The Shadows: A Novel by Alex North

room looked as though Michael had been here only moments earlier and would be back again shortly.
    But when Amanda’s gaze moved back to the boy’s parents, it was immediately obvious he would not. Mary Price looked pale and shocked. Her husband, Dean, was sitting beside her on the couch, his face blank, with one hand tightly clenching his knee. Talking to relatives of victims was the part of the job Amanda found the most difficult. Especially recently, she found it hard not to take on their pain as her own, to imagine them standing beside her at the crime scene and to absorb the impact of their grief.The feeling of loss and absence in the room right now was almost unbearable for her.
    Lock it away, she imagined her father telling her. You need to keep yourself detached.
    But she couldn’t.
    “That’s partly our fault, I know,” Mary was saying. “We could never afford much. Michael’s had the same room since he was eight. It’s too small for a teenager—just space for a bed and some drawers, really. God, I’ve been such a terrible mother.”
    Amanda looked at Dean Price, waiting for him to comfort his wife. But the man seemed so far away right then that she wasn’t sure he’d even heard.
    “You shouldn’t say that. I’m sure you both did your best.”
    “Do you have children?” Mary said.
    God, no . Amanda still vividly remembered a pregnancy scare in her early twenties; it had genuinely been one of the worst things that had ever happened to her.
    “No, not yet.”
    “It’s worthwhile, but it can be so hard. Michael was always a quiet boy, but he got so silent when he was older. Didn’t want to talk to his mom, of course.” Mary looked at her husband, who was still staring off into the distance. “You two got on better recently, though, didn’t you? That was nice for you both. Made him feel a bit less lonely, I think.”
    Mary patted his knee.
    Dean didn’t respond, and Mary turned back to Amanda.
    “That’s why I didn’t mind him gaming so much. He let his guard down a bit then, you see. Forgot I was here. It was good to hear him interacting with people.”
    “Most of his friends were online?”
    “Well, they weren’t friends, really. Just strangers he was playing against. That’s … that’s why I was so pleased when he seemed to have met some friends in the real world.”
    Mary fell silent and Amanda shifted uncomfortably in her seat. This was going to be difficult. But it needed to be done. Apart from anything else, the two of them deserved to know what had happened.
    “As you may be aware,” she said, “two boys have now been charged with your son’s murder. They’re due to appear in court early next week.”
    Dean Price came to life.
    “Elliot Hick,” he said. “And Robbie Foster.”
    He spoke slowly and deliberately, but remained staring at the opposite wall. Amanda hesitated. The boys hadn’t been named in the press, but there seemed little point in keeping this information from the parents. They already knew. Everybody did. That was the kind of community Featherbank was. It became that way after the Whisper Man all those years ago.
    “Hick and Foster had been friends since childhood,” Amanda said. “Am I right in thinking your son only started hanging around with them earlier this year?”
    “That’s right.” Mary nodded. “They asked him to sit with them.”
    Which was what Hick had told them. The three boys started sitting together at school, and then on weekends they would go to the quarry. Michael Price had been eager for the company, Hick said. Almost painfully grateful for it. The way he had described it made it sound like the two of them had adopted a stray puppy. In the light of what had happened, the thought of that made Amanda feel sick.
    On Saturday morning, Michael had met Hick and Foster at the waste ground as usual, and the three boys had walked to the quarry together. Presumably, Michael had been expecting more of the friendship and companionship