‘You guys,’ I called. ‘Wait up!’
Cora was just in front of me, and she turned.
‘Abi?’ said Fash, from up ahead. I’d started down the bank towards the stream. It was dry, but it was still slippery, and I had to grab at the tree roots to stop myself falling in. ‘Seriously, Abi,’ said Fash. ‘We’ll be out in three or four hours. We can get a bottle of water or something then. If you drink the stream water you’ll get ill. Didn’t you hear what Luke said before?’
I didn’t answer because I was trying to concentrate. And I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.
Mason had caught up by then, and I heard his voice from up on the path. ‘What’s she doing?’ he said.
‘Going for a swim, it looks like,’ said Cora. And there was the sound of her sparking up a cigarette.
‘Abi …’ called Luke, like a warning, but when I got down level with the water, I surprised them all by hopping to the other side.
‘Look!’ I said. ‘There! Do you see?’
There was a pause while the others looked where I was pointing.
‘Is that …’ said Fash.
‘It’s my phone!’ I said. ‘I’m sure it is.’
I recognised it from the cover, you see. It was lying there, right beside the stream, right on the edge of the water, like whoever had taken it had dropped it without knowing, and it had slid from the path down the bank. And the cover was bright pink, so it stood out like … like a bright pink thing lying in a patch of mud, I guess.
There were some rocks on the path side of the stream, which is why I’d jumped to the other side, and I had to lean across the water to pick it up. I remember I was grinning … right up until the point I felt it in my hand.
‘No, wait, this is just … shit,’ I said, because I’d realised the phone wasn’t mine after all. It was just some cheap-arse Nokia. A smartphone, but the sort I wouldn’t be seen dead with.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Fash, who was standing nearest. He’d started down the bank himself, and when he got close to the rocks, he held out a hand to help me back to the other side.
‘It’s a phone,’ I told him, ‘but it isn’t mine.’ I held it up for him to see. When I did, I realised the case was different, too. It was the same colour as mine, but there was also a pattern on it, like little daisies.
‘So whose is it?’ said Fash. ‘Is it Cora’s?’
But Cora had a Samsung, and obviously she would never have put it in a pink cover. And I knew for a fact it didn’t belong to any of the boys.
‘I don’t know, I …’ It had taken me a second to work out where the home button was, but when I pressed it, the screen lit up. And I swear to God, when I saw what was on it, I almost dropped the phone in the water.
‘Abi?’ said Fash, when he saw my face. ‘What’s wrong?’
For a moment I didn’t answer. But when he said my name again, I turned the phone towards him.
There was a photograph, you see. On the lock screen. You’ve probably got one on yours. Like, of your family or something. Your kids. Me, I’ve got a picture I took at the start of the summer, of the six of us sitting on the beach, that time we went down to the dunes. I used a selfie stick, but even so, we’re all crushed together. I’m on one side next to Cora, and the boys are in a bundle on the other. Sadie’s in the middle, laughing her head off. I love that photo because it reminds me of Sadie when she was happy.
And that’s what gave me such a shock. Because the thing was, on the phone – on this Nokia I’d found in the middle of the forest, lying in the mud by the stream – the lock screen was the very same photo.
What I saw when I turned it on was a picture of us.
Cora
Nobody said anything for a good half a minute. After the two of them had climbed back up the bank, I mean, and Abi had showed us the phone. She just held it in her palm in the middle of the circle, sort of balanced, like she didn’t really want to touch it. The way she would have held something dead.
‘It was seriously just right there?’ I asked. ‘Just lying there down by the stream?’
‘Yes, it was just right there,’ Abi answered, as though for the hundredth time, even though it was the first question anyone had asked her. ‘You heard me call out when I spotted it. You saw me go over and pick it up.’
‘I know, I … I’m not suggesting anything. I’m trying to work out how it might have got there, that’s all. Whose it … whose it could be.’
Abi gave a shiver. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Somebody else take it. Please.’
I lifted it from her hand, and she turned away.
I looked at the photo again, remembering the moment it had been taken. It was right after we’d got down to the beach. The sun was still up, and Mason had just opened the first bottle of wine.
‘Can I see?’ said Luke. I hadn’t noticed him move behind my shoulder.
I nodded and silently passed it to him. When he held the screen up in front of him, his face went the colour of bone.
‘It’s Sadie’s,’ said Mason. ‘It’s got to be.’
‘What?’ I
