Follow Me Back

by Nicci Cloke

  ‘It’s Cooper,’ she reminds him, in a not very friendly voice. She shakes his hand quickly and sits down, leaving him to make his way awkwardly back to his seat.

  ‘And this is DS Mahama, as you’ll remember, Aiden.’

  ‘Good to see you again, Aiden,’ Mahama says, watching me as I sit too.

  ‘We’re a little confused as to why you’re seeing him again,’ Mum says, pulling her chair a bit closer to the desk.

  ‘We’re asking many students for second interviews,’ Mahama says. ‘It’s not something to worry about.’

  ‘It’s not an interview,’ Hunter says, shooting Mahama a look I can’t read. ‘It’s an informal conversation. A chat. Not something to worry about.’ The way he says it is different to the way Mahama did. His way implies a silent Yet after it. ‘We’ve been learning new things about Lizzie. We’re wondering if you can help us with that.’

  I am very aware of my heart drumming against my ribs. But the fact that Mum is next to me gives me some confidence.

  ‘I’m learning stuff too,’ I say. ‘So I don’t know how I’ll be able to help. I don’t think I knew Lizzie very well after all.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Hunter looks down at a file in front of him. ‘You said before that you and Lizzie had a falling out at the beginning of the summer.’

  Mum is straight in there. ‘Did you say that?’

  I shake my head. ‘We just didn’t really talk much after that. It was summer.’

  ‘Right, fine, okay. Did you hear anything about what she might have been up to during the summer?’ Hunter slides a file closer to him but doesn’t open it.

  ‘No.’ I glance at Mum. ‘Well, not until recently.’

  ‘And what did you hear recently?’ Mahama asks.

  I look from her to Hunter and back again. ‘People have been saying she… started seeing guys. More than usual.’

  Hunter nods, his mouth turned down. ‘Mmm. We’ve been hearing that too. Do you think it’s true?’

  I shrug. ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Does that sound like something Lizzie would do?’

  ‘No.’ I look down at my hands. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Any idea who these “guys” could be?’

  I shake my head. The thought makes me feel sick.

  ‘You think they were local guys, or people she met online?’ Mahama asks.

  ‘He just said he doesn’t know,’ Mum says, although a little of the sharpness has gone out of her voice. She’s obviously decided I’m not in any immediate danger of being arrested.

  ‘What do you know about Lizzie’s activities online?’ Hunter asks, even though I haven’t answered Mahama’s question yet.

  My palms begin to sweat. ‘Nothing. I mean, not much. Just what everyone’s been saying.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know anything about a Hal Paterson?’

  The name makes me want to throw up. ‘I think I’ve heard that name. I think people are saying it’s someone she met on Facebook?’

  Hunter cocks his head, one eyebrow raised. He almost looks as if he’s about to smile.

  ‘We know you’ve been accessing Lizzie’s Facebook, Aiden. Marnie told us.’

  My heart starts to really thud. My mouth has become instantly, impossibly dry. ‘We just wanted to help,’ I say, swallowing a couple of times.

  ‘What you consider “helping”, we consider tampering with evidence.’

  ‘We didn’t delete anything,’ I say quickly, panicky. ‘I swear. We just looked.’

  ‘And what did you see?’ Hunter asks. His voice is cold, sarcastic. Mahama looks earnestly at me, waiting for my answer.

  ‘She was talking a lot to that guy on there, but the profile’s a fake,’ I say carefully.

  ‘Which is quite concerning, given that we believe Lizzie set out to meet him, isn’t it?’ Hunter’s voice is low, the words sinking across the room.

  ‘She doesn’t say she’s going to meet him,’ I say, but my voice sounds small and hopelessly hopeful.

  ‘Mmm,’ Hunter says, noncommittally. ‘Aiden, I want to show you something we found in Lizzie’s locker.’ He lifts out a clear plastic bag from underneath the desk and puts it on the table in front of me. ‘Can you tell me what that is?’

  I can. I recognise it well.

  ‘It’s a note from me.’

  ‘Can you read the note for us?’

  My voice sounds hollow as I read the words. ‘Don’t do this. Talk to me.’

  I hear Mum draw in her breath sharply beside me.

  Hunter looks at me over his knuckles, elbows propped on the table again. ‘Don’t do what, Aiden? What was Lizzie doing?’

  There’s a thudding in my ears. ‘It’s not what you think – it’s old, the note’s old. It’s from weeks ago.’

  ‘It’s not what I think? What do I think?’ Hunter asks, and we look at each other across the desk. Mahama clears her throat and leans back in her chair. Mum’s hands are gripping the edge of her chair, her knuckles turning white.

  ‘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.

  LIZZIE

  WHEN 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.

  AIDEN

  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.

  her clothes

  you ok?

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

  i’m ok

  pretty grim right

  feel bad for her family

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

  yeah me too

  did you see deacon’s post about it?

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

  no

  we’re not friends on facebook

  lucky you

  he’s a dick

  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:

  yeah

  can’t say we get on the best

  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.

  what did he write?

  …

  doesnt matter

  a stupid joke

  he’s a dick

  yeah

  he is

  but you’re better at football than him, right?

  haha

  I don’t know about that

  Not to be a gossip but I heard you were signing with Norwich

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

  Not exactly

  I’ve been training with them for a couple of years now

  Wow that’s so cool

  um thanks

  So you think that’s what you’ll do?

  Maybe

  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.

  What about you, what do you want to do?

  Erm

  Nursing i think

  cool, what kind of nursing?

  I want to be a paediatric nurse

  So just hoping to get really good grades and go to college

  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?

  In London?

  Yeah there’s a really good one here

  I thought about going to one in Cambridge but if I go here I can live at home and it won’t cost so much

  Ok cool, that makes sense

  Yep

  Just got to study now!

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

  I know

  Crazy to think we’ve got a year left and that’s it

  I know

  I’m not ready to be a grown-up yet!

  Haha me neither!

  …

  Hang on, just got to go help my mum w
ith something

  brb

  k cool

  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.

  Hey

  hey

  long time no speak

  i know

  sorry

  haven’t seen you around much this week

  You ok?

  yeah

  Im just kinda sick of people talking about Cheska all the time

  trying to keep a low profile

  yeah

  people are dicks

  ignore them

  i know

  just easier to stay out of the way

  How are you?

  i’m good

  that’s good

  Hey auditions next month

  I know

  we better get good parts this time!

  or there’ll be trouble…

  haha

  we can start a protest

  don’t worry, Hussy loves you

  not as much as she loves you

  Hey that scene you guys did last week was really good

  you think so?

  ahh thanks

  did you do your english homework yet?

  the 12th Night thing? Shit no

  what was the question again?

  erm

  …

  …

  “Disguises and changes of clothing are central to the plot of Twelfth Night. Which characters in the play spend time in disguise, and how is this thematically important?”

  urgh

  sounds long

  haha yeah

  I like the play though

  yeah it’s been fun

  gerber’s a really good teacher

  yep she’s alright

  right cheeky little minx

  haha!

  she’s like 60

  :p

  bless her

  lol

  you want to catch up tomorrow?