Then one day, late September, during my first few weeks in the sixth form, I went to my Thursday class at the dojo, and there he was, all green and nervous, doing a trial class. I was a few minutes early for my class so I sat and watched him finish his. He was a foot taller than everyone else; it was a beginner class so mainly kids. I couldn’t work out what he was doing there, this shambling, weed-smoking, fox-chatting boy. He did not seem the type.

He’d been paired with a small girl for the last exercises. He looked embarrassed. She looked resigned.

Then it was over and they were taught how to end the class: ‘Kahm sa hamnida.’

‘Ee sahn.’

He shuffled into the changing rooms and reappeared a moment later in his school uniform, his North Face coat, his schoolbag. He caught me staring at him and I nodded. He flushed and turned away.

It seemed like it meant something, that this boy was there, at my dojo. I wondered for a moment if he’d seen me following him and was trying to turn the tables on me; you know, like letting me know that he knew what I was up to. But he never seemed to notice me there; he didn’t have a vibe about him as if he was aware of my presence.

The third time he was there I arrived late and I was in the changing area with him. The curtain was pulled across. Two small boys sat cross-legged on the floor tying up the laces on their school shoes. I took off my coat and my hoodie and hung them from a peg. I turned to Josh and I said, ‘How are you finding it?’

He looked at me as if I was the first person who had spoken to him ever in his whole life. ‘What?’

‘I said, how are you finding it? You’re new, yeah?’

He nodded and said, ‘It’s OK.’

‘What’s your objective?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What’s your objective? I’ve been at this since I was six. Did it so that no one on the street could scare me, intimidate me, you know. Just wondered what you were getting out of it?’

‘Same, I guess.’

‘Self-defence?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Kind of. I was mugged.’

‘Oh my God,’ I said, ‘when?’

‘Like, a few weeks ago.’

‘Shit. That’s bad.’ I glanced down at the small boys on the floor and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then to Josh: ‘Did they hurt you?’

He shrugged. ‘No. Not really. I didn’t put up much of a fight, so, you know.’

I did know. I really, really did know. ‘Any idea who it was?’

‘No. Just a white guy, with a hood.’

‘Scary,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. Then he picked up his bag and left without saying goodbye.

He never came back again.

One night at around the same time I first saw Josh at the dojo, I got home and found my granddad flopped in the armchair; his skin looked grey. I said, ‘Granddad, are you OK?’

He said, ‘I think so. I’m not sure.’ He said he had indigestion, so I got him some Rennies. He rubbed his chest a lot and grimaced.

Aaron got home an hour after me and called an ambulance.

Shortly after that I was in a squeaky plastic chair at the Royal Free holding my granddad’s hand and telling him that everything was going to be all right.

But it wasn’t.

It was all wrong.

Granddad spent three days on the ward having various tests. He was finally diagnosed with angina and then, after more tests and more scans, with coronary artery disease. He was sent home with a long list of new ways in which to live his life, things he should be eating, medicines he needed to take. I could tell he had no intention of doing any of it. He’d lost his wife and his daughter, he’d been in pain for years, he had no social life and no job and now I was nearly grown, nearly an adult, he could not see the point in changing everything just so he could be around in twenty years’ time still being a problem for us all to deal with.

So he pushed away all the healthy food that Aaron bought and cooked for him and he left the pills sitting on the table next to his chair and he refused to go out for nice walks with me and then, before we’d even really started trying to save his life, he had a massive heart attack and died. He was only fifty-nine when he passed away. Sounds so much younger than sixty when you’re talking about dying.

So, there I was. No mum, no dad, no grandparents, just two uncles and two little cousins. Not enough.

I couldn’t get out of bed for a week after Granddad’s funeral. I felt hollow, like you could just blow me away or crush me under your thumb.

For the first time in my school career, I fell behind with my coursework.

Aaron went to talk to my teachers and they sent this woman over, something to do with safeguarding or pastoral care or whatever; I’d never seen her before in my life. She was grumpy with a face like a lump of pastry – it’s not like the movies y’know, where Sandra Bullock or someone like that comes over and turns your life around – and she sat on the other side of our little dining table from me, both of us with our fingers wrapped around blue mugs of tea made by Aaron, and she said stuff to me and there were words, a lot of words, and she meant well and she was nice and all, but the minute she left I just went straight back to bed.

It was Bonfire Night that got me out of the slump. Sitting on the back of the sofa with Aaron and pulling open the curtains and watching the sky explode into all those different colours. It was weird Granddad not being there, but it also reminded me that life goes on, as mundane as that sounds, life just goes on; fireworks still pop, people still watch in wide-eyed wonder, children still hold sparklers, foxes still skulk through urban blackness looking for chicken bones.

I put on my Puffa coat and I told Aaron I was going to get lemonade from the shop downstairs. Instead I bought a packet of Fridge Raiders and headed up towards Hampstead, through the leafy avenues where the fireworks exploded privately in people’s back gardens, smudges of glitter just visible above ancient trees. On the corner of Roan’s road, I sneaked through the same gap I’d seen Josh using to access the empty plot. It wasn’t cold and I took off my Puffa and used it as a blanket.

I opened the packet of Fridge Raiders and sat it on the damp gravel next to me, hoping that the smell would wend its way across the open space. I switched on my phone and messaged Aaron. I’m going over Jasmin’s place. See u laters.

He replied, Everything OK?

I started to type my response and then I stopped at the sound of rustling behind me. It was him; it was the fox. I rested my phone on my lap and held my breath. I could hear his little paws, pad-padding across the gravel, closer and closer to me. I put my hand inside the Fridge Raiders packet and pulled out a nugget of whatever in hell that stuff actually is, held it between my forefinger and thumb, just out by my side. I still didn’t turn and look. I could hear the fox’s breathing, an anxious, active sound. I felt him stop and I could tell he was inches away from me. And then I felt the warmth of his breath against the skin of my hand. I dropped the meat and heard him snaffle it up. But he didn’t move. So I pushed the bag forward a few inches to see if he’d follow it. And then there he was, standing by my side, looking down at the bag expectantly, like a pet dog.

‘Want another one?’ I said.

He didn’t look at me, just stared intently at the bag, his little gingerbread eyes totally fixed on the spot. ‘OK then,’ I said, taking one out. ‘Here you go.’

A huge firework exploded overhead and for a moment the fox looked like he was going to scamper away. But he held his ground and his snout appeared in my peripheral vision and then there he was, taking the snack from between my fingers. I inhaled so hard I heard my own breath catch.

And here I was, I realised, back in the same place I’d found myself that time at Lexie’s animal party, when the guy gave me the owl called Harry. All the black inside me turned silver and gold. I felt the punch of a connection with the ground, the sky, the trees, the air, so strong that it almost winded me. Butterflies whipped through my stomach. I stifled a giggle and covered my mouth with the back of my hand. I looked up into the gunpowder-stained night sky and I searched with my eyes until I found a star, muted and grubby, but there, and I clasped my hands together in a prayer and said, ‘I love you, Granddad. I love you, Grandma. I love you, Mum.’

I picked up my phone and replied to Aaron’s message.

I’m all good! with a smiley face emoji.

And still the fox stood by my side.

I passed him more snacks and laughed out loud.

I thought, Ha, see, Roan Fours, I didn’t need you, after all. I only needed nature. I only needed owls and foxes and stars and fireworks.

I was fixed.

Or so I thought.

29

The police cordon is still stretched across Cate’s street the next day. The helicopters are back. But there’s nothing on the news. Clearly they haven’t found anything yet. Clearly there’s no body in there. If there was, Cate thinks, surely they’d have found it by now?

Roan is eating a bowl of cereal, standing up. He’s making annoying eating noises, scarfing it down for some reason as though he’s late for something.

‘Are you in a hurry?’ asks Cate.

‘Yeah, a bit. I want to be at work early.’

‘You went in early yesterday.’

‘Yes. Lots on. Two other clinicians on holiday – you know, half-term. Need to catch up with myself.’

‘You could do that here,’ she says, gesturing at the kitchen table.