‘Fancy a McDonald’s?’

After Suzy went to university, Kat had spent countless nights lying awake wondering what she’d do if she came home to find Dad collapsed at the foot of the stairs, or some kind of radioactive spillage in the kitchen that had transformed the tea towels into bloodthirsty goblins. The last thing she considered herself was a responsible adult, and she’d never needed to call 999 before. This was probably the right time to start, but people didn’t just randomly fade – it had to be against some law of physics she probably wouldn’t understand.

‘Research time,’ she said to herself.

The phone was pleasingly heavy in her hand, ballast she hoped might keep her from floating away. First, Kat opened her contacts and found her sister’s number. Kat’s thumb hovered over the call button. They hadn’t spoken in months – Suzy hadn’t even come home from university over the summer break – and even if they had she wasn’t sure her sister would believe her about everything that had happened.

She opened their dormant chat log and tapped out a message instead. Hey, can we catch up soon? Call me. x

The rest of her contacts was populated by acquaintances at best. There was never any need to exchange numbers with her so-called online friends, and anyway, they’d all been scared off by the trolls. Kat remembered all too well the final conversation with her regular gaming group.

Sorry, we can’t let you play with us any more, they had said over headsets.

What do you mean?

The long silence was ripe with social awkwardness, but Kat had been determined that one of them be brave enough to strike the final blow.

They said they’d come for us too. We do this to escape that kind of crap, you know? We’re sorry.

Kat almost asked where she was supposed to go to escape it. It had been so humiliating, like not getting picked for a team in PE, and she’d deleted the game immediately. Another piece of her gone.

With a hollow pang, she realised she had nobody to tell about what had happened. At least with social media it felt like there were people in the world who cared about what you were doing, who were invested in your existence. In some small way they were always beside you – even if it was just an illusion. She couldn’t go downstairs and talk to Dad, couldn’t face that yet.

Kat moved to the window and watched cars pass for a while, pedestrians hurrying home, and wondered who was waiting for them there.

She needed to focus. Searching on her phone was a pain, but without her laptop she had no choice. First she checked her website: it hadn’t been revived in her absence, and there was no sign of the photograph. It could have been saved by somebody else, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

Google was safe, but she opened an incognito tab just in case. Flexing her thumbs over the keypad, letters nudging through her nails, she tried to think of any search term that wasn’t completely ridiculous.

Fading . . . disappearing . . . becoming a ghost . . .

This line of questioning mostly turned up obscure films, rainforest charities, cleaning services, paranormal conspiracies, fetishes. She decided not to check the images.

Kat tried a different tack: detached from life.

Half way down the results she found a website that compiled suicide notes posted to social media, nobody able to save their authors in time – if anybody had even tried. Another website focused on Japanese teenagers who withdrew from society so completely they spent their entire lives online, literally never leaving their bedrooms.