Follow Me Back (10 page)

‘Okay,’ Hunter says after a minute, still
fixing me with his steel stare. ‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think maybe you and Lizzie
are
still close. And maybe she told you she was going to leave. And maybe you’re trying to protect her. Or yourself. Probably yourself, now you realise the profile’s a fake and she could be in serious danger here.’

I’m starting to feel like the room’s getting smaller. Like the walls are closing in. ‘You’re
wrong,’ I blurt out. ‘She hasn’t spoken to me in months.’

Both of them look at me. Mum looks at me. Nobody says anything.

‘The note’s old,’ I say, looking from my mum to Mahama. ‘I – we – she wouldn’t speak to me. I missed her. But I don’t know anything about this. I swear.’

Mahama leans forward in her chair again. ‘Aiden, anything you can tell us is very important,’ she says. ‘Time really
is of the essence here.’

‘I know!’ I say, frustration making me sound panicked, angry. I check myself, try to keep calm. ‘I don’t know where she went, or why. I
wish
I did.’

The silence seems to stretch on forever before Hunter finally leans back and folds his arms. ‘Okay. I think we’re done here.’ Mum stands up straight away, gathering up her bag and coat. I can tell, without looking at her,
that she’s upset.

‘Keep in touch,’ Hunter says, sliding a business card across the desk to me. ‘You know, if anything jogs your memory. That thing DS Mahama said, about the time. She’s not kidding.’

I don’t ask why.

I find out by the end of the day, anyway. I don’t know who hears first, but by fifth period it’s all anyone’s talking about, and by six o’clock, it makes the national news.

Someone in London has found Lizzie’s clothes.

W
HEN
I
FIRST
met him, it was like the perfect story. He was the boy and I was the girl, and there was a happy-ever-after written just for us from the very first line.

And then it all went wrong. Things didn’t go according to the script; they went their own way.

He broke my heart.

He hurt me.

I trusted him. I trusted them all. That’s where I went wrong, because not everyone can
be trusted. I know that now.

But now is too late.

I
DRIVE TO
training that evening without paying any attention to the road. Lizzie’s clothes. Found on a bench in Victoria Park. I can’t think about what that means. I can’t. I can’t.

Police are searching through CCTV of the area, trying to find an image of her at some point in the last week. I hope against hope that they find one. I’d do anything to see her again, even in some grainy
black-and-white shot. Something to prove she was there. Something to prove she exists.

I’ve left Mum at home, silent and tense. When I got in from school, she was sitting in the kitchen, the paper unopened in front of her. She watched me take off my shoes. She didn’t say hi.

We’ve always been close, Mum and me. We joke around with each other a lot: I ruffle her hair, she teases me about my
parking. She’s quick and witty, full of one-liners, always the first to pull me up on something funny I’ve said without meaning to. Over the years, but especially in the six months between the divorce and Mum meeting Kevin, we’ve become more like friends.

So it’s only really now that I realise I can still be just as scared of upsetting her, of making her angry, as I was when I was nine and I
broke the dining room window with a football.

In the kitchen, I pulled out the stool opposite hers and we both looked down at the picture of Lizzie – a school photo from Year 11 – on the front page.

‘I’m telling the truth, Mum,’ I said.

She looked at me for a long time. ‘This is really serious, Aiden. If she told you
anything
–’

‘Mum, I swear she didn’t. She wouldn’t. We aren’t friends
any more.’

She sighed and looked at the picture again. We both did. After a while, she got up and started taking things out of the fridge for dinner.

‘I’m going to get ready for training,’ I said, and just as I got to the door, Mum spoke.

‘I keep thinking about the two of you on stage.’ She reached for an onion and started chopping; the last four words were almost lost under the tapping
of the knife. ‘You were good together.’

That’s what I keep thinking now. Things I should have done, things I wish I’d done. How I wish that Lizzie and I were still good together, how I wish we were still close enough for her to trust me, to tell me her secrets. To tell me where she was going, to tell me how I could follow her.

I pull up in the deserted car park of the training ground, the
sky already dark. Hefting my kit bag off the back seat, I try to switch off thoughts of Lizzie, try to get my head in the game. For probably the first time ever in my life, it doesn’t work.

It starts to drizzle as soon as we’re all out on the pitch, the floodlights trapping swarms of tiny droplets in their beams. Doug sets us off running laps, moving us quickly through our warm-up as our shirts
get slowly sodden. The balls make hushing noises as we pass them over the slick grass, and I’m glad of the silence, glad of having one focus, just one thing to think about and nothing else. The stands are in shadow, seats clapped closed.

Halfway through, Doug tosses out coloured bibs and splits us into teams to play five-a-side. As he throws mine to me, he pauses. ‘Alright, Kendrick?’

I nod.

‘You look a bit peaky. That better not be a hangover.’

Farid Jarrar, one of the other centre-forwards, elbows me as Doug turns away. ‘Bet it is.’

I shake my head. ‘Nah.’

Farid claps his hand to his head. ‘Aw, mate, I should’ve thought. You’re mates with that Lizzie girl, aren’t you?’

Farid isn’t from Aggers; he goes to school in Norwich. All he knows about Lizzie is what he’s seen on
the news. He’s a nice guy – probably one of the people I like best on the squad – but I really don’t feel like talking to him right now. So I shrug. ‘Sort of. Not really.’

He frowns. ‘She came to see us, though, right? Last Christmas, that charity match down by you? Thought I recognised her.’

‘Maybe. Can’t remember, mate.’ I pick up the ball at my feet, speckled with grass and mud, and pass
it to him, harder than I mean to. He catches it against his chest with a thud. ‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘I’m freezing here.’

I do remember. I remember her, front row of the stands, cheeks pink, a pale blue beanie pulled down over her hair. Taking off her mittens to clap, cupping her hands round her mouth to cheer.

But it’s only later, on the drive home, the mud drying chalky on my legs, that I
remember something else about that day. Something she said to me, after the match, her breath warm against my frozen cheek. ‘Thanks for inviting me. I like to see you play.’

And then she leaned in closer, hat in her hand, and she whispered, ‘It makes me want to play with you.’

I
SAW THE
news, Autumn writes, when I’m just out of the shower, my microwaved dinner in front of me.

But after my interview today, the note in its plastic bag, I just want to put space between Lizzie and me.

Casual, like I didn’t really know Lizzie. But hey, that’s how it feels now, isn’t it?

An alarm bell rings. Deacon: that’s the first time she’s mentioned him.

Maybe I should feel relieved, but the fact she’s brought Deacon up at all has got me suspicious again. Like she’s
trying
to get me to slag him off. Trying to get me to badmouth him so she can report back, maybe? But then
what do I care, anyway? It’s not exactly like he’d be surprised that I only had bad things to say about him.

I settle for:

She doesn’t reply straight away and after a while, I look back at the messages. Deacon posting about Lizzie?

A sensible voice in my head tells me not to ask. But it’s pretty small, and easy to ignore – as the sensible voices in
my head usually are – so I ask anyway.

Okay, now I really
am
suspicious. Why is she asking me about that?

I look at her profile picture in the corner of the screen. She’s changed it today, to one of her sitting in a deckchair in a garden somewhere, a copy of
Catcher in the Rye
in her lap. It’s a great book, one of my favourites. She’s smiling up at the camera, or the person behind it, and it’s a wide, genuine
smile, like they’ve just told a joke and she’s about to start laughing. It’s the kind of smile that makes you want to smile back.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, and she’s just being nice, just interested. It’s stupid to think that Deacon would be interested enough in me to ask some girl who used to go to our school to stalk me. Right?

I still change the subject, though. Just to be on the safe
side.

I feel myself relaxing again. She’s only making conversation, like normal people do. Some people
are
just friendly. Not everyone has another motive.

And, okay, yeah – maybe, when I read the conversation
back, it does feel a bit like she might be flirting with me. And maybe that does feel kind of nice, after everything. Is that so bad?

Yeah. Studying. Not something I’ve been doing
a lot of lately.

But she doesn’t come back. I sit and watch the conversation window but it goes to idle, and then to offline. And even though she’s a random girl I don’t really know, I’ve missed
conversations like this; just talking for the fun of talking, getting to know someone. And so, when Autumn doesn’t come back, I do the next best thing, and I go back to a conversation from the past.

O
N
T
UESDAY MORNING
I’m leaving the gym, still wet from the shower, when my phone rings; a number I don’t recognise. I’ve got five minutes before first period starts so I answer it jogging through the car park to chuck my kit bag in my boot.

‘Hello?’

‘Aiden, it’s Cheska.’

I pause, the boot lid halfway up.

‘Hi,’ I say slowly. Cautiously.

‘Can we meet today?’ She sounds so casual, so
relaxed, so in charge. Like I’m an employee of hers.

‘Erm…’ I look around the car park, and then into the boot. ‘Today’s not great,’ I say decisively. I do
not
feel like seeing Cheska Summersall today. I heave my bag into the boot.

‘Please, Aiden.’ She drops a little of the casual cheer in her voice, does a reasonable job of sounding a bit sadder. ‘I really need to speak to you.’

I look
up at the sky. I don’t say anything.

‘Please,’ she says again, capitalising on my silence. ‘Please. If you won’t do it for me, do it for Lizzie.’

I sigh. I know she’s playing me. But…

‘Fine.’ I say. ‘I’m going into town at lunchtime. You can meet me then.’

‘Great,’ she says. ‘Wherever you want. Thank you.’

I hang up. And when I slam the boot shut, I slam it just that extra bit harder.

I meet her outside Waitrose in town, after I’ve picked up some dry-cleaning for Mum and grabbed myself some lunch. She’s dressed in the hoody again, with a pair of jeans and towering high heels. I guess that’s what counts as dressed down for her, but it looks too thought-through, too much like a costume. Like she stood in front of her wardrobe this morning and thought
What would a person who feels
sad wear?
I want to tell her that she’s got the shoes wrong.

‘Has something happened?’ I ask instead, because I don’t feel much like making small-talk.

‘Not exactly.’ She glances around. ‘Here, come this way.’

There’s a war memorial in the middle of the road, the sides carved into sort of sheltered seats. Cheska leads me over to one and when we sit down, we’re out of sight of most of the
street.

‘I don’t have much time,’ I tell her, checking my watch. I want to try and find Marnie before lunch is finished. I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days and I’m worried about her, especially after the news about Lizzie’s clothes.

When I glance back at Cheska, she’s smiling. ‘You don’t like me much, do you?’ she says.

‘Not really.’

‘You don’t like the show.’

‘No.’

‘You
think I should keep my personal life private and not use it to get on TV.’

It’s so bang on that I’m shocked. I may as well be honest. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Did you ever think that maybe someone watching the show might come forward with information? That it might stop people from forgetting about Lizzie?’

I don’t reply. There
is
a kind of twisted logic to that, I guess.

‘Aiden, 300,000 people
follow me on Twitter, and that number gets bigger every day. That’s 300,000 people who see everything I write about Lizzie, who’ll be looking out for her. That can’t be a bad thing, can it?’

‘I guess not,’ I say, even though I can feel her leading me somewhere and I don’t like it.

‘I’m glad you think so,’ she says, ‘because that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.’

There’s something
about the way she’s talking that isn’t right. It’s posher than her usual fake-dumb twang, and she’s speaking carefully, like she’s trying to get it right, even though she’s trying to sound casual. It’s like… I don’t know –

‘You want to help find Lizzie, right?’ she asks, leaning a bit closer to me.

‘Of course –’

‘Do you know that Sunday’s show had the second highest audience share? That’s
of
all
the channels. That’s huge!’

‘Okay…’ I still don’t see where she’s going with this.

‘All of those people were reminded of Lizzie. That means they went to work on Monday with her story fresh in their minds.’

Suddenly I realise what’s wrong. These words aren’t hers. It’s like someone’s feeding her lines. Like someone’s given her a script.

‘So people know Lizzie has a family who love
her waiting for her at home. Don’t you think it would be even better if they could see she had a boyfriend who loves her, too?’

I jerk round to stare at her. ‘Cheska, I’m
not
–’

She waves the rest of the sentence away. ‘
I
know you’re not her boyfriend. But you sort of were once, right? And what does it matter, really? It’s constructed reality. You know, like real life
made better
.’

I’m too
disgusted to even reply.

‘Look,’ she says, ‘you wouldn’t have to do much. Just a scene, maybe two – me and you, talking like we are now. We’d just talk about Lizzie and how worried we are. And then she might see –’

I jump up. ‘She might see us talking about her on a TV show she hated! And you know what, she hated you, too, Cheska. She hated you, and she hated me, and she would really,
really
hate all of this –’

It’s at this point that I look up and see the camera crew setting up on the other side of the road. The producer is back with her clipboard, and all of them are watching us like we’re animals at the zoo.

‘
What
the –’

‘Aiden.’ Cheska’s voice is still calm but I can see she’s starting to get twitchy. ‘It wouldn’t take very long. It would help, honestly.’

I look from her
to the crew and back again.
Would
it help? Is there any chance that Lizzie might be watching? And what would she think if she saw me?

Cheska stands up next to me. ‘They’d pay you,’ she whispers.

‘Go to hell, Cheska,’ I say, and I walk away. As I pass the crew they all goggle at me, like they can’t believe what they’re seeing. The producer scowls down at her clipboard and starts scratching
something out with her pen. I’m almost out of earshot when I hear one of her assistants say plaintively, ‘But she
promised
.’

‘It’s fine,’ the producer says. ‘We’ll do a scene with Aimee instead.’

I feel a vicious stab of satisfaction that I’ve just cost Cheska airtime, but it’s only temporary. My bad mood lasts the rest of the day.