The last time Wesley visited the flat it was almost empty. Their possessions had been transferred piecemeal to Dave’s place, as many boxes as would fit into a car at once, until hardly anything was left. Wesley had volunteered to collect the final few himself, leaving them to get on with unpacking.
He had planned to walk around the place slowly and commit it to memory. It was supposed to feel romantic. The end of an era, etc. Instead he felt only an eagerness to leave it behind.
The bedroom smelled of paint. They had covered up the damp as best they could, though it still left an ominous shadow across the ceiling. The mural beside the door had been more easily hidden. Wesley ran his fingers down the wall. There was nothing of it left to see, but he would always remember it. A cautionary tale for the lonely.
Three boxes remained, mostly toys and other junk excavated from under the bed. Wesley stacked and heaved them awkwardly up, and staggered back to the front door.
‘You said you didn’t need any help.’
The boxes were taken from him one by one, Aoife insisting on carrying the heaviest while Robbie and Jae fought for the lightest.
‘I was going to have a sentimental moment,’ Wesley said. ‘But then I decided against it.’
He locked the door and pushed the keys through the letter box. It was a relief, to hear them thunk on the other side. To walk away for the final time.
As they emerged from the main door, Buttnugget hopped up onto the wall and arched his back in invitation.
‘Now you I am going to miss.’ Wesley ran his fingers through the cat’s soft fur, smiling as he immediately began to purr.
‘You can come over and see my cat,’ said Jae.
‘Or we can trap this one in a box and run for it,’ added Robbie.
It was only a fifteen-minute walk to Dave’s flat. They took turns exchanging the boxes so one person could always have a break.
‘Thanks for helping,’ Wesley said, as they turned off the road. It was a taller block of flats, set back away from the street behind trees and a small playing field. Before they had even reached the car park he spotted three cats he would do everything in his power to befriend.
‘It’s nice here,’ said Aoife.
‘Yeah. It is.’
A battered red car was waiting near the main entrance, back seat piled with boxes. Its door opened to greet them.
‘So you really do have friends,’ said Jordan. ‘Ready to go up?’
Wesley smiled. ‘Let’s do it.’
Even a year later, it was a little strange to have a full-length mirror where her posters used to be. Kat examined her costume: the white, high-necked dress wasn’t exactly the right fit, and the boots barely made it past her ankles. There was absolutely no way she was giving herself a perm, so the slightly droopy wig would have to do.
‘Esme,’ she said to her reflection, pulling on a pair of studded gauntlets. ‘You’re back.’
Kat hoped her cosplay would at least be good enough that she wouldn’t look stupid at the convention. Especially as she would be meeting so many new people there.
‘You look amazing.’
Kat whirled around to find Safa outside her bedroom doorway, holding her arms wide to show off her costume.
‘Oh. My. God.’
A full-body brown morph suit left only her face uncovered, and sewn into its front was an enormous, looping plushie pretzel with angry eyes and a gurning mouth. It made the costume so wide that she couldn’t fit through the door.
‘I thought you were joking!’
Safa shrugged, the entire pretzel rising and falling with her. ‘I want to make an impression. And knock loads of people over by accident.’
‘How many people are we meeting there?’
‘At last count it was nine, if they all show up.’
In the last year, they had kept the All the Lonely People site running, but had stripped out the cryptic sixth-form poetry and instead detailed everything they had learned about the fade in a way that made it clear it was not to be aspired to. They had seen the effect that finding connection could have for the detached – for them, for Aoife and Robbie and Jae – and they responded to anybody who contacted the site to try and help them find it too.
They would be meeting some of them for the first time at the convention. Another gathering of the Lonely People, but for a different purpose now. The familiar panic awakened in Kat’s chest, but with Safa beside her she had the power to fight it back into its corner.
‘We’re going to get stuck in traffic!’ shouted Dad from downstairs.
Kat took out her phone. ‘Let’s take a selfie, while it’s just the two of us.’
‘Okay, but you’re going to have to come out here.’
The photo was a disaster. The wig tickled Safa’s nose and made her sneeze so that the pretzel covered half of Kat’s face. It was perfect.
‘We could just stay here and watch Backwash together all day,’ she said.
Safa threaded her hands through the loops of the pretzel, and Kat took them in her own. They held onto each other – still there, still real – and then made their way downstairs.