by Louise Voss
It was a shame.
But we were never meant to be. Every time I eliminate a girl, I see it as progress. One fewer possibility. Another step closer to The One.
At first light, I checked out of the hotel and went in search of a minicab. I’d been checking Katherine’s Twitter feed and Facebook page through the night, taking a little bump or two of coke to keep me awake, not that I really needed it as the adrenaline was keeping my heart pounding, even after my second orgasm. She hadn’t updated it, so I didn’t know if she had stayed over with City Boy or whether he’d chucked her out once he’d finished having his fun with her. But it didn’t matter too much.
I found a minicab office, said I wanted a cab to Herne Hill and was accompanied outside by the weary Middle Eastern driver to a heap of junk on four wheels.
‘Where in Herne Hill?’ he asked. When he got in, I held open his driver door and leaned down to him through the gap.
‘How would you like to earn a hundred pounds?’
He looked up at me with disgust.
‘No, no – not that. I’m not a fucking homo. I want you to deliver something for me.’ I showed him the slim box with the Agent Provocateur logo scripted across its pink lid. ‘This needs to go to a young lady in SE24. If she’s not in, please put it through the letter box.’
‘You pay up front,’ he said.
‘Sure, of course. Here’s the address. And if I hear it didn’t get there, I’ll be back looking for you.’ I smiled, man to man. ‘This is for a very special lady. It’s very important.’
I winked.
‘OK, no problem,’ he said. And with that, he drove off, audibly crunching into second gear as he turned the corner and disappeared.
Katherine was going to be thrilled to pieces with her gift. I just wish I could be there to see it.
Bang bang bang.
Katherine had been dreaming about her ex again – though not Clive. Funnily enough, she didn’t miss Clive at all; the early times, back when it was all so thrilling and the bed – and the carpet and the sofa and the toilets on the 22.37 out of London Bridge – drew them like magnets. Sexy magnets. She giggled in the dream, her laughter drowned out by loud banging. She pulled the pillow over her head, but the banging was insistent. Someone was knocking at the door.
She opened one eye and lifted her phone from the bedside table. Eight a.m. She’d only been asleep for ninety minutes. She’d made a sharp exit just before dawn when Fraser started pawing at her bum and asking her if she liked anal sex, and got back just as the birds were waking up in Brockwell Park.
Ordinarily, she would have ignored the banging and gone back to sleep, but she was expecting a delivery from Asos and she didn’t want to miss it. Knowing she could come straight back to bed – God bless the summer holidays – she got up, pulled on a long T-shirt and made her way to the front door.
The man on her doorstep didn’t look like a delivery man. He held up a little pink box. His eyes widened when he saw her and she realized what she must look like, with her hair sticking up like a fright wig and mascara all round her eyes.
‘It won’t fit through the letter box,’ he said.
She took it, perplexed. ‘What is it?’
‘A man asked me to deliver it to you. He said it was very important.’ He turned to go.
She scrutinized the box. Agent Provocateur. Much too expensive for her with her teacher’s wages. She’d tried to get something in the sale once but everything sold out within seconds. ‘Who’s it from?’
He shrugged. ‘He didn’t tell me his name.’
After he’d gone, she went inside and sat on the bed. She opened the box and gasped. Inside was a lovely pink-and-black slip, in a size 12, just right, and a couple of naughty little items: some black discs with little tassels, which she realized were meant for her nipples, and a small black patent-leather paddle. And beneath the slip, a special little present. A bag of coke.
She squealed with delight and grabbed her phone, finding Fraser in her contacts.
Hi Fraser – I just got your gift. Thanks so much! You naughty boy;) See you soon – if you’re lucky … xxxxxxxx
She stripped and held the slip against her. It was beautiful, but she didn’t want to make it dirty by putting it on her smelly body. The tassels looked fun, though, and after working out how to attach them, she stuck them over her nipples and admired them in the mirror, laughing. What silly things. She peeled them off and put them back into the box.
She was wide awake now – well, not wide awake. She could do with a lift. Her eyes fell on the bag of coke on the bed. It was a ridiculous hour to snort coke, but it wasn’t like she had any plans for the day. She felt like taking a couple of bumps and having a bath.
She went into the bathroom – it needed redecorating, but she couldn’t be bothered with such mundane things these days, not with Clive gone. He used to take care of all that boring stuff. She turned on the taps and sat on the closed toilet, grabbing a hand mirror, which she balanced on her lap. She shook a couple of lines out of the bag. Then shook out a little more to make two fat lines.
What a star Fraser was. Maybe she’d go back and shag him again.
9
Amy
Monday, 22 July
Amy’s phone pinged at just after nine a.m. It was a text from Gary:
My friend, Lewis, the social networking expert, said he can meet you for lunch today to give you some advise. Is that OK? x
She smiled at the spelling mistake and texted back: Sure. Thanks. Can you send me the where and when?
His reply came back immediately: His name’s Lewis Vine. He said he can meet you at Azzurro outside Waterloo at 12.30. Good luck x
She wondered briefly how she was supposed to recognize him but decided she’d figure it out when she got there. She wasn’t keen on going to meet someone she didn’t know in order to talk about Twitter, but if there was any likelihood at all that it would help her find Becky, she had to do it.
As it was, she figured out who Lewis Vine was the moment she walked into the pizza restaurant. She had been here before, with Nathan, when they had just started seeing each other. In the evenings, the upstairs area was dark and quiet, making it a favourite haunt for couples who wanted to kiss more than they wanted to eat. Gary’s friend was sitting downstairs by the entrance, a copy of Wired magazine on the table in front of him, an iPhone in his hand. He had dark brown hair that touched the collar of his expensive-looking white shirt and when she opened the door he looked up and gave her a quizzical look.
‘Lewis?’ she said.
He stood up and shook her hand formally. His grip was dry and warm, his wedding ring pressing against her finger. She guessed he was in his late thirties, but with boyish looks and a manner about him that she recognized well from working in digital media. London was heaving with men like him – Internet experts, consultants and freelancers who made a living advising others on how to do their jobs. He probably had a couple of kids at home and a wife who worked in publishing or TV. From his clothes and flashy watch, she guessed he was doing very well.
After buying a mineral water at the bar, she sat down and they exchanged small talk about the journey, the weather, the magazine he was reading, which had a photo of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, on the cover. This led naturally to the topic she had come here to discuss.
‘So, Gary told me about your sister.’ He pulled a face.
‘Yes, and he said you might be able to give me some advice about how to use social networks to find her?’
Lewis nodded eagerly. ‘Yes. The power of crowds – that’s what it’s all about. You have to get the word out there, spread it as wide as possible, so everyone is keeping an eye out for her.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She had a horrible feeling that at the end of this he was going to invoice her for his advice.
‘Have you got a recent picture of, um …’
‘Becky.’
‘Yes, sorry. Becky.’
‘I’ve got one tha
t was taken a month or so ago. Plus, I could always get one off Facebook.’
‘Good idea. It’s actually quite straightforward – the trick is that you have to create something that people want to share. It’s marketing, basically.’ His eyes shone with excitement and Amy tried not to take offence that he was talking about her finding her beloved missing sister as a marketing campaign.
He went on: ‘What job do you do, Amy?’
‘I run my own business. A website called Upcycle.com.’
‘Oh, what’s that? Sounds interesting.’
‘It’s a website for people who are interested in crafts. Women, mostly, who want a platform for selling items they’ve made, plus there’s a big community where my users exchange tips, advice, that kind of thing.’ I’m using his kind of language, she realized.
‘That’s cool,’ he said, in a slightly patronizing way. She was sure he was about to ask her how much traffic she got. But instead, he said, ‘So you probably know a lot of this stuff anyway.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t use social networking as much as everyone says I should.’
‘A familiar story. Well, like I’m saying, you need to make your appeal have some kind of “wow” factor, a hook. I see a lot of tweets about missing people but I rarely take any notice of them unless they grab my attention. Missing kids, obviously, that always makes one pause. You have to appeal to people’s basic human emotions. Women – you have to make them feel sympathy. Men … um, is Becky pretty?’
‘Very.’
‘That will make things easier. Make sure you use the best picture you can – she needs to look pretty but not tarty. The girl-next-door type, the sort you’d see advertising yoghurt rather than perfume. And your story needs a hook. Not just, “Have you seen this woman?” but something like … What’s her job?’
‘She’s a secondary-school French teacher.’
He nodded deeply. ‘Perfect. Couldn’t be much better. “My schoolteacher sister has mysteriously disappeared. Please help me find her.” You need something like that. Hey, maybe you could get some of her schoolkids involved. No, you’re right, that’s too much.’
He carried on, explaining how to go about setting up a campaign, the best time to tweet, how often she should do it. He told her that her aim needed to be to get as many people to share it or retweet it as she could, so it spread as far as possible. ‘That’s the power of social networks,’ he said. ‘If you’ve only got, I don’t know, five hundred followers, that’s not going to get you anywhere – unless a good number of them share it, and then their friends and followers share it, and it goes viral. That’s the trick. If you can get a celebrity or two to retweet it, then you’ll really be in business.’
As Lewis gave her more details, Amy scribbled notes in a pad. Every five minutes, his phone would go off and he’d apologize but answer it, leaving her sipping her water as he talked business. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful – she very much appreciated his help and it was good advice – but she wished he wouldn’t talk about Becky as if she were a product they were trying to sell.
Finally, he looked at his Rolex and said, ‘Right, I’ve got a meeting to get to. Was that helpful?’
She told him that indeed it was.
‘Give my best to Gary,’ he said, as she left, handing her his business card. ‘And if you need any more help, don’t hesitate to give me a ring. Especially if you need any help with Recycle. Hope you find your sister.’
He strode away. Recycle. She tutted. But on the way back to where her bike was parked, she paused and logged into Twitter on her phone. No harm starting now, she thought.
Boris sat on the floor of the bus, his body pressed close to Amy’s calves. Holding him on a tight leash, she put her other hand on his warm back, feeling the way that he rocked in rhythm with the motion of the bus.
Amy pulled out her iPhone and checked TweetDeck, the app on her phone that she used to check Twitter. It had only been two hours since she’d posted the first appeal for information about Becky’s whereabouts on Twitter, following Lewis’s advice, and she’d done the same on Facebook as soon as she’d got home.
‘MY SISTER BECKY COLTMAN IS MISSING – HAVE YOU SEEN HER SINCE FRI? SO WORRIED. PLS.RT’
Along with the message, she’d added a link to a gorgeous photo of Becky laughing at a party, but Amy saw that thirty-seven people had already retweeted it to their followers too, and it had had dozens of shares on Facebook so far.
She herself only had just over a thousand Twitter followers, most of them members of the crafting community. When she got home, she thought, she would send the appeal directly to some famous tweeters – Jonathan Ross, Caitlin Moran – people with many thousands of followers, just as Lewis had told her to.
Amy and Boris got out at Waterloo – it was a pain having to go to Waterloo, then go home, then back again, but she needed Boris with her now – and boarded a South West train heading out of town. Twenty-five minutes later the train pulled into St Margarets station and Amy led Boris up the steps to the street. She turned right and headed purposefully towards the park – she had already memorized the directions.
‘Very chi-chi, Boris, isn’t it?’ she said, taking in the flower shops and artisan delis.
She reached the mini-roundabout she’d seen on the map, and nerves clumped in a tight ball in her stomach – that meant that Ross’s office should be … just … here. She looked along the row of shops and at the brass plates on the doors between them. There it was: Malone Associates.
She and Boris hurried over a zebra crossing and, trying not to look anxiously around her, she wondered what time exactly Ross took Wiggins for his afternoon walk. She had assumed a vague ‘after lunch’ sort of time, but that could be completely wrong.
The park was extremely pretty – a vast sweep of lawns with the backdrop of an imposing white Palladian villa. She looked around. The only dogs she could see nearby were a fat placid black Labrador, and an excitable Lakeland terrier racing after sticks.
Boris whined and strained at the lead, so she jogged with him along the path. The Lakeland terrier ran up to them and sniffed Boris, then its owner, a kind-looking ruddy-faced man in a Barbour, smiled apologetically at Amy. Then, in a flash of black and white, a cocker spaniel streaked over and joined in. Amy’s heart jumped. There was no sign of his owner. He was a nice dog, glossy and enthusiastic, smiling gleefully in the way that spaniels did. He and the Lakeland ran in delighted circles for a few minutes, and Amy and the ruddy-faced man stood watching, like parents at the school gates.
‘Haven’t seen him before,’ said the man, nodding down at Boris. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Boris,’ Amy said. ‘No, we don’t live here – we’re just, um, visiting. So you know all the regulars, do you?’
‘You get to know their names, yes,’ the man said, turning his foot over to rub a small clod of mud off the side of his shoe. He sounded extraordinarily posh. ‘That’s Wiggins.’
Amy tried to contain her excitement.
‘Oh, and there’s his owner,’ said the man, pointing with a chubby finger towards the path. Amy followed his gaze.
The man on the path looked absolutely nothing like his photograph on CupidsWeb. Amy thought she’d never have recognized him had it not been for the help of the ruddy-faced man. Ross’s profile had said he was five foot eleven, but this man was no more than five foot eight. His web presence – photos on both his own website and CupidsWeb – had depicted him looking healthy, clean-shaven and well coiffed, but the person walking towards her now was anything but. He was a physical wreck – greyish stubble, bowed shoulders flecked with dandruff, vast puffy bags under his eyes.
‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ Ruddy-Faced Man called out to him, and he nodded back. ‘Right, must get on with it. Come here, Jimi! After Jimi Hendrix,’ he explained to Amy as the terrier bounded over. ‘Nice to have met you.’ He smiled over his shoulder as he headed towards the park gates.
Ross ignored Amy, even though they were onl
y standing a few feet apart. Blimey, she thought, he doesn’t look as if he could motivate anyone. She wandered as casually as she could up to him, grateful to the ruddy-faced man for having effected an introduction
‘So, Wiggins is yours, is he? That man over there just told me his name. He’s lovely. Have you had him long?’
Ross met her gaze, and for the first time she recognized him from his photos. ‘Two years,’ he said, appearing slightly more animated. ‘What’s yours called?’ He reached down and gave Boris a half-hearted pat.
‘This is Boris. He’s a rescue dog – been with me for four years now.’ She pretended to do a double-take. ‘Oh, my goodness, I’m sure I know you from somewhere!’
Ross pushed back his shoulders and looked pleased. ‘Have you been to one of my talks?’
Amy pretended to consider. ‘I don’t think it’s that … Forgive me if I’m wrong, but are you by any chance on CupidsWeb?’
Ross blinked at her. ‘Er, yes, I am, actually.’
Amy clicked her fingers. ‘That’s it! So am I. I remember now – I was looking at your profile yesterday. You’re a writer, aren’t you? What a weird coincidence! I don’t even live around here, I was just staying with an old schoolfriend last night who lives up the road.’ The words gushed out and she wondered if he could tell how nervous she felt – it sounded so implausible. She had to keep reminding herself that this man could have something to do with Becky’s disappearance. He might be dangerous.
Ross looked properly at her and held out his hand for Amy to shake.
‘I’m Amy,’ she said, taking his hand.
‘Ross. Very nice to meet you, Amy, and yes – what a coincidence. I’m not a writer as such, although I’ve written a book on self-help techniques. I’m a motivational speaker.’
‘Oh, yes, that was it, sorry. I remembered something about a book.’ She lowered her eyelashes and pretended to look coy. Her heart pounded and she felt a fluttering sensation in her stomach. She was aware that if how she felt was visible, Ross would mistake her nervousness for desire.
