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  There is sadness there—of course there is—but the main thing is anger. Rage, in fact. Rage that his life, the whole perfect order of things, has been torn down. How was that right? How was that fair? None of this had been anything to do with him. Charlie? Who cares about Charlie? Just some posh kid. Some weird kid. Someone who shouldn’t even have been in Ram’s orbit. His problems? The stuff he was running from? None of Ram’s business.

  But it had been made his business. He’d been dragged into it, and it had cost him Rachel, his leg, and, perhaps most of all, his sense of order. Nothing fit. How that makes him burn.

  Now this. Some other bit of weirdness, something else that doesn’t fit in The World According to Ram. Something else he is being dragged into. Something they are trying to make his problem.

  Trying.

  Ram just wants his life back, and all the trying in the world isn’t going to make that happen.

  TEN

  THE WALLFLOWER OF SHOREDITCH IS COMPLETELY OFF HER HEAD

  Morning, and Coal Hill School lurches into life. Kids hoist backpacks over shoulders, car doors slam, and the flood towards the building begins. Give it twenty minutes, enough time for the drudgery of first period to really bed in, and the atmosphere will drop to one of mild sufferance. Now it’s all about the noise, all about the enthusiasm. In fact, if you see anyone looking vaguely wary, they’re probably a teacher.

  This is just how education works.

  Obviously, the main subject of conversation is the blackened-out shell of the Collinses’ house, the news about which has spread virally from Wi-Fi network to Wi-Fi network. By now everyone knows, and by now everyone is thrilled.

  This is just how people’s minds work.

  It’s not evil, it’s just the only way a mind can face something that awful. It is Big News. It is a ripple in the potential tedium of existence, a spike of drama that has everyone talking, fast, breathless, full of opinion, eager for grisly details.

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘All of them. I heard when they carried his dad out, one of his arms was so burned it snapped off on the door of the ambulance.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘It’s what I heard.’

  Facts don’t mean a thing the morning after; facts are speed bumps on a roller coaster of thrilling, shocking, sensational detail. Who wants to kill an amazing story with facts?

  Of course, later, once the truth of it all has sunk in, once it has stopped being something so outrageous and unexpected, it will become real. Then the enthusiasm, for most, will plummet. For some it already has, of course, because for some this kind of thing is already nowhere near as outrageous or unexpected as it should be.

  ‘Do you know what happened to Max?’ Tanya asks, walking along next to Charlie and Matteusz.

  Charlie shakes his head. ‘He’s saying he didn’t do it.’

  ‘But we know he did?’

  Charlie shrugs. ‘They found him sat watching the house burn. Apparently his face was all singed, like sunburn, because he sat too close.’

  ‘That is probably not true,’ suggests Matteusz. ‘You know what stories are like.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tanya agrees, just about managing to control her disappointment at not being able to keep this terrifying extra detail. ‘I guess.’

  They head inside, the bell for registration ringing. None of them notice the dishevelled figure veering towards the front gate.

  ‘Good morning, class,’ sighs Miss Quill. ‘Let’s all pretend we can bear the thought of ploughing through this one more time, shall we?’ She leans on her desk and stares out of the window. All she can see is the distant playing field but, to cheer herself up, she imagines it erupting in plumes of smoke and earth, a bomb run strafing its way towards the school.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she suggests, ‘we can even turn it into a little game. A game called “I Might Actually Learn Some Physics from Clever Miss Quill Today”.’

  ‘Psycho Miss Quill, you mean,’ someone mumbles from the back.

  Quill pops the cap off a Biro and onto her desk, she then flicks the cap and hits the boy who spoke, bang in the centre of his forehead. This is made all the more impressive by the fact that she carries on looking out of the window while doing it.

  ‘Oi!’ he shouts. ‘You can’t do that! That’s abuse.’

  ‘Something you no doubt prefer doing to yourself, Mr Lowe,’ she replies.

  She is actually slightly angry that the round of laughter the comment generates pleases her. Dear God, Quill, she thinks, you’re playing to the crowd.

  ‘You could have blinded me! I can report you for that!’

  ‘And I can report you for the fact that I clearly saw you smoking a joint on the corner of the playing field half an hour ago, Mr Lowe. Shall we both report each other and see what happens?’

  Mr Lowe declines to answer. Mr Lowe may be stupid, but he’s not blind to the notion of self-preservation.

  Quill tears her eyes away from the playing field and looks at her class. ‘I have empty seats,’ she says, only now noticing. ‘Why do I have empty seats?’

  Which is when the classroom door crashes open and April stumbles in.

  ‘Well, that’s one seat accounted for,’ says Quill. ‘The wallflower of Shoreditch slept in. No doubt she stayed up late deciding what to name her first eight cats.’

  ‘Ah, shut up,’ April mumbles, before swinging her bag off her shoulder, tripping over it, and performing an impromptu slam-down on the waste bin. ‘Ow,’ she moans quietly. She rolls over the now somewhat flattened bin and ends up on her back, staring up in confused pain at the strip lighting.

  In any other class, this manoeuvre would have created laughter or even a round of sarcastic applause, of the sort heard in a pub when someone breaks a glass. In Quill’s class, the students are genuinely unsure how badly this might play out. Considering that speaking out of turn might earn you a pen cap to the head, it seems entirely possible April MacLean may be hanging from one of the goalposts within the next five minutes.

  Even Quill isn’t quite sure how she’s going to respond as she stares at the now writhing girl. April is trying to put her bag back over her shoulder and get back on her feet. Either move seems difficult; performed together they’re impossible.

  Charlie’s the first to respond, running over to April. She is now on her hands and knees with her bag slung over her neck.

  ‘April, are you alright?’ he asks, taking her arm.

  ‘Absoloobly fie,’ she replies, her speech so slurred it sounds like she’s trying to spit out a fly that’s strayed into her mouth.

  ‘Is she . . . ?’ Quill can barely say the words it seems so absurd. ‘Is she drunk?’

  ‘Of course not,’ says Charlie, getting April to her feet. She turns to him, grins, and kisses him. He is so startled by the violent, vodka-soaked tongue suddenly in his mouth that he just stands there, his shoulders slumped. She then vacates his face and laughs so hard that she falls over again, taking Charlie with her.

  This time there is an audible inhalation of breath from the entire class. They are witnessing the best thing to happen in a classroom ever and none of them can quite believe it.

  ‘She is,’ says Quill. ‘I don’t believe it but she is. She’s . . .’

  ‘Completely off her head,’ agrees Tanya who is now also moving to help.

  ‘Miss Adeola,’ says Quill. ‘Do sit down, I can’t imagine this situation is going to be improved by having three of my students flailing all over the place.’

  Tanya hovers, torn between helping her friend and doing as she’s told. Quill walks over to April and Charlie, tapping the latter on the shoulder as he struggles to get up, April holding on to him.

  ‘Charles, do go away, you’re not helping,’ Quill says, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and lifting him clear.

  She looks down at April.

  ‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ she says, still not quite able to believe her own eyes. April MacLean. Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Hammered and g
iggling on her classroom floor.

  ‘You’re so MEAN!’ April screams, and then, promptly and with considerable force, throws up all over Quill’s shoes.

  All things considered, nobody can quite believe that April is still alive. Not only did Quill not simply snap her neck or hurl her out of the window, she actually seemed to care.

  ‘Get on with physics,’ she said. ‘Read a book or something.’ Then she picked April up and half carried her out of the room.

  Now, with April sat on the closed lid of one of the student toilets, Quill is cleaning off her shoes and actually talking.

  ‘What’s this about?’ she asks, but April isn’t really able to answer because, in truth, she doesn’t know.

  Quill sighs and leans on one of the sinks. ‘Seriously, Miss MacLean,’ then, with a slight sigh of effort, ‘April . . . this isn’t you, so I’m asking. Turning up to school drunk, what’s that about?’

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ April says. Quill sighs again, gets up, drags April to one of the sinks and begins dowsing her with cold water, dunking her head over and over while April tries to fight back. At one point, another student walks in, a young girl from Year Eight.

  ‘Get out,’ Quill tells her. ‘Use the boys’ toilets if you have to, but we’re busy.’

  The girl slowly inches out of the room, and Quill goes back to dunking April.

  Eventually, when both of them are soaking wet and at least one of them has had the fight knocked out of them, Quill sits April back down in one of the cubicles and resumes her position against the sink.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘where were we? That’s right . . . I was asking why you were drunk.’

  ‘I meant it though,’ April replies. ‘Of course I wouldn’t drink before school. Why would I?’

  ‘That’s precisely the point of this entire conversation,’ Quill replies with an irritated sigh.

  ‘Maybe I’m coming down with something,’ April says.

  ‘Cirrhosis of the liver perhaps?’ Quill suggests, wondering whether she should just start dunking April again. She knows that, generally speaking, the education system frowns on what could be perceived as physical abuse of a student, but she hasn’t got it in her to care.

  ‘I don’t drink much anyway,’ April says, ‘I . . .’ Truth be told, she doesn’t really have the opportunity, but she’s not going to admit that to Quill. To develop an enthusiasm for alcohol she would need precisely the sort of social life she’s never really had. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ she replies in the end, having no other words to fall back on.

  ‘Was it on the way to school?’ Quill asks. ‘I’m assuming it must be. Please tell me your mother didn’t just pour it on your breakfast cereal.’

  ‘I . . .’ April thinks hard. ‘I actually don’t remember walking to school. I remember leaving the house. Said goodbye to Mum, went up the path . . . I saw Mr Veltham, across the road, he’s weird, don’t like him much . . .’

  ‘This is all so fascinating,’ Quill sighs.

  ‘But that’s it. That’s all I remember—the next thing I know I’m just up the road from the school, I realise I might be late so I start running but . . . but it’s really hard, I’m all over the place, it feels like . . .’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  Reluctantly, finally, April admits it. ‘Yes.’

  Quill stares at the ceiling and wonders if she isn’t wasting her time with this after all.

  ‘You knew the dead girl, yes?’ she asks.

  ‘Poppy? Sort of, yes. We weren’t . . . It’s not like we were close friends or anything.’

  ‘Because it would be perfectly understandable if her death had upset you. There’s been a lot of it about lately.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ April says, sinking slightly, resting her head against the side of the cubicle.

  ‘And I understand how that can feel.’ Just saying the words makes Quill want to throw up, but it’s true and, as much as she hates to admit it, there were times, on another world, in another time, when she could have really done with someone to talk to about it.

  ‘Because of the war thing . . . with Charlie?’

  ‘Against the little prince, not with, but yes, because of that.’

  April nods. ‘OK, yes, sorry . . . but honestly, this isn’t that. I’m not saying I haven’t been . . . Well, things are hard at the moment. I’m supposed to be doing exams, playing the violin, looking after Mum, not . . . not whatever this life we now all have is. But that doesn’t mean that one morning I decide enough’s enough and pour a bottle of whisky down my throat. That’s just not how I deal with something like this.’ She sighs. ‘It’s not me. For some people, when life gets too much, they become self-destructive.’ She looks up and Quill is genuinely startled by the coldness she sees in April’s eyes. It’s a coldness she would never have imagined the girl could possess. ‘I know that. I have known people like that. And it’s not me. It’s the very last thing I would be.’

  Quill believes her. Which is awkward because, frankly, this morning would have been easier if it had been about April having a breakdown.

  ‘So, somewhere between leaving the house and getting here, you blacked out and somehow got drunk,’ she says. ‘Which means we need to have you looked at by a doctor.’

  ‘If I’d just had a blackout I’d have woken up in a hedge or something. This isn’t that either.’

  Quill thinks about this. ‘No,’ she says in the end, ‘maybe it isn’t.’

  ‘In the last couple of days, two people have suddenly done things completely out of character,’ April continues. ‘In both cases, things that are a lot worse than getting drunk.’

  ‘Two people?’

  April realises that nobody has told Quill about Max. Everybody else knows, everybody, but nobody talks to Quill. Quill has no friends. Just for a moment, April feels a profound sadness for her.

  ‘Last night,’ she says, ‘a boy set fire to his house. His family were trapped inside. He sat on the front lawn and watched it burn. By the time the firefighters arrived it was too late. His mum and dad and his younger brother were all dead. It was obvious to everyone that he had done it—he had empty cans of petrol next to him, his clothes stank of it. When the police arrived he told them he had no idea what had happened, and that the last thing he remembered was playing on his games console.’

  ‘Which makes me wonder if the kid that stole the car . . .’

  ‘Poppy. Her name was Poppy.’

  ‘Whatever. It makes me wonder whether she would have said something similar if she had lived to walk away from it all.’

  April shakes her head. ‘It just doesn’t stop. The weird stuff. It never, ever stops.’

  ‘There’s something else this makes me wonder,’ says Quill.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You weren’t the only one absent from the start of class. Where’s Ram Singh?’

  ELEVEN

  WHAT’S WRONG WITH EVERYTHING?

  Ram wakes up and wonders what’s gone wrong with the ceiling. It’s dark, but not so dark he doesn’t stare at the network of exposed pipes and wonder what they’re doing in his bedroom. The pipes are really blurred, little more than shapes.

  He can’t focus properly. His head is splitting, brain refusing to have a sensible thought. This is why it takes him around twenty seconds to come to the first simple truth of his situation: the pipes aren’t in his bedroom, because neither is he.

  He closes his eyes again and tries to make the white noise of jumbled thoughts quiet down. What’s wrong with him? It’s like everything’s an earworm, chaotic, uncontrolled voices tripping over each other in his head.

  It’s like they’re nothing to do with him. They are, because he recognises them: playing football with his dad, sitting on his bed watching a TV show on his laptop, running through the corridors at school trying not to die.

  (And of course, Rachel’s there, the look of shock on her face, the sword bursting from her chest, the wetness on Ram’s face that he only l
ater realises is her blood.)

  But he’s not aware of thinking these thoughts. They’re just happening. Loud and clear, all at the same time, without being asked. He just needs them to shut up for a minute. To give him some peace. To give him some space. Why is he always surrounded by this mental white noise?

  He opens his eyes and stares at those pipes again. They’re still blurred, but he fills his head with them, turning down the volume on everything else. It takes him a few moments, but eventually he’s clear.

  ‘Where the hell am I?’ he asks the room, and that’s weird because his voice sounds off, like there’s something wrong with his throat.

  He sits up, head quiet now but still splitting. Something’s attached to it. Like a pair of headphones but with too many wires. He takes it off, throwing it onto the floor.

  He’s lying on some sort of couch. The sort of thing you see in movies, the sort of thing broken people lie on while they’re talking to their therapist. No thank you, he thinks. No more talking, especially not to strangers with university degrees.

  He swings his legs around so his feet touch the floor and he slowly sits up, slightly terrified at how much this will hurt his head.

  He’s right to worry. It’s bad, a pulse of pain that nearly has him falling backwards again. It’s like his head is too small to contain the pain, swelling as it builds, stopping just short of cracking open.

  The thing that takes his attention off it is his leg. He suddenly realises, putting pressure on his foot, that it’s working properly. There’s none of that slight ‘offness’ that he gets with the prosthetic. That niggling sensation that this is not your leg and that if you want it to do as it’s told you’re going to have to really concentrate.

  He looks down and wonders why he’s wearing a suit. Then he looks at his hands, resting on his thighs, and wonders why they’re white. Then he lies back down again because the world is just far too stupid today and none of this makes sense.

  This is not helping.

  And why can’t he see properly? Why is everything so fuzzy?

  Slowly he stands up and, once again, takes a second to remember what it feels like to have a leg that is entirely your own. He bounces on it slightly. Putting his weight on it. There’s more weight than there should be and slowly, his pained, lagging brain starts to really catch on to all the conflicting data it’s receiving. He touches his wrong, white hands to his wrong big belly and fights off a dizziness that threatens to send him right back onto his wrong fat arse.