‘Thought so.’ Logan shot Elizabeth with a finger gun. ‘OK, Fizzy Lizzy Bing-Bong: who’re we meeting next?’ Sneaking a quick glance at his phone as she checked the photocopied schedule.
Attachment Number One was a photo of half a dozenyoung people, in a pub – no idea which one – all gathered around a table grinning at the camera with their glasses raised. Pints, mostly.
There were more revellers off to both sides, but in the middle sat: Ralph, Jericho, Charles, and...
Oh sodding hell.
35
Logan jammed his phone back in his pocket. ‘I have to go. Sorry.’
‘But Da-ad!’
He hunkered down, so they were eye to eye. ‘Who does Daddy love most in the whole wide world?’
Elizabeth didn’t even have to think about it: ‘Cthulhu.’
‘True.’ He gave her tummy a prod. ‘But who does Daddy lovealmostas much as Cthulhu?’
‘Mummy.’
‘Nah, she’s a poo-head.’
Tara walloped him one. ‘Hey!’
A big grin from the Lizzasaurus Rex. ‘Is it Elizabeth Tobermory Strachan-McRae?’
So he gave her a wee kiss on the head. ‘Darn tootin’.’ Then stood and shot Tara a grimace.
‘Go.’
Logan marched for the door, already dialling.
‘But remember what I said about spanking!’
He thumped out into the playground, where the air was hot and claggy and smelled offreedom. Phone to his ear, waiting for the halfwit Tufty to—
Logan stumbled to a halt, inches away from falling over a little girl. Well, notlittle, little. Maybe twelve years old? Dressed in black jeans, black biker boots, black leather wrist things,and a black T-shirt with Marceline fromAdventure Timeon it. She’d even dyed her hair jet-black, like Undertaker Barbie.
She glowered up at him, from a ghost-white face with coal-coloured lipstick. ‘Hey, watch where you’re...’ Then her eyes widened in their smoked shadows. ‘Ooh, it’syou! It reallyisyou. They said it was, but then you didn’t show yesterday, so I thought maybe they were lying, but it’syou, and...’ Then she must’ve remembered that babbling Goths weren’t cool, so bobbed one shoulder and sniffed instead. ‘Yeah. I mean,...’sup?’
‘Sorry.’ He pointed at the gate through to the teachers’ bunker. ‘I’ve got to—’
‘You don’trememberme?’ Bottom lip trembling.
Not even vaguely.
‘Erm...Yes?’
The Ghost Goth Girl looked away, chin jutting out like a chalk cliff. Shoulders back. ‘We rescued those kids from the Livestock Mart. You know, from those tits in masks?’
What?
Logan stared at her.
Nah.
Couldn’t be.