good reason why he’d gone to so much trouble. Not only had he stolen Neil’s keys and broken us in after hours, he’d set up a table in the café, with lit candles, buttered teacakes and two glasses of milkshake. It looked like something from a honeymoon brochure, with all the fairy lights strung up in the palm trees and the white cloth on the table. Essentially, though, we were still in a garden centre. I’d worn an actual dress and shaved my actual legs to be taken to a place that sold worm poo and weed killer.
‘Of course I remember,’ I lied. ‘This is nice. Thanks.’
He folded his arms. ‘I could get quite offended, you know.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t have a Scooby, do you?’
‘Ummmm, well… I’m pretty sure it’s not my birthday. And you’ve just had your birthday, so that must mean that it’s…’ I scanned my brain for something, anything. What did 1