Faadi sat back on his heels and sighed. He had emptied nearly all the contents of his bedroom drawers, as well as having searched through his wardrobe, but the Xbox game he was looking for was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t played it in a while; he had bought a few new ones recently and had been kept so engrossed with them that he’d forgotten all about it. A couple of months ago, back in the summer, his mother had suggested doing a car boot sale in order to clear the house of some of its clutter. Now he wondered whether the game might have got mixed up in the things he had packed away.

They had never done the car boot sale. It had rained every weekend for a month during August and no one had fancied standing in a muddy field for the sake of a few extra quid. Everything had been put in the garage at the end of the garden to wait for the following summer, which would probably be as wet as the last.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the beep of his mobile phone. He searched for it among the debris that lay strewn across the carpet, wondering who might be texting him. No one ever texted him; only his mother, and she was downstairs.

Hi, Faadi. You having a nice half-term? Rebecca x

He stared at the text message for a long time, not quite believing what he was seeing. He only knew one Rebecca. She had spoken to him a few times at school, each time resulting in the inevitable twist of tongue and loss of words that Faadi suffered every time someone addressed him. And with Rebecca it was even worse. She was a girl. She was a pretty girl; a girl he had liked since he had first met her at school.

Good thanks, he texted. How are you?

He knew he wouldn’t send it. Even if he wanted to – and he really did want to – he knew it would mean unthinkable embarrassment the next time he was face to face with her, which would likely be in full view of a corridor full of other kids; kids who would love to watch him die a slow and painful death in front of this girl and then tease him relentlessly about it for months afterwards.

Faadi knew what his problem was: he couldn’t communicate with people. Not face to face anyway, and not with anyone who wasn’t his mum. Recently he wondered whether he was even able to speak to her any more. She was so wrapped up in other things: the problems with Syed, the fire at the shop, his dad always being away with work. That was why he loved being online so much. He could speak to people there. It was like being someone else: someone who wasn’t awkward and clumsy and embarrassing.

He supposed there was no difference with a text, really. Texting someone a message was just like talking to them online.

His thumb lingered over the send button. Then he did something he had never done before. He acted on impulse and sent the text.

Shoving his phone into his pocket, he stood and made his way downstairs. He could hear his mother in the kitchen and could smell dinner wafting from the open doorway; the heady scent of spices behind which his mother always hid. No matter what was going on, his mother would cook. They could be told the world was coming to an end within hours, but that wouldn’t stop her preparing one last dinner for her family.

He left the house through the kitchen and went down the back garden to the garage. He didn’t like it in there: it was cold, and there were too many cobwebs, and everything was coated in a thick layer of dust that caught in the back of his throat and made him cough. With a sigh, he began to open boxes, rummaging among the contents. After every box, he would move it aside before opening the next. He strained under the weight of one, exhaling loudly as he put it on the ground with a thud.

He was just wondering whether his efforts were worth it when something caught his eye. Something red. Something much cleaner than anything else in the garage. He leaned over the boxes and craned his neck for a better look.

It was what he’d thought it was. It was a petrol can.

---

Faadi stood on the pavement outside his parents’ burned-out shop, wondering where everything had started to go wrong. He had thought it had been the move from Cardiff that had sent his family spiralling into chaos, but looking back now, it seemed the problems had started before then; he had just been too young to see them for what they were. Syed was a bully; he always had been. Their mother preferred to blame his behaviour on the older kids he’d got involved with back in Cardiff, but doing so was only a desperate attempt to avoid an inescapable truth: Syed had been bad long before any of those boys had appeared on the scene.

Faadi had heard of a mean streak before, and he guessed that was what his oldest brother had. He was passing it on to Jameel now, gradually getting him to think and act more like him; slowly poisoning all the nice parts that Jameel had once had. Faadi could remember the times when Jameel had played on the Xbox with him. He could remember, not that long ago, when Jameel had listened to him talk about school, about his fears over not fitting in. He’d been sympathetic, once. Now he just used all the things Faadi had told him as weapons, beating him about the head with them and using them to make him look stupid every time Syed was near.

Faadi looked at the boarded-up window and the blackened signage that hung above the door. He glanced at the black bin bag in his hand and knew what he had to do. He took his mobile phone from his pocket and searched for Chloe Lane’s number.