Pip:
When?
Connor:
At, like, half five. Mum was at the supermarket. It ended before she got back, she doesn’t know. I was listening from the stairs.
Pip:
What was it about?
Connor:
The usual things they fight about. Dad telling Jamie he needs to buck up his ideas and sort his life out, that he and Mum won’t always be there to pick up the pieces. Jamie said that he was trying, that Dad never notices when he’s trying because he presumes Jamie’s going to fail anyway. I couldn’t hear the whole fight, but I remember Dad saying something like, ‘We aren’t a bank, we are your parents.’ I don’t know what that was about, I guess maybe Dad brought up that he thinks Jamie should pay rent to still live here. Mum thinks that’s ridiculous and will never allow it, but Dad’s always, going on about ‘How else will he learn?’ The last thing they said to each other before Mum came back was . . .
Pip:
What?
Connor:
Dad said, ‘You’re a waste of space.’ And Jamie said, ‘I know.’
Pip:
Is this why everyone was quiet on the drive to the memorial? Your mum picked up on that.
Connor:
Yeah. Oh god, she’s gonna be so upset when I tell her.
Pip:
You should tell her tonight, when I’m gone.
Connor:
I guess.
Pip:
So, back to that night. You arrive at the memorial, and you go off to find our friends, and Jamie goes off to find Nat. But then Jamie did come up to you at one point. When Zach and I were talking to my new neighbours, Jamie came and spoke to you.
Connor:
Yeah.
Pip:
What did he say then?
Connor:
He apologized. Said sorry about the argument with Dad; he knows I hate it when they fight. And then he told me that after the memorial, he was going to go to Nat da Silva’s house for a bit; spend the evening with her. I think they thought it was only right, to be in the company of someone else who knew Sal and Andie. He said he’d back home that night, though. And as he walked off, the last thing he said to me was, ‘See you later.’ I don’t think he’d lie to my face like that, if he knew he wasn’t coming back. But Mum and I called Nat this morning; Nat never saw Jamie after the memorial. She doesn’t know where he is.
Pip:
And where did you go, after the memorial?
Connor:
Well me and Zach didn’t fancy going to the calamity party with Ant and Lauren, because they ignore everyone else anyway, so I went back to Zach’s new house and we . . . we played Fortnite, so now the world knows that then. And later Zach dropped me home.
Pip:
What time?
Connor:
We left Zach’s just after half eleven, so I must have been back around twelve. I was tired, went straight to bed, didn’t even brush my teeth. And Jamie never came back. I was sleeping, went to bed with no second thought about Jamie. It’s so stupid, really, how you take things like that for granted. I was stupid. I thought he’d come home. He was supposed to come home. And now he’s . . .
Eight
‘Photos?’
‘Yes, recent photos of him,’ Pip said, looking between the two of them, the sounds of the large kitchen clock counting the silence. But the ticks felt far too slow, as though she were somehow moving faster than time. A feeling she hadn’t had in a while, one she missed. ‘I suppose you don’t have any photos of him at the memorial, what he was wearing?’
‘No,’ Joanna said, unlocking her phone and flicking through. ‘But I did take lots on Jamie’s birthday last Thursday.’
‘One where his face shows clearly?’
‘Here, have a look through.’ Joanna passed her phone across the table. ‘There’s several if you scroll left.’
Connor moved his chair closer, to look over Pip’s shoulder at the screen. The first photo showed Jamie on his own, on the other side of this kitchen table. His dark blonde hair was pushed to the side and he was grinning, an overly wide grin that stretched into his rosy cheeks, as his chin glowed orange from the lit candles on the caterpillar birthday cake below. In the next photo he was bent low over the cake, cheeks puffed out to blow and the flames stretching away to escape from him. Pip swiped. Now Jamie was looking down at the cake, a long grey knife in his hand with a red plastic band between handle and blade. He was sticking the point of the knife in the caterpillar’s neck, cracking the chocolate outer shell. Next photo and the caterpillar’s head was detached, Jamie looking up, smiling directly at the camera. Then the cake was gone, replaced by a present in Jamie’s hands, the silver-spotted wrapping paper half ripped away.
‘Oh yeah,’ Connor snorted, ‘Jamie’s face when he realized Dad bought him a Fitbit for his birthday.’
It was true; Jamie’s smile did seem tighter, more strained here. Pip swiped again but it was a video next that started to play as her thumb brushed against it. Connor was in the frame now, the two brothers together, Jamie’s arm draped across Connor’s shoulder. The frame was swaying slightly, rustling sounds of breath behind it.
‘Smile boys,’ Joanna was saying, through the phone.
‘We are,’ Jamie mumbled, trying not to disturb his smile for the photo.
‘What’s it doing?’ Joanna’s voice asked.
‘For goodness sake,’ Connor said, ‘she’s accidentally taking a bloody video again. Aren’t you?’
‘Oh Mum.’ Jamie laughed. ‘Again?’
‘I’m not,’ Joanna’s voice insisted, ‘I didn’t press that, it’s this stupid phone.’
‘Always the phone’s fault, isn’t it?’
Jamie and Connor looked at each other, their laughs spiking into high-pitched giggles as Joanna grew more insistent that she hadn’t pressed that. Arthur’s voice saying, ‘Let me see, Jo.’ Then Jamie tightened his arm around Connor’s neck, bringing his little brother’s head down to his chest where he messed up his hair with his other hand, Connor protesting through giggles. The frame dropped and the video ended.
‘Sorry,’ Pip said, noticing how Connor had tensed in his chair, and Joanna’s eyes were so full she’d dropped them to the floor. ‘Can you please email me all of these, Connor? And any other recent photos?’
He coughed. ‘Yep, will do.’
‘Alright.’ Pip stood up, packing her laptop and microphones into her bag.
‘Are you going?’ asked Connor.
‘One last thing to do before I go,’ she said. ‘I need to search Jamie’s room. Is that OK?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ Joanna said, standing up. ‘Can we come too?’
‘Sure,’ Pip said, waiting for Connor to open the door and lead them upstairs. ‘Have you already looked through it?’
‘Not really,’ Joanna said, following them up the stairs, tensing as they all heard Arthur cough in the living room. ‘I went in there earlier when we first realized he was gone. I did a quick look to see if he’d slept here last night and left early in the morning. But no, curtains were still open. Jamie’s not the sort of person who opens his curtains in the morning or makes his bed.’ They paused outside the door of Jamie’s darkened bedroom, which was slightly ajar. ‘Jamie’s a little untidy,’ she said tentatively. ‘It’s a bit messy in there.’