id="u7b70ebee-0ca8-55a6-9e37-00a03caf51ec">
C.J. SKUSE is the author of the YA novels PRETTY BAD THINGS, ROCKOHOLIC and DEAD ROMANTIC. She was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, England. She has First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Children and, aside from writing novels, lectures in Writing for Children at Bath Spa University where she is planning to do her PhD. THE DEVIANTS is her fifth novel.
For my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Roy Snead,
Thank you for the days, those sacred days you gave me.
Contents
2. Moonlight Adventure Saturday, 1 August
4. The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat
5. An Old Friend One month earlier – 9 July
11. A Smashing Time and a Piece of Advice
13. Up To Mischief Tuesday, 4 August
15. A Rather Unpleasant Meeting
16. Junior Springs a Surprise!
19. A Rather Splendid Party Friday night, 21st August
24. Discoveries at the Witch’s Pool
29. Five Have a Wonderful Time
I’m sitting beside the café window when I see the man running up the beach and I instantly know it’s washed ashore. The sand flicks up behind him as he sprints. And he’s screaming.
His face is alive with fear. He’s running so hard to get away from it, what he’s found. In those brief moments, I am the only person in the café to see him. But, within seconds, the quiet crumbles into chaos.
‘Somebody! Help!’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Did he say a body?’
Someone calls my name, but I don’t turn around. I keep walking, out of the café, into the morning air, along the Esplanade, down the steps and onto the wet sand, like the sea is a magnet and I am metal.
People overtake me. Someone shouts, ‘Call the police.’ Thudding footsteps, snatches of breath. The sand’s covered in a billion worm hills and tiny white shells. A group of crows squawks nearby. They’re all clustered around an object, pecking at it.
‘Let the police handle it.’
‘Don’t look. Don’t look.’
I keep walking towards the mound, until I can see for myself what the man was running from. Until I can see for myself what I have done.
‘Tell me everything. Start with what was happening between you and Max.’
