Soul Beach

Maybe I will, one day soon,’ I say, but we both know it’s a snub. Sometimes I feel really, really alone.
    When I dare to look at him, the light darts across his face and I see coldness there.
    The second time it lights up I realise it isn’t coldness. It’s hurt.
    ‘Sorry, Lewis. I know I seem like an ungrateful cow but really, I’m not. I feel incredibly lucky that you’ve helped me. You’re amazingly kind and maybe I will be able to tell you, one day. If I can ever tell anyone, it’ll be you. I . . . well, I trust you.’
    ‘Thanks. I think.’
    ‘You’re welcome.’
    As he drives, I sneak glimpses of his face. I think of the other men I trust in my life: my dad, Danny.
    Tim . . .
    Could Lewis possibly help me solve that mystery too? I take out my phone, switch it back on. There’s a new text from Adrian: he’s sending several a day, now, since the conversation with Tim.
    Still making plans for a face-to-face meeting, Alice. Expect to have more news soon. Your friend, Ade
    ‘New boyfriend?’ asks Lewis, with a smile.
    I tut. ‘Not interested. Boys are so shallow.’
    The motorway skirts London. Forty five minutes till I can go back on the Beach. Where Danny is waiting for me . I stare up at the dense, black heavens above us and try to imagine the cloudless blue.
    A bright pink light flashes across the sky. Then orange. Then green.
    ‘Oh my God, fireworks ,’ I whisper, thinking of Triti. Could that be a supernatural sign that she’s gone?
    ‘Well, yes,’ says Lewis. ‘You do remember the date, don’t you?’
    I blink, and try to remember. October? Or November? Isn’t asking the date one of the tests they use on accident victims and old people when they want to work out if they’ve still got all their marbles?
    No. It’s no use. Some days I don’t notice if it’s summer or winter.
    ‘It’s Bonfire Night,’ Lewis tells me.
    Another firework rips into the sky, then cascades. A white chrysanthemum. Isn’t that the flower of death?

The memories are fading, like old photographs, and what’s left is loneliness.
    Every day that passes, Meggie becomes less real to me. There was something so precious about her last moments, because they were just mine and hers. For so many months, she’d been public property, pawed over and fawned over, and worse, by millions of so-called fans.
    And then, suddenly, we were completely alone.
    But sharing a perfect memory with a dead girl is not as good as I’d imagined it might be. For one cannot reminisce with the dead, and the details soon blur at the edges. Once or twice, I have even resorted to doing what the stupid do, and watching the videos of her on the internet. They repulsed me.
    I don’t want to be alone any more. I crave company. Someone to understand me, as she did. Someone to love.
    I’ve tried to fight it, but that same name, that same face, appears in my day dreams and my night dreams.
    Alice.
    It ought to be enough just to see her, hear her voice.
    But I fear a time is coming when the battle against myself will be lost.

59
    I sit in front of the screen, trying to summon up the courage to go on the Beach.
    All it takes is half a dozen clicks of the mouse.
    ‘I’m afraid, Meggie,’ I whisper, even though she can’t hear me yet.
    Afraid that I’ve changed nothing,or that I’ve changed everything. Over the last few months, the Beach has been a safe haven. A place I cannot change, or influence, because I am only a Visitor. I might be able to cheer my sister up now and then, and I might have made Danny think there’s a reason for his living death, but there’s been no connection between my world and theirs.
    Until now.
    The snap, crackle, pop of our local, crappy fireworks display has started outside. The air will be full of damp smoke and the pub car park full of terrified babies and disappointed kids and desperate parents trying to get excited about sparklers that snuff out before you’ve written a single letter of your name in the air.
    Meggie didn’t like fireworks. Dad used to joke that she couldn’t stand anything else being the centre of attention, even dynamite.
    Not much of a joke any more.
    Get on with it, Alice , I say to myself. I stand up, pace the floor, then catch sight of myself in the wardrobe mirror. I look a bit of a state after all today’s dramas. OK, so on the Beach, everyone is beautiful, but would it do any harm to give my webcam a bit of help along the way?’
    As I pick up my hairbrush and make-up