The block of flats Wesley called home was longer than it was tall, two storeys of brown brick that ran the length of a car park before dog-legging away to pull up short at a railway bridge. The top floor doors lined a sheltered walkway, almost like a shared balcony, so he could see his front door as he crossed the tarmac and came around the grubby metal bins.
His anger had only spiralled on the walk home, every hard step stoking the fire hotter, so he was fuming by the time he reached the main entrance. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys. Before he had it open he heard a soft mew behind him, and a scrawny, tawny cat appeared at his heels.
‘Hey, Buttnugget,’ Wesley cooed in reply.
Buttnugget was probably not its real name. The cat belonged to one of the old ladies on the ground floor, and was mostly allowed to roam freely. It had taken a liking to Wesley as soon as they moved in, possibly because he was always keen to offer prolonged head scritchings. Lately it had been spending some nights curled up with him in his room. The cat wound around his ankles now, mewing insistently, and Wesley scratched its ears and sank his fingers into the animal’s warm fur. It always seemed like a small marvel, to have his touch so welcomed.
It was enough, at least, to calm him down a little, and by the time he made it upstairs and picked his way along the walkway’s obstacle course of flowerpots and chained bicycles, he knew he wouldn’t shout. Like he’d promised Evie he never would.
The door opened straight into the sitting room, and he shut it too hard behind him, sending his little sister scurrying away from her usual position in front of the TV. Mum was through in the kitchen, wrapping a sad-looking sandwich in tin foil.
‘Do you want me to work there or not?’ Wesley said.
Mum dropped the sandwich into her bag. ‘Shady Acres care home needs an extra assistant for the night shift, and we need the money. I’m sure Dave doesn’t mind.’
‘I mind,’ Wesley said, following her back to the front door. ‘It’s embarrassing.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Mum turned on him, voice officially raised. ‘I have to work.’
Wesley shrunk back, knowing there was no arguing with that. Even after all this time it surprised him how powerless she could make him feel.
‘I’ve tried to get a job,’ he said, quieter now.
‘You know that doesn’t matter. I want you to focus on your exams.’
Wesley had let her down there too – he had failed almost all of them so far.
‘What kind of mother am I if the only way we can pay bills is for my son to work?’
‘Jordan did.’
Mum stiffened. ‘That was different.’
It was clear then that if he didn’t ask she would try and hide it from him for as long as she could.
‘When were you going to tell me he was back?’
Mum sighed, like she’d been caught stealing. ‘Dave and his big bloody mouth.’
‘After two years I think I have a right to know.’
‘You’re right. I just . . .’ Mum unhooked her keys from behind the door and squeezed them in her fist. ‘It was last week, and I still need some time to think about it. Don’t let him inside if he turns up.’
‘What did he—?’
‘I’m going to be late, we can talk about this later,’ she said, pocketing the keys. ‘Evie needs dinner, there’s stuff in the freezer. Love you.’
She reached out to ruffle his hair, but Wesley ducked away. ‘Fuck!’ he growled, as soon as she was gone.
‘Wezzer?’ Evie was marooned in the doorway to their bedroom.
‘It’s okay, Eves. Sorry about the shouting.’ Wesley’s promise to himself that he’d always keep his temper around his four-year-old half-sister had been harder to keep than expected.
She was spattered with paint, the result of this month’s hobby that had covered her wall of the bedroom they shared in bright, messy finger-paintings. She marched over to him, one strap of her dungarees broken and flapping, and he opened his arms for a hug. Instead she presented him with her copy of Frozen on DVD.
‘You know what would be fun?’ Wesley said, making his voice light. ‘Watching any other movie ever made.’
Evie pouted; it was a losing argument. As soon as he set the film playing for the millionth time she began to run miniature laps of the cramped sitting room, burbling vaguely about building a snowman.
Mum having work meant food in the cupboards and money on the electricity key, so Wesley knew he shouldn’t complain about babysitting duty. It was being stuck in the flat that really bothered him: the smell of the bins drifting up from downstairs, the rattle of commuter trains passing on the bridge, the peeling wallpaper by the TV and the wall behind it bruised yellow by previous tenants’ cigarette smoke. The patch of damp in their bedroom had blackened and spread over summer, and he was getting worried it would soon gain sentience and eat them in the night.
It was a shithole. It was also the first place they had lived where they didn’t have to worry about somebody kicking them out in the night. Home, no matter how grim. Wesley was proud of that.
Still, it was lonely. As much as he loved her, a four-year-old wasn’t the kind of company he wanted. Hours could feel unending if he didn’t find something to fill them. He took out his phone and opened YouTube. There were some new TrumourPixel let’s play videos, showing off his shooter skills.
‘What’s up, guys?’ the first video began. ‘Once again we’re on the hunt for a delicious chicken dinner.’
TrumourPixel wasn’t the best YouTuber out there. It was mainly video game let’s plays, with a few prank videos thrown in. He didn’t have the best equipment, which meant his face in the bottom corner of the screen was always a little blurred. What Wesley liked was that Tru was local, had grown up in all the same places he had, so he understood what it was like. It made him easier to trust.
‘The latest patch has slightly nerfed the fire rate of the SCAR assault rifle, but I can still kick ass with it.’ TrumourPixel gunned down three advancing enemies in succession and whooped with delight. ‘You see that? A whole squad of women! That’s why they shouldn’t be allowed to play. Fucking bitches.’ He moved his character to stand over their bodies and teabagged them, crouching and standing repeatedly until somebody else started shooting at him.
Watching these videos was almost like having someone to sit and play with himself. Half an hour bursts of company. Sometimes Wesley imagined them being friends. Maybe they would be, when Tru learned what they had done to Kat.
The video finished, TrumourPixel giving his trademark sign-off: ‘The fight never stops.’ Wesley’s stomach rumbled. The smell of damp seemed to grow stronger again. No matter how many videos he watched, sometimes he just needed to escape.
‘Eves,’ he called. ‘Fancy a McDonald’s?’
After Suzy went to university, Kat had spent countless nights lying awake wondering what she’d do if she came home to find Dad collapsed at the foot of the stairs, or some kind of radioactive spillage in the kitchen that had transformed the tea towels into bloodthirsty goblins. The last thing she considered herself was a responsible adult, and she’d never needed to call 999 before. This was probably the right time to start, but people didn’t just randomly fade – it had to be against some law of physics she probably wouldn’t understand.
‘Research time,’ she said to herself.
The phone was pleasingly heavy in her hand, ballast she hoped might keep her from floating away. First, Kat opened her contacts and found her sister’s number. Kat’s thumb hovered over the call button. They hadn’t spoken in months – Suzy hadn’t even come home from university over the summer break – and even if they had she wasn’t sure her sister would believe her about everything that had happened.
She opened their dormant chat log and tapped out a message instead. Hey, can we catch up soon? Call me. x
The rest of her contacts was populated by acquaintances at best. There was never any need to exchange numbers with her so-called online friends, and anyway, they’d all been scared off by the trolls. Kat remembered all too well the final conversation with her regular gaming group.
Sorry, we can’t let you play with us any more, they had said over headsets.
What do you mean?
The long silence was ripe with social awkwardness, but Kat had been determined that one of them be brave enough to strike the final blow.
They said they’d come for us too. We do this to escape that kind of crap, you know? We’re sorry.
Kat almost asked where she was supposed to go to escape it. It had been so humiliating, like not getting picked for a team in PE, and she’d deleted the game immediately. Another piece of her gone.
With a hollow pang, she realised she had nobody to tell about what had happened. At least with social media it felt like there were people in the world who cared about what you were doing, who were invested in your existence. In some small way they were always beside you – even if it was just an illusion. She couldn’t go downstairs and talk to Dad, couldn’t face that yet.
Kat moved to the window and watched cars pass for a while, pedestrians hurrying home, and wondered who was waiting for them there.
She needed to focus. Searching on her phone was a pain, but without her laptop she had no choice. First she checked her website: it hadn’t been revived in her absence, and there was no sign of the photograph. It could have been saved by somebody else, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
Google was safe, but she opened an incognito tab just in case. Flexing her thumbs over the keypad, letters nudging through her nails, she tried to think of any search term that wasn’t completely ridiculous.
Fading . . . disappearing . . . becoming a ghost . . .
This line of questioning mostly turned up obscure films, rainforest charities, cleaning services, paranormal conspiracies, fetishes. She decided not to check the images.
Kat tried a different tack: detached from life.
Half way down the results she found a website that compiled suicide notes posted to social media, nobody able to save their authors in time – if anybody had even tried. Another website focused on Japanese teenagers who withdrew from society so completely they spent their entire lives online, literally never leaving their bedrooms. They were called hikikomori, literally ‘pulling inward, being confined’.
‘I wasn’t that bad,’ Kat muttered, then realised she was saying it to herself, alone in her bedroom.
If any of the hikikomori had experienced what was happening to her, there was no evidence of it here.
She checked the chat log, a double-tick confirming the message had been delivered. As she was locking the phone, the ticks turned blue. Suzy had read the message. Swiping the screen awake again, she waited to see typing . . .
Ten minutes passed without her sister even attempting a reply.
That left Kat only one place left to go.
She had been strangely afraid of the note crumpled in her pocket. It was dangerously close to confirmation that this wasn’t all in her head. Plus it could have been written by anybody, Luke and Justin or whoever caused all this in the first place. It could easily be another trick.
She ran her fingers over the note, its scrawled letters unwinding under her skin. I see you. She wouldn’t blindly write to the email address included, that was asking for trouble. Instead she typed the domain name – The Lonely People – into the search bar, and clicked.