The Alibi Girl. C.J. Skuse

and board games played the wrong way and bare feet on cold evening grass playing Mad Rounders with leeks and sprouts. I need to run until my sides stitch and make up dance routines to Madonna songs with Foy.

      I need to fly kites and make nests from cut grass in fields wider than oceans, in sunshine that warms our backs and stretches our shadows to look like giants. To jump on desert rock furniture and lava carpets and create assault courses from old fire guards and broken chairs and table cloths. To play for hours a day in our secret places where adults don’t go – the quiet churchyard over the wall from the pub, the castle, our duvet dens – places where time is decided by the colour of the sky, not clocks and watches, and my limbs are powered by fizzy drinks and melted ice lollies.

      Where every morning Chelle says ‘Rise and shine, Clementine,’ when she opens Foy’s bedroom curtains and takes us downstairs for milky coffees and bacon sandwiches. And we help Stuart stock up the bar and he gives us five pounds to spend at the shop. And we buy felt tips and sketchpads and blue bootlaces and we take it all up to our castle in the tree where we draw our wedding dresses and watch over our land where popcorn fields sway in the wind and unicorns run wild and a T-Rex stalks the land, looking for half-open tins of Jurassic Chum.

      And where everyone calls me Ellis. Or Elle. Or Ellis Clementine Kemp, when I’m naughty. Or Smellis or Elly Belly Cinderelly. But always, always Ellis.

      If only I’d known then that everything would soon be taken from me – even my own name.

5

       Friday, 25th October

      Kaden is out at 6 a.m., doing little sprints up and down the seafront. I only went out to put the Smarties by the gate for Alfie but I decided to sit and watch him as it was such a peaceful, bright day. So I’m sitting on the front steps, looking across the road at the doughnut van and wondering what time he opens. I hold my glass of Strawberry Nesquik. I think about Us again. Me and him supermarket shopping, the baby sitting in the trolley seat and him making faces at her. When I’m thinking about him, I’m not thinking about Tessa Sharpe. I need him in my life. He can protect me from The Three Little Pigs. He can be my brave Saturday Knight with bulletproof shield and a lance that will pierce the hearts of my enemies.

      He always seems so busy though. If he’s not jogging, he’s working. And if he’s not at the gym he’s gone off somewhere on his motorbike. I don’t like to impose.

      But if I don’t impose, I’m going to keep thinking about it. About Tessa. Wondering if she knew what was happening when those big hands were around her neck. Wondering how long she panicked before the breath was squeezed out of her. Wondering if she heard Death creeping into her bedroom.

      Kaden eventually appears, vest sweated through, lost in music. I call out, ‘Hiya.’

      He sees me as he’s climbing the steps to the front door. ‘Oh hey, Joanne,’ he puffs, yanking out one of his earphones. His neck’s all sweaty again but the big news is he’s wearing shorts. And he has the most wonderful legs. Tanned, toned, soft blond hairs all over but I’ve never minded that. He’s never looked lovelier. Beads of sweat trickle down his forehead and into the nape of his neck.

      ‘How are you today?’ he puffs.

      ‘Yeah, I’m okay thanks,’ I say, gesturing towards my Nesquik.

      ‘Nice. How’s Emily?’

      ‘She’s fine. Thanks. Asleep, for now.’ I roll my eyes like Mums do when they’ve been up all night with their babies. ‘What are you doing today?’

      ‘Got to have a shower and then it’s work at nine. You?’

      ‘Work this afternoon,’ I shrug. ‘That’s about it.’

      I feel like I have left it open for him to ask me to spend this morning with him instead but he doesn’t. One of the cats leaps up onto the wall and startles him – Tallulah von Puss. We share a laugh and he tickles her chin as she nuzzles his hand. So he’s okay with cats too. He is all kinds of perfection.

      ‘Saw a poster that looked like her a few streets away,’ he says, frowning to inspect her labelless collar.

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yeah. Little white patch here and everything,’ he says, stroking her chest.

      ‘Oh yeah, I saw that one,’ I lie. ‘That isn’t her. This is Tallulah von Puss.’

      ‘I think that one was called Pedro. Anyway, I best get going. See ya.’ He jogs up the front steps to the door. I wait for him to take a second look back at me, like men sometimes do in films when they’re secretly in love but they can only say it with their eyes. But he doesn’t.

      And Tessa Sharpe’s dead face comes screaming into my mind again.

      I hear the first notes of Emily’s cry inside so I gulp down my Nesquik, pick up my crumby plate and go to her.

      Me and her. Me changing her. Me cuddling her in the middle of the night when there’s nobody else to. It’s just us. It always would be just us, wouldn’t it? And in a heartbeat I’m annoyed, my head is full of thunder and lightning. I wish, for a second, that I was Tessa Sharpe.

      And then I feel awful, like my insides are rancid. How could I wish I were dead even for a second? After everything Scants has done to protect me? Because being dead means this all being over, that’s why. All this running and hiding and lying. I can just be Me. Ellis Who Died. Rather than Joanne Who Barely Existed. I don’t want to be the Me they tell me to be. The Me that Scants says I have to be. It doesn’t stick.

      Today I’ve told work I’m going to be late as I have to attend a funeral. And it’s true; I am going to a funeral. June Busby’s funeral. Whoever June Busby is. I heard them talking about it at Leonard Finch’s funeral last week and I asked the vicar about it. I wonder if they’ll have those mushroom vol-au-vents again after; they were delish.

      I’m not disrespectful when I attend these gatherings, far from it. And I’m rarely asked for identification. I like going because funerals are family occasions and I like being around families, even if they aren’t my own. People are usually so taken with peeking into the papoose to try and see Emily, they aren’t bothered that I’m neither family nor friend. I could be a neighbour, a work colleague, someone the deceased met down the park while feeding the ducks. Maybe I gave her a lift to aerobics. Maybe I walked his dog for him in his final weeks. They’ll never know.

      I haven’t brought Emily today. I wanted to go alone. I’m all in black as I walk funereally through the fog towards the big cemetery gates. I see the coffin in the hearse. Dark brown. Brass handles. Small floral arrangement on the top with a card. A large black car follows closely behind. They both stop at the doors.

      The family members get out of the car. A man with a ginger beard and blond hair. Black suit. People gravitate towards him, shaking his hand, a manly embrace. A We’ll get through this shoulder clasp. I’m handed an A5 white booklet.

       Celebrating the life of June Miranda Busby.

      The entrance music is listed as The Carpenters’ ‘Yesterday Once More’. I flick to the back page. The exit music is ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’. Leonard Finch’s exit music was ‘Oklahoma!’ which everyone seemed to find amusing for some reason.

      There’s a Welcome and Introduction by the Celebrant – Miss Gloria Andrews, whoever she is and whatever a celebrant is. Posh word for a priest, I suppose.

      Then a hymn – ‘Make Me a Channel of Your Peace’. Loads of verses.

      Then a Eulogy and a family tribute, read by June’s son Philip. Then another hymn. Then the Committal. Which is the bit when the coffin goes behind the curtains and, presumably, gets burned.

      ‘You will come to the pub for a cuppa, won’t you?’ says the son,