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My voice was wobbly and I was crying again.

“Hush, Cosmo, there, there. I know. It always seemed so pointless and random to me, too. But we have to learn to live with it. We really do. Otherwise we're all going to lose
our minds and our sense of reason, and there's no point in us doing that. It wouldn't be very practical.”

There's one thing I can say about my gran: she's always been full of common sense.

But everything felt too late all of a sudden, and something cruel and hard and angry was rising from somewhere very deep and very furious inside me. All I could think of was how I'd gone to this huge amount of trouble. I'd spent practically a whole stupid year in my granddad's childhood, for God's sake, and I'd done a load of things for him. And I'd only asked him to do one thing for me. One measly thing, and he couldn't even do that.

I ran to my granddad's room. He was lying in his bed in exactly the same position I'd left him the very last time I'd talked to him, my poor old granddad, all slumped and heavy-looking. I tried my best. I really did. I tried to see the boy in him. The boy I loved so much. But I couldn't. All I could see was someone who had made a promise to me, with his own voice. A promise that he'd totally broken, as far as I was concerned.

“Granddad Kevin. It's me.”

He opened his eyes and gave me the foggy look.

“Who are you?”

“I'm Cosmo, for God's sake, you stupid retard. I'm Cosmo. Cosmo. COSMO. Does that name mean nothing to you? Does this face not ring some tiny bell inside your stupid brain? Don't you know who I am?”

“Oh no. Have I forgotten something?” he asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact you have. You were supposed to save Brian. You were supposed to stop him from falling out a window.”

“Brian? Who's Brian?”

“He was your GRANDSON, you MORON. I told you. I TOLD you. It's the last thing I said when I left Blackbrick. But noooo. Would you BOTHER doing anything about it? He's still dead. Brian's still dead.”

Granddad looked at me then. He held his hands up to his mouth like someone who had forgotten something really dreadful and then remembered.

“Don't you remember, you old nutter? You!
You
were the one with the chance to make everything okay. Nobody usually gets a chance like that, but you did, because I gave it to you. And you didn't take it. You wasted it, Kevin. And now everything is wasted and ruined and broken, and it's all your fault.”

“I'm so sorry,” he said.

“Yes, well, sorry is no good. I guess you'll have to live with that for the rest of your STUPID old LIFE.”

I didn't really know why I was talking like that to my lovely granddad. I was already starting to feel like a stupid retard myself. But once you've done something, you can't undo it. The past is frozen.

And then Granny Deedee was standing in the doorway, and she came into the room and she stood between me and him and she started to speak.

“Cosmo? What on earth are you doing? Get away from him. Stop it! How can you turn on him like this when you are the one whom he always adored? He would never have a word said against you, and you two have always been the best of friends. What's gotten into you, Cosmo? Shame on you.”

“You don't understand.”

“No, I certainly do not. You, young man, are going to have to stop punishing everyone for something that no one can do anything about.”

I could tell she was raging with me, not that I blame her or anything.

“I've put up with your selfishness and your tantrums, but this . . . this is simply not acceptable. It doesn't matter how much grief you feel. You're not the only person in the world. I'm losing him too, you know. Day by day he gets further and further away from me as well, into that dark place he's slipping into, and there's nothing I can do. And you come here and you shout at him and you make him so desperately upset when you know we've got to try to make this time as peaceful and calm and gentle as he deserves it to be.”

She was totally right, of course. But I couldn't get out of the rage I was in. It seemed to be a bottomless pit there for a while. I started shouting at her then:

“He doesn't remember anything, does he? He's never going to remember anything. All these people he's supposed
to love, he's forgotten us, hasn't he? And that's basically that, isn't it?”

I went over to the picture table and held up the photos one by one. And for each photo I shouted a name. Mum! Ted! Brian! Granny Deedee! Me! Me! Me! Me! And I just said “Me” over and over again, which was pretty self-centered, I'll admit. With my arm I swept all the photos off the table, and they clattered and slid and smashed across the floor. And then there was only one picture left. Only one picture that did not fall. It was old and black-and-white and it was of Maggie and baby Nora. Maggie was looking straight ahead, all serious, not even trying to smile, and the baby was snuggled in her arms with her little velvet head peeping out.

I took the photo in my hands and looked down at it. It was still basically unbelievable how good-looking she was. Granddad reached over and he took the photo and he said, “Maggie, oh, Maggie, why did I bring you to Blackbrick? If only you'd stayed away, then you would have been all right.”

I could feel the blood all sucking out of my heart and draining away into my feet.

“What? Granddad, what are you talking about? What happened to her?”

But Granddad went back to saying nothing again and there was no point asking him any more questions.

“I'm sorry, everyone,” I said under my breath. And I was. I really was.

Granny Deedee was in the kitchen by then, trying to get through to Ted, who never answers his phone. I ran past her, straight out to the shed, and got my old bike, which was quite rusty but it worked okay, and I cycled that morning all the way back to the gates of Blackbrick. I was going back there and I was going to find everyone again, and I was going to make sure nothing bad happened to Maggie.

I cycled really fast. I could see a few faces looking nervously at me from cars and on sidewalks, but I never slowed down and I never stopped. It took a while, but I knew the way. The gates were locked and tied. I lifted a jagged rock from the ground, and I started to whack the padlock as if it were some living thing that I was trying to kill. Again and again I smashed the rock down on the lock with massive force, minding my fingers. Eventually it started to bend and dent and break, and then it fell, with this big, dead
thump
. I opened the gates and I was back. Back in Blackbrick.

I ran up the brown gravelly driveway until I got to the end, but Blackbrick was ruined. Everything was. The windows were broken and boarded up. The big door that had twinkled and glistened at me was gone. There was an empty space where that door used to be. I walked inside, and the hall's old floors were dusty and cracked. I saw the table where the silver tray had always been, but there was nothing there now.

I don't really know why, but I tried to fix a few things.
The handle of the kitchen door was on the floor, with a black steel rod sticking out the back of it. I picked it up and put it back in the hole where it belonged. But it slipped out again and rumbled around, echoing in the empty corridor.

And then I walked up the stairs, all sixty-four of them, even though they were leaning over and creaky and probably quite dangerous.

Blackbrick's skeleton was still there, but its soul had definitely gone. There wasn't any point in hanging around. I did go to the stables, just for a second or two. I'm not stupid; I knew the horses weren't going to be there or anything. I didn't feel anything. Their spirits were gone.

There was nothing left at all.

I ran all the way down the avenue again, past the gate lodge and through the south gates, pulling them closed behind me as tight as I could. By then my legs were very tired and the thought of cycling back to my life felt a bit exhausting. So I lay down and rested my face on the cold ground, and even though it was very uncomfortable, I fell asleep.

Chapter 21

I DON'T really know how long I was there for, but the next thing I could feel was someone's hand on my shoulder.

“Get off me,” I said.

“Okay. Sorry, Cosmo,” said a voice. “Cosmo, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry about everything and I'm here to ask you if you'll come back with me. We can go back to Gran and Granddad's if you like.”

And then I repeated Maggie's and Kevin's and baby Nora's names over and over again, but afterward when I thought about it, I guess he couldn't possibly have known who on earth I was talking about.

It was Uncle Ted. I stood up. Everything felt like it had come to an end and there was something dead somewhere inside me that was making me shiver. He kept on saying how worried he'd been. There was a car waiting, and Ted helped to put my bike in the trunk, and then we went back to my granddad's house.

I sat in the back and kept turning around and looking out the window, knowing that there could never be any more going back, even though I kept wishing that there could.

On the way home Ted said a few things to me, and he didn't sound like the self-obsessed person I'd once thought he was. It was even quite good to see him. I told him it was me who'd stolen his bag, but he was totally fine about it.

I was very tired when we got back, so I fell straight asleep. When I woke up again, I looked around. I was in my own room at Gran and Granddad's. I knew because my lava lamp was throwing its wobbly gentle light around. I was sleeping in my comfortable wide bed and I was covered by my huge white duvet and there were tons of green pillows thrown around the place.

I threw the duvet off. I slid a hand under one of the pillows at the top of the bed and I found my pj's. I wriggled into them and squirmed around there in my old bed for a while like I used to do when I was a kid. The room was all bright and warm and clean. It smelled of lavender.