She and Josh both crane their heads upwards as the sound of helicopter blades starts to rumble and boom overhead.

  ‘Reporters,’ says Josh. ‘I wonder how they found out?’

  ‘It only takes one phone call,’ says Cate. ‘It’s not as if the police are doing anything to hide what’s going on here.’

  Cate sees a movement across the road and the front door of the house opposite swing open. There’s the man, the weird man. She ducks slightly so she’s not visible.

  Behind him is the woman he appears to live with, the statuesque silver-haired woman she’d seen looking for her keys in her bag that morning weeks ago. And behind the silver-haired woman is a very tall gentleman with grey, slicked-back hair.

  Slowly they emerge. The older man looks upwards at the sky for the helicopter he can hear. The woman walks to the police by the cordon and Cate watches her ask them questions. The older man and the younger man stand side by side, a few feet away. Suddenly it occurs to Cate that maybe the weird man has something to do with all of this, that maybe the police coming to her house to ask about midnight on Valentine’s night was nothing to do with her and everything to do with him.

  She stares at him now, overriding her physical discomfort. He has his fingers over his mouth, one arm wrapped around his waist. He keeps turning to look at the building site. After a minute he leaves the older couple standing on the front drive and heads back into the house.

  She sees the female detective talking to the two people who have just walked out of the building site with plastic boxes. She asks them something. One of them nods. One of them shakes their head. They all turn to look at the building site. Then the female detective turns and looks directly at Cate’s house, at Cate herself. It looks exactly as though they have been talking about her, about her family.

  ‘Come on,’ she says to Josh, who has barely breathed for the past two minutes. ‘Let’s leave them all to it.’

  She touches his shoulder and he recoils, almost imperceptibly. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I want to stay here and watch.’

  She sighs. ‘OK,’ she says lightly. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes please,’ he says. ‘Thank you. Love you.’

  ‘Love you, too,’ she replies. Her heart aches a tiny bit at the thought of him. Her soft boy with his endless love and his raw, shaved neck.

  27

  Owen hears helicopter blades breaking apart the air above the house. He opens his bedroom window and peers out as far as he is able. At this time of year, before the trees come back into leaf, he can see parts of the big empty space next to their house.

  There used to be a mansion there called Winterham House. For decades it had sat with broken windows and ivy climbing up to precarious balconies, toppled chimney pots, graffitied walls and overgrown grass. When Owen first moved into Tessie’s flat it was two months away from a demolition order. He’d watched in fascination as the whole building was dismantled and demolished, brick by brick, all the finery being taken away in vans to be sold as reclaim at vastly inflated prices, the bricks taken away to be put back into stock, everything else being broken down into components small enough to fit in the back of a pickup. It took about three months and then the demolition people left and suddenly the dust stopped, the noise stopped, there was light through the trees and into Owen’s room, birdsong and foxes, meadow flowers every summer. Occasionally on warm nights Owen can hear teenagers in there and the smell of skunk wafts into his room.

  One day a notice went up outside to say that someone had applied for planning permission to build a development of five luxury townhouses on the site. Of course the whole neighbourhood joined together to try to block it. In the end the house-builder who had bought the site compromised with plans for a small block of flats, thus maintaining the maximum amount of greenery and space. That had been approved four years ago but since then, nothing.

  The open, verdant aspect from his bedroom has made Owen feel rather as though he lives alone, in a wilderness; the view from his room is nothing but trees; there is no sign of urban life to be seen.

  But as he peers from his bedroom window now, he sees that that silent oasis is teeming with people. Voices call out to each other; radios crackle. He sees the suggestion of bodies moving across the open space while the boom of the helicopters overhead fades in and out. He assumes this is something to do with the missing girl, the one the police asked him about yesterday. He assumes it is his fault they are here, because it was him who stupidly mentioned the girl in the hoodie outside the house opposite on Valentine’s night. And he’s not even particularly sure what he saw. The night is a blur, a sped-up film that stops occasionally on a random still and then moves on again at high speed. He can barely remember getting into bed that night and had woken up wearing his shirt and one sock.

  He heads out into the hallway. Tessie and Barry are already there, standing in the front door, watching the activity.

  ‘They’ve found something,’ she says. ‘Something to do with that girl they were asking you about, the one on the flyer.’

  ‘What have they found?’

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me. But they’re going to be keeping the road closed off all day. And they asked for access to the outside areas.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of here. Of the house. I said of course.’

  Owen blinks.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asks, her eyes narrowed.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Why would I mind?’

  ‘I don’t know. You might feel it was a breach of your privacy. Or something like that.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my garden, is it? It’s everyone’s garden.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Tessie, ‘yes. That’s right.’

  There are police in their back garden now, picking through the undergrowth, over the piles of rusty old gardening equipment that no one ever uses. He watches them for a while, trying to hear what they’re saying. He catches the occasional word but not enough to form any idea what they might be talking about.

  There appears to be a smaller group of detectives searching in the vicinity of his bedroom window, at the back of the house. A flash of anxiety passes though Owen’s gut and he heads back to his bedroom and closes the door behind him.

  He hears a voice, close to his window, a man calling to someone else. ‘Here, look. Bring the flashlight.’

  He catches his breath, stands to one side of the window, his back pressed against the wall, listening.

  ‘Get the governor,’ says the man.

  He hears someone run off through the grass and across the gravelled drive, calling out for DI Currie.

  A moment later he hears a woman’s voice. ‘What have you got?’

  Owen peers cautiously around the window frame. He looks down and sees the tops of three heads, a light being shone into the grass, a suggestion of rose gold glinting in the beam. He sees gloved hands gently parting the blades of grass. He can see the phone case being plucked from the grass and dropped into an outstretched plastic bag.

  The air feels electric. Something is about to happen. Something extraordinary. Something appalling.

  The helicopter blades spinning overhead sound like herds of heavy-footed animals thundering through thick black dust.

  Owen turns away from his window and collapses against the wall.

  28

  SAFFYRE

  Roan’s son’s name was Josh. Joshua Fours. You almost have to say it posh otherwise it doesn’t sound right. He went to the school opposite my flat. I saw him from time to time that autumn term. I would never have picked him out in the crowd before, just your typical gangly white dude in a North Face jacket and black trainers. He had a friend; weirdly this friend had red hair and a pointy face and it was almost as though the friend and the fox were somehow interchangeable, like maybe Josh only liked things that resembled foxes.

  I followed him home a few times that autumn. He walked so slowly, like a tortoise. If he wanted to look at something on his phone he’d literally just stop in the middle of the pavement, oblivious to whoever was behind him or near him. Sometimes he’d cross the street for no good reason, then cross back again. He’d stop and look into shop windows that didn’t look like the sort of shop he would even care about. It was as if, I sometimes thought, he was just trying to drag it out. Like maybe he didn’t even want to go home.

  He slipped through the bushes into the empty plot quite often, to smoke weed. One night he went in with the boy with the red hair. I heard them laughing a lot and I was pleased that he had a friend to laugh with.

  Then one day, late September, during my first few weeks in the sixth form, I went to my Thursday class at the dojo, and there he was, all green and nervous, doing a trial class. I was a few minutes early for my class so I sat and watched him finish his. He was a foot taller than everyone else; it was a beginner class so mainly kids. I couldn’t work out what he was doing there, this shambling, weed-smoking, fox-chatting boy. He did not seem the type.

  He’d been paired with a small girl for the last exercises. He looked embarrassed. She looked resigned.

  Then it was over and they were taught how to end the class:

  ‘Kahm sa hamnida.’

  ‘Ee sahn.’

  He shuffled into the changing rooms and reappeared a moment later in his school uniform, his North Face coat, his schoolbag. He caught me staring at him and I nodded. He flushed and turned away.

  It seemed like it meant something, that this boy was there, at my dojo. I wondered for a moment if he’d seen me following him and was trying to turn the tables on me; you know, like letting me know that he knew what I was up to. But he never seemed to notice me there; he didn’t have a vibe about him as if he was aware of my presence.

  The third time he was there I arrived late and I was in the changing area with him. The curtain was pulled across. Two small boys sat cross-legged on the floor tying up the laces on their school shoes. I took off my coat and my hoodie and hung them from a peg. I turned to Josh and I said, ‘How are you finding it?’

  He looked at me as if I was the first person who had spoken to him ever in his whole life. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, how are you finding it? You’re new, yeah?’

  He nodded and said, ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘What’s your objective?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What’s your objective? I’ve been at this since I was six. Did it so that no one on the street could scare me, intimidate me, you know. Just wondered what you were getting out of it?’

  ‘Same, I guess.’

  ‘Self-defence?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Kind of. I was mugged.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said, ‘when?’

  ‘Like, a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Shit. That’s bad.’ I glanced down at the small boys on the floor and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then to Josh: ‘Did they hurt you?’

  He shrugged. ‘No. Not really. I didn’t put up much of a fight, so, you know.’

  I did know. I really, really did know. ‘Any idea who it was?’

  ‘No. Just a white guy, with a hood.’

  ‘Scary,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. Then he picked up his bag and left without saying goodbye.

  He never came back again.

  One night at around the same time I first saw Josh at the dojo, I got home and found my granddad flopped in the armchair; his skin looked grey. I said, ‘Granddad, are you OK?’

  He said, ‘I think so. I’m not sure.’ He said he had indigestion, so I got him some Rennies. He rubbed his chest a lot and grimaced.

  Aaron got home an hour after me and called an ambulance.

  Shortly after that I was in a squeaky plastic chair at the Royal Free holding my granddad’s hand and telling him that everything was going to be all right.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was all wrong.

  Granddad spent three days on the ward having various tests. He was finally diagnosed with angina and then, after more tests and more scans, with coronary artery disease. He was sent home with a long list of new ways in which to live his life, things he should be eating, medicines he needed to take. I could tell he had no intention of doing any of it. He’d lost his wife and his daughter, he’d been in pain for years, he had no social life and no job and now I was nearly grown, nearly an adult, he could not see the point in changing everything just so he could be around in twenty years’ time still being a problem for us all to deal with.

  So he pushed away all the healthy food that Aaron bought and cooked for him and he left the pills sitting on the table next to his chair and he refused to go out for nice walks with me and then, before we’d even really started trying to save his life, he had a massive heart attack and died. He was only fifty-nine when he passed away. Sounds so much younger than sixty when you’re talking about dying.

  So, there I was. No mum, no dad, no grandparents, just two uncles and two little cousins. Not enough.

  I couldn’t get out of bed for a week after Granddad’s funeral. I felt hollow, like you could just blow me away or crush me under your thumb.

  For the first time in my school career, I fell behind with my coursework.

  Aaron went to talk to my teachers and they sent this woman over, something to do with safeguarding or pastoral care or whatever; I’d never seen her before in my life. She was grumpy with a face like a lump of pastry – it’s not like the movies y’know, where Sandra Bullock or someone like that comes over and turns your life around – and she sat on the other side of our little dining table from me, both of us with our fingers wrapped around blue mugs of tea made by Aaron, and she said stuff to me and there were words, a lot of words, and she meant well and she was nice and all, but the minute she left I just went straight back to bed.

  It was Bonfire Night that got me out of the slump. Sitting on the back of the sofa with Aaron and pulling open the curtains and watching the sky explode into all those different colours. It was weird Granddad not being there, but it also reminded me that life goes on, as mundane as that sounds, life just goes on; fireworks still pop, people still watch in wide-eyed wonder, children still hold sparklers, foxes still skulk through urban blackness looking for chicken bones.

  I put on my Puffa coat and I told Aaron I was going to get lemonade from the shop downstairs. Instead I bought a packet of Fridge Raiders and headed up towards Hampstead, through the leafy avenues where the fireworks exploded privately in people’s back gardens, smudges of glitter just visible above ancient trees. On the corner of Roan’s road, I sneaked through the same gap I’d seen Josh using to access the empty plot. It wasn’t cold and I took off my Puffa and used it as a blanket.

  I opened the packet of Fridge Raiders and sat it on the damp gravel next to me, hoping that the smell would wend its way across the open space. I switched on my phone and messaged Aaron. I’m going over Jasmin’s place. See u laters.

  He replied, Everything OK?

  I started to type my response and then I stopped at the sound of rustling behind me. It was him; it was the fox. I rested my phone on my lap and held my breath. I could hear his little paws, pad-padding across the gravel, closer and closer to me. I put my hand inside the Fridge Raiders packet and pulled out a nugget of whatever in hell that stuff actually is, held it between my forefinger and thumb, just out by my side. I still didn’t turn and look. I could hear the fox’s breathing, an anxious, active sound. I felt him stop and I could tell he was inches away from me. And then I felt the warmth of his breath against the skin of my hand. I dropped the meat and heard him snaffle it up. But he didn’t move. So I pushed the bag forward a few inches to see if he’d follow it. And then there he was, standing by my side, looking down at the bag expectantly, like a pet dog.

  ‘Want another one?’ I said.

  He didn’t look at me, just stared intently at the bag, his little gingerbread eyes totally fixed on the spot. ‘OK then,’ I said, taking one out. ‘Here you go.’

  A huge firework exploded overhead and for a moment the fox looked like he was going to scamper away. But he held his ground and his snout appeared in my peripheral vision and then there he was, taking the snack from between my fingers. I inhaled so hard I heard my own breath catch.

  And here I was, I realised, back in the same place I’d found myself that time at Lexie’s animal party, when the guy gave me the owl called Harry. All the black inside me turned silver and gold. I felt the punch of a connection with the ground, the sky, the trees, the air, so strong that it almost winded me. Butterflies whipped through my stomach. I stifled a giggle and covered my mouth with the back of my hand. I looked up into the gunpowder-stained night sky and I searched with my eyes until I found a star, muted and grubby, but there, and I clasped my hands together in a prayer and said, ‘I love you, Granddad. I love you, Grandma. I love you, Mum.’

  I picked up my phone and replied to Aaron’s message.

  I’m all good! with a smiley face emoji.

  And still the fox stood by my side.

  I passed him more snacks and laughed out loud.

  I thought, Ha, see, Roan Fours, I didn’t need you, after all. I only needed nature. I only needed owls and foxes and stars and fireworks.

  I was fixed.

  Or so I thought.

  29