‘It’s Corey!’ I yanked open the car door and slammed it behind me, running up the path. ‘Corey? Are you OK?’
‘Ella?’ said Corey, un-crumpling. He was all bleary-eyed, and he had a noticeable scab on his eyebrow and a yellowing bruise on his chin. Old wounds.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was waiting for you.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
Another car door slammed and Max ran up the steps, two at a time. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m still trying to find out,’ I said. Corey was getting to his feet, adjusting his glasses with one hand and clutching his skateboard with the other. ‘Why are you on my doorstep?’
‘No one answered.’
‘My dad’s gone to Manchester to do a book signing and see my brother. He’s just had a baby. What’s happened? Is something wrong?’
‘Ells,’ said Max, folding his arms across his chest and nodding. I followed his eye line towards the bottom of the road. A figure stood beneath a lamp post opposite Corey’s grandparents’ house; a stocky figure with a shaved head, wearing a rugby top and jeans.
‘Let’s go inside,’ I said, getting out my key and ushering both boys through the front door, keeping one eye on the distant stranger.
Me and Max had grown up with Corey Malinowski (his full name was Corneliusz, but we’d never called him that). We’d spent the summers together, us and him and Fallon and Zane. He’d gone to Brynstan Academy too, but he’d mostly been one of the school loners – he had a mild form of cerebral palsy, a hearing aid and two dead parents, so he was pretty much begging to be an outcast. But to us, he’d been vital. He was the reader of books, the architect of dens, darer of dares, encyclopedia of Harry Potter trivia (seriously, down to page numbers), and the only one who could get a fire going using just sticks. To the other kids, he was that skinny weirdo with the limp; to us, he was a genius.
He took off his tatty Converse by the pillar in our lounge and padded into the kitchen, standing in front of our French windows like they opened onto a long dark tunnel.
‘He’s gone,’ he said, turning to me.
I knew his granddad had a bad heart. ‘Oh, Corey, I’m sorry. Are you OK? How’s your nan coping?’
‘No, no,’ he said, correcting me. ‘Granddad and Nan are on their cruise to the Rhineland. For their anniversary.’ His voice was shaky, and before each sentence, he would sort of rev up to get going. I’d forgotten he did that. ‘No, it’s Mort.’
His cat! Phew. ‘What’s happened to him?’
Corey sat down on one of the heavy pine chairs at the breakfast table. I got some Diet Cokes from the fridge. Max shook his head when I offered him one and leaned against the wall, taking a roll-up out of his tobacco pouch.
‘Patio,’ I said, ordering him towards the French windows. ‘Go on, Corey.’
‘I was outside on my skateboard yesterday, and Mort got in my way.’
‘And you… ran him over?’
‘No,’ he said, his eyes creasing up. A single tear fell. ‘I put him on my board. I was gonna Instagram it.’
I bit both my cheeks to stop the laugh. Corey was always doing things like this. His nan sometimes saw my dad – they both did the sugar-craft class at the community centre – and she told him how much Corey got on her nerves with his ‘experiments’. Putting foil in the microwave, just to see. Trying to drive his granddad’s car out the garage, just to see. Asking out a supply teacher, just to see. Nothing ever ended well.
Max poked his head through the gap in the French windows. ‘Did I just hear right? You put your cat on your skateboard?’
I threw Max a death stare and turned back to Corey.
‘OK, so you put him on your board. Then what?’
‘The board went too fast. He got to the bottom of the close where there’s that hilly bit and then the kerb. And it flipped him up and he crashed into the wall.’
I felt bad for Corey, but not for Voldemort. I couldn’t stand that cat. It was always wailing outside our French windows, waiting for my dad to make a fuss of it. He even bought tuna for it – from the Finest range. I didn’t really like animals, anyway, and cats were the worst of all. And Mort was the worst of all cats. He hated me. His yellow eyes were full of it, like it was thinking, I know your secret.
‘Right. Well, we better go and scrape him up then. I’ll help you bury him.’
Corey pulled back, wiping his nose on his jumper sleeve. ‘No, he’s not dead,’ he said. ‘He got up straight away and ran off. I haven’t seen him since. But he could be injured, Ella. Dying somewhere. We need to look for him.’
‘Why didn’t you start looking?’ said Max, poking his head through again. ‘Why wait for Ella?’
Corey didn’t respond to that. ‘Can you help me, Ella? Please? I don’t know where to start. What if Zane’s found him? He might do something to him.’
Then I knew for sure who the figure was, standing under the lamp post. It had been Zane. I’d seen him a few times in our road, or thought I’d seen him. He didn’t live round here, though. He lived on the seafront.
‘OK, Corey, let’s get looking. We’ll find Mort, I promise.’
Corey leaned in for a hug. ‘I knew you’d help me,’ he said.
‘Max’ll help too,’ I said. ‘Won’t you, Max?’
Max rolled his eyes, but flicked his fag butt outside onto the flagstones. At once, I barged past him and went to stamp it out, just in case the world burned down.
‘Why did you feel like you had to help?’
An Old Friend One month earlier – 9 July
Corey’d had a crap life. Not only had he been born with a disability but his junkie dad died of an overdose when Corey was months old; his junkie mum killing herself a year later. He’d got lucky with his grandparents. They took him in, wrapped him in home knits, organised physio and speech therapists and treated him like a little prince. But at school, he was one of the loners; one of ‘those’ kids with an aura of stay-away about them. The last few years had leached something out of him. He looked like Kurt Cobain gone wrong, with his shaggy, dirty-blond hair, baggy jeans and cardigans. He had this low, almost apologetic voice. We’d barely spoken in months.
I still saw him around town, though; a headphone zombie skulking in doorways, sitting on walls eating pasties from a Greggs bag, or in the churchyard, reading comics and fantasy novels. He worked at the computer shop in town, had about six Twitter followers and idolized his cat, Mort. All his Instagram posts were pictures of Mort reaching up to paw at a toy mouse or wearing a little sombrero next to a stand-and-stuff taco.
Everyone knew what Zane was like with Corey. We’d seen the spit glistening in his hair, the bend in his glasses. I was afraid Zane had done something to Mort. And it would be my fault if he had. Our last day of school, I’d been in the girls’ changing rooms when I heard noises outside:
‘Please, please don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t, I swear, I promise. No! Pleeeeease!’
‘Go on, have it!’
Cough Cough. Nggghhhhhhhhh.
‘Do