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DING-DONG

I close the front door behind me, shutting out the night. I can hear Classic FM playing from the kitchen. Smell the familiar, lingering floral scent.

‘Eli? Is that you?’ Mum’s voice from the dining room. ‘Hi, darling!’

I push the stolen phone down into my jeans pocket, my own phone in the other.

‘Got sidetracked helping an old lady get on the bus,’ I call back. ‘Sorry I’m late!’

‘It’s fine. Your brother’s still in the shower. Dinner’s nearly ready!’

‘Great!’

I kick off my shoes and check my reflection in the mirror above the side table where a vase of lilies sits. There are always lilies here – Mum’s obsessed with them. I sweep my damp fringe out of my eyes and do my ghost-vampire smile. It looks good, really good. With the hair dye, it’s very Jokeresque. I exhale, then pad across the checked hallway tiles into the dining room.

And there they are. Mum and Dad, Mr and Mrs Pew, sitting at the dining table – candles lit, four sets of expensive cutlery perfectly laid, napkins neatly folded.

Time to pull out my A game. They must not suspect. Confuse and discombobulate to distract. ‘Greetings, sexy earthlings. It is I, your sweet son, descended from a foreign world.’

‘Half right,’ Dad says, not looking up from the Telegraph . ‘Me, sexy? Yes. But you, sweet? Not sure.’ He smiles.

He’s joking, see. Actually, he doesn’t think he’s sexy but does think I’m sweet, which is exactly what I need him to think.

Mum pretends not to have heard. ‘How was it?’ she says, standing. Her white blouse is all chic and elegant and her eternally blonde hair is in a neat ponytail, as always. Her appearance hasn’t changed in my entire seventeen years.

I feel the phone start to vibrate in my pocket. Nisha’s phone. Shit . I should’ve turned it off.

‘It was good, thanks!’ I smile. A warm one.

‘I’m so pleased, Eli.’ As her arms wrap around me, I smell the faint tang of dusty books and altruism. Mum’s a lawyer. A crown prosecutor, to be precise. Precise is actually a good word for her. Immaculate. Delicate, but not frail. ‘Gosh, you’re soaked through.’

‘Just a bit damp. How was your day, Mum?’

‘Busy. But good.’ She kisses my forehead, right where the scar is. She’s stopped mentioning it now, to my immense relief. ‘I’m going to fetch the food. You hungry?’

‘Starving.’

She heads into the hallway and I hear her shout up the stairs. ‘Lucas! Dinner! Your brother’s back!’

‘We were getting a little worried,’ Dad says. He doesn’t sound it though, and only half looks up from his newspaper. He’s wearing his jumper-shirt combo that he thinks makes him look professional but relatable. ‘I was about to call the chief of police.’

‘Ha!’ I say.

He’s very clever, my dad. Very perceptive, so I need to play this well. And he probably could call the chief of police because he works for the government. He’s a Member of Parliament. The MP for Lewes, to be exact. The town I grew up in – the town we lived in until the Incident.

Dad used to have a job in Big Tech, but the company he worked for loved him so much that they persuaded him to join this new political party they were helping fund. ADVANCE brITAIN: a radical party to elicit real change, harnessing and embracing technology as the way forwards .

Their slogan is burned into my memory from all the campaigning Dad did five years ago. I don’t think he actually thought they’d win the election. No one did. But, as Dad so often puts it, people had become desperate. His party offered something new and the nation got on board. Sounds crazy, but it isn’t really. It hasn’t changed anything for me. Just that my dad is famous now. He signs autographs sometimes – says he hates it, but I know that’s a lie.

So, yes. My parents are both honourable, respected members of the community. Which is why this house is so massive. And also why they cannot know about my side project. They wouldn’t understand.

I feel the phone start to buzz again. Damn it. Stop . I should probably turn it off, but don’t want to draw attention to it.

‘How’s the world doing?’ I say, pointing at the newspaper. To distract. Deflect.

‘Typically barbaric,’ he sighs. He folds it, takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. He always looks so tired, my dad.

‘Why so serious?’ I say, like the Joker does. But I don’t do the voice.

‘Oh, just another day dealing with terrible people doing terrible things.’

‘Oh no. The worst type of people.’

‘There are more of them than you’d think, Eli.’

‘I can imagine.’ He starts pouring wine, but not for himself. He doesn’t drink or smoke any more – again, very wholesome. ‘Maybe don’t read the paper then. Out of sight, out of mind.’

‘If only that were true.’

He’s right. If only that were true of this stolen phone .

Dad frowns. ‘Is that your phone? Aren’t you going to answer it?’

I suddenly feel two arms envelop me from behind, picking me up so my feet leave the floor.

‘Hey, Little Broski.’

Saved by my brother. Dad goes back to pouring. Thank God .

Lucas smells like a meadow. A masculine meadow. He drops me back down and rubs my head with his knuckle.

‘Hey, Luc,’ I say, keeping things casual.

‘How was the shrink?’

‘Good. My head has been perfectly shrunk.’

He grins. ‘Brilliant. You’re soaking.’ He’s wearing the same shirt he’s been wearing every day since he got back from Cambridge. Yes: he goes to Cambridge University. Yes: he’s very clever. Yes: just like my parents. He’s also very nice. He is Perfect Son Material. We are not short of high achievers in this family, except for the black sheep: me.

It didn’t used to be that way. There was once so much promise. Then my head was smashed open.

Nisha’s phone buzzes in my pocket again.

I quickly sit back down. ‘What are we having?’

‘Lamb,’ Dad says.

Mum brings in the dishes from the kitchen, piled with steaming food. As she sets them down, Lucas sits opposite me and sips his wine in a way that is different to how he did before university. He does it all … academically.

‘How’s work going, Eli?’ he says in his now even posher voice.

‘It’s good, yeah.’ I see Dad smile. I haven’t told them I’m on my last warning at the café. It’s not my fault the customers are so messy. The Muswell Hill mums like to bring their children in to cause what I call food tornadoes. It’s my job to clean that shit up.

God, this phone .

‘No more annoying customers then?’

‘I’m learning to deal with them.’

I try to smile as I’ve been told to. Be nice . A smile goes a long way, Elias .

The manager recently had a sit-down chat with me about all the ways I could appear jollier. Laughing is good, she said. So I did. I laughed. I laughed a lot when a customer asked me for a puppucino for her dog because I thought it was genuinely funny. I didn’t realise she was not joking. I got my first warning for that because the customer was very offended.

‘You’re doing great, Eli.’

‘Why, thank you.’

The second warning was for hiding in the walk-in fridge because the dick chef, Dan, kept flicking hot butter at me every time I went into the kitchen. When he found out I was hiding in there, he locked me in. I tried to break the door open, but just broke the lock instead. When the manager finally opened it, she found me drinking a carton of the extra special posh milk with a chef’s apron wrapped round my head for warmth, which apparently was really not OK.

‘When’s your next shift?’

‘Saturday.’

It’s not. The manager asked me to take Saturday off to reflect on why I think it’s OK to drink things that aren’t mine. But my family don’t need to know that.

I should have thrown this phone in a bush . Please shut up .

I do actually like my job, though. The cleaning bit at least. I find it focuses my brain. To my family, it’s just a stop gap . A way for me to regather myself, after everything. But it’s good for now. I have a bit of money in my bank – currently eighty-three whole pounds – and my parents don’t make me pay rent because they’re nice like that.

‘So, tomorrow you’re all clear for the group session?’ Mum says.

‘Yep! Can’t wait for that little gem.’

She looks at me warmly. ‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’

‘How could I forget?’ Because I have forgotten lots of things.

The buzzes on my upper thigh increase in frequency, like someone’s texting the phone at high speed. I feel for it with my fingers and slip it out while my brother talks about how good it’s been for me – all the therapy.

I make uh-huh noises to show him I’m listening and steal glances at the screen. Messages flash up one after the other. All from the same person.

Boss: I know you stole this phone

Boss: Who are you?

Boss: Fucker

Boss: I’m gonna find you

Wait, is this her? Or is this her boss? Or is she Boss? Or someone just called Boss.

Who calls themselves Boss?

‘What other shifts are you working this weekend?’ Dad says.

‘Uh-huh’

‘Elias?’

Oh, bollocks. I look up to see him eyeing me as he cuts the lamb. ‘Just Saturday.’

‘I was thinking…’ He glances at Mum as she dishes out green things. I know what’s about to happen because he used his soft voice, which means he is about to bring up the Future. ‘I wondered if you’d thought any more about going back to resit your exams? Maybe we could discuss it this weekend? No pressure, of course.’

‘Let’s get tomorrow out of the way first, Gordon,’ Mum says with a hint of a warning as she dishes out potatoes covered in herby bits.

‘Of course,’ Dad replies and I see him go a little red.

I glance back down.

Boss: Ever heard of GPS tracking? Cos that’s about to fuck you mate

Oh, God. Not good at all. I am the world’s worst thief. How could I not premeditate GPS tracking?

‘I have been thinking about it, actually,’ I say.

‘Oh?’ Mum says.

‘I want to do criminology.’ I appreciate that might seem a little ironic right now, but it’s the truth.

‘Oh, Eli. That’s wonderful .’ Mum’s eyes widen with glee. ‘You’d be so good at that.’

Boss: I’m gonna find you

‘Someone’s popular,’ Lucas says, seeing me glancing at the phone. Shit . ‘Made some new friends?’ I look up at him and smile coyly like maybe I have . He raises his eyebrows in that way he does when he’s being encouraging. ‘Or is it a boyfriend you haven’t told us about?’

The room goes silent. Except for the buzzing.

I notice the hopeful look between Mum and Dad. They want me to find someone lovely. They do. Because I’ve never had a boyfriend and they think it’ll be really good for me to find someone nice .

I push the phone back down into my pocket. Out of sight, out of mind .

It’ll be fine.

People called Boss definitely lie. Just like people called Elias. E-lie-as.

‘Sadly not, Lucas.’

I feel the optimism in the room dissipate.

‘That’s a shame,’ Dad says.

‘Steve and Paula’s son, Peter—’ Mum begins.

My brother snorts and grins at me over his wine glass.

‘What?’ Mum says, glaring at him. ‘Peter’s nice.’

Peter is nice. Peter lives a few doors down with his parents. He just got a place at UCL to study Social Change or something wonderfully altruistic like that. He’s objectively very handsome and wears expensive clothes that don’t look expensive, like Prince William. Anyway, Peter asked me on a date. Problem was, he went about it the right way. The polite way. He asked via his mum and dad, which went via my mum and dad. The invitation to go to dinner (at his parents’ house, may I add – why, God, why? ) arrived via the lips of my very own father.

Which all just felt a little … formal. And Steve and Paula are obsessed with my dad because he’s famous and they want a famous friend so I actually think they have ulterior motives.

‘I just want to be on my own for a bit,’ I say.

‘You sound like a forty-year-old divorcee,’ Mum says, laughing gently. ‘Not a handsome young man in the prime of his life.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘He’s so sweet, Eli. And he’s handsome too.’

I slip the phone out again to see if Boss has gone away.

Boss: I know where you live, little bitch

‘Fine,’ I say to stop Mum talking. ‘Maybe.’

Mum’s eyebrows raise and her forehead crinkles. ‘Brilliant! I’ll let them know.’

I feel a sudden flash of blankness, a sharp shooting pain in my head that makes me wince.

‘You OK, son?’ Dad asks.

‘Yeah, all good,’ I say, but I can feel my cheek twitching. ‘Just one of the –’ I point to my head – ‘things.’ They know what I mean and smile sympathetically. ‘How’s Ingrid, Lucas?’ I ask, to change the subject.

His girlfriend. I call her Intense Ingrid. Because she’s really intense.

‘She’s good, thanks.’

‘How’s her PhD in Machine-Intelligence-thingy-thingy?’

‘Good,’ he says, chewing on a potato.

Boss: you’re dead

‘Does she still think the world’s about to end?’

‘Yup,’ he says.

Mum frowns. Dad blinks.

The doorbell goes.

Oh. Oh, shit.

Mum looks at her watch. ‘Who could that be?’

Surely not… Boss is a liar. He has to be. He ’ s called Boss, for fuck ’ s sake .

Boss: ding-dong

The doorbell goes again. ‘I’ll get it,’ Lucas says.

‘No!’ I jump to my feet, scraping my chair. ‘Let me.’

‘Elias?’ Dad says. ‘It’s probably just Steve or Paula.’

Lucas raises his eyebrows at me playfully.

I feel the smallest twinge of panic. Yes. Yes! Oh, sweet panic, I’ve missed you.

Wait. This could be a problem. A really big problem. ‘Um…’

But Lucas is already in the hallway, making his way to the front door.

Maybe Intense Ingrid is right. Maybe the world is about to end.