Anyway, we were all there—everyone except Abi. And when she turned up she didn’t say anything, and it was obvious she’d been crying. And the weird thing was, she had on this hat. Like, a woolly hat, which came right down over her ears, even though it was the middle of summer.
“What’s with the tea cozy, Abi?” said Mason.
Which maybe wasn’t exactly the most sensitive way to say hello, given that Abi was obviously so upset. But with us lot it was just the sort of thing you came out with, although admittedly Mason more than most. But what I mean is, because we knew each other so well, none of us ever tried to hide anything. Nobody ever made out they were cooler than they were, and if something shitty had happened, you just admitted it. You didn’t try to pretend everything was OK, not the way we all had to do at home.
So Abi took off her hat. She still didn’t say anything. But the thing was, she didn’t need to. Because her hair, which was normally sort of mousey, was bright green.
“Whoa!” said Mason. “What the hell, Abi? What happened?”
Abi burst into tears. But slowly it all came out. She’d had her hair cut, apparently, and she’d been feeling all brand-new, until she’d got home and her dad had started laughing. All, like, “How much money did you waste on that?” and “I don’t know why you even bother.” Just to make her feel bad. And apparently what he said was, “You’re a five, Abi. On a good day. You’ll never deserve a higher score than that. Look at your mother if you want someone to blame.” And Abi was distraught, but what she also thought was, I’ll show him. And her dad’s always liked blondes, which for some messed-up reason means Abi’s always wished she was blonde, too. So she bleached her hair. Herself. And whatever she used . . . Well. Obviously it hadn’t quite worked.
“He’s gonna laugh at me for the rest of my life!” she wailed. “Everyone is. The entire school!”
“So what?” Mason said, grinning. “I actually think it’s awesome.”
“It’s not awesome,” said Abi. “It’s hideous. There’s no way I’m going to school tomorrow. I’m never showing my face in public ever again!”
And that’s when Mason got all serious. “Screw that, Abi,” he said. “I’m all for bunking off school and everything, but only for the right reasons.” And he made her swear. I mean, it took about an hour, literally, but he wouldn’t let it drop until Abi promised she’d turn up the next day at school. And then what he did was, he got the rest of us all together that evening. Him, me, Luke, Sadie and Cora. And he’d got hold of this bottle of hair dye. And none of us even had to think about it. I mean, my mum didn’t talk to me afterward for about a month, and Sadie’s dad practically had a stroke. But it didn’t matter. We’d have dyed our hair green even if it had meant getting expelled. For Abi’s sake, you know? For ours.
And that’s what I mean. That’s how it was with us before.
But then I guess something changed. Probably around the start of the summer. For me, I . . . I was concentrating on preparing for sixth form, I suppose. That’s why I didn’t always go out when the others asked. And anyway, me and Mason, we . . . I don’t know. It’s like I said, I was always mainly friends with Luke, and just lately, with Mason . . . it had been a bit awkward, I suppose. Not just for me. For everyone. Because before Mason and Sadie got together last year, Mason had been with Cora. So Cora was dealing with that, plus the fact Sadie seemed to be hanging around with Abi more, when before, Cora and Sadie had been inseparable. So it was all just . . . just different, that’s all. And then, after Sadie went missing . . . Well. To be honest, the rest of us have hardly spoken.
But Luke.
I was telling you about Luke.
“You’ve heard what they’re saying about him,” he said, talking about Mason, about how he didn’t want us asking him along. “You know what they’re saying he did.”
“They’re saying stuff about the rest of us as well, just in case you hadn’t noticed,” said Cora. “And anyway, are you really going to listen to a bunch of rumors? In this town? You know what people are like. You know what the police are like. They always think it’s the boyfriend. The husband, the lover. If they had any actual evidence, they would have arrested him by now. The fact that they haven’t—”
“Means they haven’t found it yet,” said Luke. “It doesn’t mean Mason didn’t do it. That he isn’t secretly some kind of psychopath.”
“A psychopath? Really?” Cora threw up her arms and turned away.
Abi looked slightly afraid.
“Dude,” I said, stepping forward. We were at the footbridge, the big one near the caravan park, where the river’s at its widest. Not far from where you lot began the search. “Mason isn’t a psychopath,” I said. “My mum is a psychopath. To give you a frame of reference.”
For a moment Luke just stared at me, and I was worried I’d said the wrong thing. Like, joking. Was that still OK? Because we hadn’t. It didn’t feel like we had. Not since Sadie had gone missing.
But then Luke laughed. It was only a snort, really. But it was like something suddenly lifting.
Luke looked ashamed. Ashamed or afraid or just upset, really, I suppose. And tired. You know? Just really, really tired. Which we all were, I think. I don’t know about the others, but I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a time since Sadie had gone missing.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Yeah, OK. Sorry.”
Cora gave him this broken little smile.
We had to backtrack to get to Mason’s house. He lives with just his dad now—his mum left home when Mason was small—and they
