Odd Child Out Read online

  Imran was a strong boy, with thick black shiny hair. He talked fast and he was definitely a fast mover on the friendship front. I had to hand it to him on that count, actually. In just a few weeks, he’d already persuaded Abdi to drop IT club and go to badminton club with him instead. It was precocious.

  They invited me to go with them and watch. I felt like a mongrel dog, compared to them. Unwanted, strange-looking, and kicked so many times I didn’t know how to do anything apart from cower. I sat on the benches beside the badminton court and clapped and cheered when they turned to me to celebrate after a good shot. At first I watched their high fives and fist bumps patiently, but when Abdi pumped the air with his arm and whooped, I thought, Really? Is that necessary to impress Imran?

  I thought about Imran all night after I got home from school. I told Mum about him and she said, “Things change, Noah. Sometimes there’s nothing we can do apart from learn how to deal with it.”

  It made me remember a conversation I overheard her having with Dad, soon after my first round of treatment, when I’d just restarted back at school.

  “I can’t face the playground,” she said. “The competitiveness, the people who ask me about Noah who I know don’t really care, they just want something to gossip about. I find myself being really short with everybody. They’re going to hate me. They probably hate me already because they think I’ll infect them with our bad luck.”

  Even I’d noticed her transformation from a chatty mum to a mum who kept herself separate in the playground.

  “I can’t even answer their questions normally.” She mimics a conversation: “‘What did you do today?’ ‘Oh, I took my toddler swimming and made organic cupcakes for the fundraiser, and signed a petition against the new high street parking regulations. What did you do?’ ‘Oh, I flushed out my son’s Hickman line and returned the sharps bucket to the hospital. Then I felt really happy because he managed to eat half a chocolate bar, which frankly counts as excellent nutritional intake for us this week!’ I can’t have that conversation with anybody! Talking like that scares them away.”

  “People will be there for you when this is over. The people who matter will, anyway.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  On the day that Imran came into my life, Mum perked up when she thought through the implications of Abdi making a new friend: “If you don’t like Imran, you could try another friendship group . . .”

  I would never do that. It was Abdi I wanted.

  The next day, when we were in French class and Imran was finally out of our way because he was in a different set, I said to Abdi, “You don’t have to show off so much for Imran, you know.”

  “I’m not showing off!”

  He was about to say something else, but the teacher arrived and we stood up. He held himself very stiffly when we all said, “Bonjour, Madame.”

  I didn’t make it to the end of the lesson. When I told Madame Moreau that I felt really wobbly, she got Abdi to take me to the school nurse. On the way there I said to Abdi, “Just one thing too many, you know.”

  “I think you’ve been really strong today,” he said.

  The next day, Abdi was hanging around Imran again when I arrived, along with a crowd of other boys who were impressed by a gross trick that Imran could do where he flipped his eyelids up.

  I didn’t think it would work to talk to Abdi about it again, because he sounded so defensive last time, so I decided to test him, secretly. All I wanted to know was whether he was a good enough friend to stick with me or if he was done with me, just like Matthew was after he came to the hospital.

  The very first test happened that afternoon. When I arrived at a science lesson, Imran beckoned me over to join him at his lab table. They were designed for two students. I snubbed him, though, and he stood there in his lab coat and goggles and held out his hands, palms up, like, “Oh, well, I tried.”

  I thought he looked stupid. I took another workbench, by the door.

  When Abdi arrived, he looked at Imran and then at me. You could tell he felt conflicted. I said, “I saved you a work space.” Annoyingly, he still seemed unsure about who to work with, so I said, “You promised we’d do the experiment together.”

  “Did I?”

  “You totally promised.” It wasn’t true.

  After he sat down beside me, I gave him a present because he passed the test. I didn’t explain that to him, obviously. I just handed him a very cool, clicky pencil with thick refillable leads that Mum had given me as a “well done for having a lumbar puncture” present a while before. It was red. Abdi was excited to get it because his parents didn’t have much money so they got his pencils from the supermarket and the leads were always breaking.

  I tested him lots more times after that. I tested him by not texting first, to see if he would. I tested him by leaving places without saying goodbye to see if he would notice. Sometimes I think he suspected he was being tested, sometimes not. Some of the tests he passed; some he didn’t. When he chose Imran over me or forgot me, I felt useless, and that could make me feel ill. When that happened, I always wanted Abdi to take me to the nurse. I made sure all the teachers knew it had to be him.

  It took a while, but the testing worked eventually: Abdi saw that I was right, that he couldn’t be best friends with both me and Imran. It was obvious that Imran would be fine because he’d made lots more friends by then. He spread himself thin. My final proof was when Imran easily found somebody else to play badminton with after Abdi started coming to IT club with me again. I said to Abdi, “That sporty lot aren’t our kind of people, anyway.”

  We got close again, after that. We shared homework, projects, and clubs, and everything went back to how it was before my stem cell transplant.

  What my parents didn’t know was that before the night of Dad’s gallery party, Abdi and I had made a plan. It was something we were going to do after the party.

  Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 8: Experience a rite of passage. (In my head this one could also have been worded “Have a beer with a mate,” but I didn’t tell Dad that, because he suggested I could have a beer with him. It was a nice idea, but really, who the heck goes through a rite of passage with their dad?)

  It was an imperfect plan, because I knew Abdi wouldn’t drink alcohol, but I didn’t really see that as a problem. The point was, we were going to sneak out of the house and do something cool together, and I was going to get to feel like a real teenager.

  The sensation of heat rising in my body is becoming overwhelming. It’s woozy, baking, oven-hot heat. Randomly, all I can think about is the Cat in the Hat with his fan. I would like him to fan me. I don’t think the ice is working.

  I’m aware that there’s silence around me, where before there was talking, and I wonder why I can’t hear my parents and if they’re even here with me.

  Panic rises along with the heat. I don’t want to be stuck here alone, even for five minutes. Not anymore. I can’t tolerate the heat. They need to make it go away. My paralysis should be over by now, my eyes should be open, I should be able to speak. I’m afraid I’m getting worse, not better. A death like this, incarcerated in my own body for who knows how long, would be awful.

  I’m overwhelmed with a desire to see where I am, who’s around me, and all the familiar things that Mum brings to the hospital to make it nice. I start to list those things in my head, to calm myself down.

  My old toy dog from home will be here. I know I’m too big for that kind of thing, but I like to have it with me for luck.

  I want to see the tub of caramel chocolate bites on the table beside my bed. My favorites, always there in case I find my appetite. Mum will have put a bag of Pink Lady apples in the fridge in the parents’ room, too, so I can have one if I ever feel like it, and it’ll be crisp and cold in my mouth.

  I want to see the nurses and doctors I’m familiar with, not the strange ones who are hovering around me here.

  Most of all, I want to see my parents.

>   I feel very afraid.

  I’m afraid that I’ll be stuck like this forever, and afraid that I might die. Not the way that I’ve imagined it would happen, but locked in my own body. With people, but not with them. Not able to say or explain anything. Alone.

  “Nurse!” Mum calls. “Nurse!”

  I hear rapid footfall.

  “He’s crying,” Mum says. “Look. He’s crying.”

  “Noah,” says the nurse gently, “can you let us know why you’re crying? Are you in pain anywhere? Can you give us any kind of sign?”

  Their voices drift away like small shreds of cloud chased across the sky, and there’s nothing left but a burning white sun, and its heat is everything.

  I have to leave for work before Becky wakes up the following morning.

  There’s been no update from the hospital on Noah Sadler’s condition overnight, so I plant a coffee on Woodley’s desk and ask him to call Noah Sadler’s ward for me.

  “Is this bribery of some sort?” he says, lifting the lid to peer at the cup’s contents.

  “Absolutely. It’s a key management tool, I’m told.”

  “Works for me, boss.”

  A note on my desk tells me that there are some CCTV clips ready for us to look at. When Woodley gets off the phone, we find the officer who’s been poring over hours of footage for us.

  “I could only get hold of an agency nurse,” Woodley tells me on the way, “but she said so far as she knows he’s stable, and she’ll get somebody to call us if anything changes.”

  The first CCTV clip the detective constable has ready for us shows Noah and Abdi walking past the cathedral, heading west across College Green toward the city center. The boys are together, shoulder to shoulder. Noah Sadler wears a backpack, and it looks weighty. The camera has recorded them from a height, so it’s very hard to see their expressions, but their body language says a lot. They look like partners in whatever they’re doing.

  “Did we recover that backpack?” I ask.

  The DC shakes his head. “He’s wearing it in every picture I’ve seen, so it must have disappeared nearer the scene or at it. He might have been wearing it when he went into the water.”

  “Then he’d have had to get it off in the water.”

  The DC shrugs. “Could have, I suppose. By the look of it, if he was wearing it, it would have dragged him under fast.”

  Woodley is staring at the frozen image. “They look friendly enough together there.”

  “It doesn’t last,” says the DC.

  The next clip shows Pero’s Bridge. It spans the floating harbor slap-bang in the center of the city. Fog billows over it: a result of the artist’s installation that the local news has been banging on about for weeks.

  “They come out from here,” says the DC, pointing at a small gap between buildings, and I see the boys emerge together and walk toward the bridge. The time gap between this clip and the last is considerable. At least twenty minutes have passed, yet the distance between the two cameras is only about five minutes’ walk, if that.

  The boys step onto the bridge and the fog immediately obscures them.

  “Frustratingly, you can only see glimpses of them on the bridge, because the fog’s so thick, but they get up to something . . . here . . .” The DC forwards the tape then pauses it. “Watch carefully,” he says. He plays the next bit of footage in very slow motion. Putting the frames together it seems as if Noah Sadler interrupts Abdi as he looks at something and then knocks it from his hand. The DC zooms in on a blurry object caught on the floor of the bridge.

  “I think he knocks a phone out of Abdi Mahad’s hand,” he says. “And it goes into the water.”

  We watch the clip a couple more times and I’d have to agree.

  “Trouble in paradise, maybe?” Woodley asks. “There usually is.”

  The DC queries that with a look.

  “They’re supposed to be best of friends, these two.”

  “I must have looked at it twenty times and I can’t tell if it’s an accidental gesture or not. The rest is obscured by fog. It’s extremely annoying.”

  He gets a third clip up for us.

  “Next time we see them is here,” he says. “About a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge.”

  Noah Sadler’s crossing a road alone. He’s walking more quickly than before, hands in pockets, head down, backpack still on. From what we can see of his expression and his gait, he’s fatigued. He disappears out of frame.

  “Wait for it,” the DC says. We stare at the empty crossing, and just a few seconds later, Abdi Mahad appears, following in his friend’s footsteps. His hood’s up, he’s walking more easily than Noah, but he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to catch up. We can’t see his face.

  “Anything else?” I say once Abdi has disappeared out of the frame.

  The DC shakes his head.

  “I’m still working on getting hold of the CCTV around the scene,” Woodley says. “The scrapyard doesn’t have any and it’s a bit of a nightmare tracking down the owners of the other units.”

  “We need it ASAP.”

  I turn back to the screen.

  “So what happened on the bridge,” I say, “to separate the boys, and make Abdi start following Noah?”

  We watch the clips over and over again, scouring them for clues—a bit of body language, anything that can tell us more—but we come up short. All we can say for sure is that Noah Sadler’s clearly struggling physically by the last clip, and Abdi Mahad’s following him as they head toward the station. Whether that’s to help or harm him, and whether Noah’s aware he’s there, is impossible to gauge.

  I run into Fraser in the cafeteria. She’s holding a packet of wasabi peas and examining it with suspicion.

  “Ever tried one of these, Jim?”

  “They’re good.”

  “I’m skeptical.” She drops the packet back onto the rack, selects a bag of crisps instead, and moves on.

  I follow her to the drinks station, where she gets a coffee from the machine and puts two packets of sugar into it. I get a fizzy water and she raises her eyebrows.

  “Doctor’s orders,” I say. “Because of my insomnia. I’m supposed to limit my caffeine intake.”

  “And that is precisely why I avoid doctors. Sit with me a moment, Jim.”

  We take a seat by the window. The sound of good-natured chatter and the smell of hot food being prepared come from the kitchen.

  “Emma Zhang,” Fraser says, and coming out of the blue like that, the name almost makes me shudder. Fraser gazes at me, but her eyes are an unreadable slate gray. She knew that Emma and I were involved during the Ben Finch case, and she didn’t get on my back about it, even after things fell apart. I have no idea what her agenda is now.

  “Yes” is the safest answer I can think to give her. I’m wary because I don’t know where she’s going to go with this. I ease the cap off my water and wish I’d got a coffee.

  “Have you had any contact with her since the Ben Finch case?”

  “No, boss.”

  “None at all?”

  “None.” It’s the bare-naked truth. I haven’t even googled her, though I’ve thought about her more than once probably every single day since we parted ways. It’s pride that’s stopped me from trying to track her down.

  Fraser nods. She slurps her coffee noisily.

  “You need to know that she’s popped her head back above the parapet.”

  “What?”

  She sighs. “Look, I wouldn’t have assigned you this case if I’d known this was going to happen, but we are where we are. Have you got your phone on you?”

  I hold it up.

  “Google your case: ‘Feeder Canal teenager’ or whatever.”

  I feel my foot start to twitch as I wait for the results to come up. I move it away from Fraser’s leg.

  “See the article on TwentyFour7 News?”

  I nod.

  “That. Scroll down to the bottom of it.”

  There it is:
a photograph of my ex, and beside it the words “Emma Zhang, Crime Reporter.”

  I look at Fraser and she nods. “She’s reporting on your case. First we’ve heard of her getting into journalism, and it’s bad luck for you, it really is. I’m not inclined to move you off the case, though, so long as you think it’s not going to disturb you unduly.”

  I stare at Emma’s picture. It’s been more than a year since I last saw her so this feels like a gut punch.

  “Jim?”

  “Yes, of course it’ll be fine. You don’t need to take me off the case.”

  “You’re not filling me with confidence just now.”

  “Sorry, boss. I do mean it: I’ll be fine.”

  “This makes her absolutely toxic. You understand that, I hope. Look at me, Jim.”

  I place the phone on the table facedown and give her my full attention, even though I think I can hear the blood rushing between my ears.

  “An ex–police officer reporting on crime is out of bounds in every way for a personal relationship. Are your feelings for her resolved?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  “I could turn a blind eye before, but I won’t be able to again. Not now. I need to make that crystal clear.”

  I stand up. “I am absolutely past my feelings for Emma Zhang, and there is no possibility of entering a relationship with her again.”

  I know I sound stupidly formal, as if I’m translating the sentence from another language, but it’s the best I can do.

  “Okay then.” She doesn’t look one hundred percent reassured.

  I wait until I’m alone before I google Emma again.

  That face. That hair. Those eyes.

  My guilt.

  Sofia wakes up late the following morning, overtired from being up all night and stressing about the papers in Ed Sadler’s office and the recording, trying to work out if it means anything at all, and if so, what.

  She has no time to try to discuss it with her parents or Abdi, because she has to run for the bus to college, but she hands the iPad over to her mother and tells her that she needs to listen to the recording. She shows her mother which button to press.