Follow Me Back

by Nicci Cloke

  ‘I don’t know. Her answers are… They don’t exactly –’ I don’t know how to explain what they are. What they mean to me.

  King’s Lyme is the second to last stop on the train, so by the time we’re almost there, the train is much emptier, the two seats beside us vacated. Just as the train begins to slow, Scobie glances up from the screen.

  ‘“Do you love me?” You wrote that?’

  Heat shoots up my face. ‘No! I didn’t even know she had the stupid page until Marnie showed me.’

  He looks at it again and shrugs. ‘Could’ve been anyone, I guess. Loads of people thought something was going on with you two. Probably Deacon or Kieron. Or Lauren. That’s the kind of thing girls do on here, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ I say, irritated. ‘It’s the other questions that’re weird. Her answers.’

  He nods slowly, scrolling back and forth through them.

  ‘You think they’re about you, don’t you?’

  I bite my lip. ‘Some of them… seem close to home.’ I glance at him. ‘Do you?’

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe. But I don’t see how that helps us. We already know you were a dick to her.’

  The train pulls into the platform before I can reply.

  AS I SPEED out of King’s Lyme and onto the dual carriageway, Scobie checks the Facebook page we made to see if anyone else has posted pictures of Lizzie. The car whines as I move up through the gears, and that’s the only sound we hear because Scobie and I have fallen back into a cold silence. It’s weird; we keep forgetting, keep slipping into our old, comfortable roles. And then we remember. We remember the secrets we’ve kept from each other, the other selves we’ve hidden. And I’m tired. Tired of being all these things. Footballer. Actor. Student. Liar. Boyfriend; friend. I’ve built myself too many identities and now they’re imploding.

  The police are at my house. The fear that thought strikes in me feels small and faraway, like it belongs to someone else. I knew this moment would come; I feel something that’s almost like relief.

  ‘What do you think they want?’ Scobie asks, reading my mind in the casual way he does, not even looking up from his phone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, taking the exit for Abbots Grey, a winding country lane that takes us abruptly away from the grey strip of dual carriageway and into gold and green fields, the light quickly fading. But that isn’t true.

  Scobie looks up at me, just as we make it to the Welcome sign at the entrance to the town. The last dull rays of daylight flash across the lens of his glasses, hiding his eyes.

  ‘What if they’ve found her?’ he says.

  We pull up outside my house and there’s the panda car, right outside. It looks so weird, so out of place among the landscaped gardens, the sleek cars and 4x4s, their muted colours. The police car looks like a cartoon, like a picture out of a comic that someone’s cut out and stuck onto an estate agent’s brochure. When we get out of my car, the neighbourhood seems quiet. So quiet. Too quiet.

  What if they’ve found her?

  I get out my keys and open the front door and there’s a moment’s stillness, a moment’s silence before the kitchen door opens. My mum comes out, looking terrified, and behind her, Hunter and Mahama. Mahama’s face is serious, her mouth a straight line. But Hunter is smiling. It’s a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  ‘Aiden,’ he says, as if we’re old friends. ‘Where have you been?’

  SCOBIE

  ‘YOU’RE GOING TO have to wait outside,’ the male officer, a big guy with a blondish beard and tired, baggy eyes that are a weird shade of grey, says to me. I decide to take him literally, and I sit on the stairs, right outside the closed living room door. Kevin Cooper might have expensive furniture but his doors are thin as anything; I can hear every word they’re saying.

  ‘Do you know why we’re here, Aiden?’ the female officer asks, her voice kind, inviting.

  Aiden doesn’t answer and in his not answering, I hear his fear. I know what he’s thinking. Maybe I’m not the only one who knows about him and Lizzie and the last day of exams. Or the night of the prom.

  ‘We’ve had a report of an incident today at school. Does that ring any bells?’ The other officer doesn’t have a kind voice. He sounds the opposite of inviting. Incident?

  ‘Look at his face,’ Aiden’s mum says. ‘He’s clearly the victim here.’

  Oh, his face. I’ve kind of gotten used to it already.

  ‘That might be the case,’ the man says, ‘but that isn’t the report we have. We have a complaint from the other party involved.’

  ‘Deacon?’ Finally, Aiden speaks up. ‘Deacon called you. That –’

  ‘They have a long-standing, erm, disagreement,’ his mum says, cutting over him. ‘It’s just schoolboy stuff.’

  Having seen the results of at least one of these ‘disagreements’, I feel this to be something of an understatement.

  ‘The fight is a matter for the school in the first instance,’ the woman says, ‘unless Mr Honeycutt decides to move forward and press charges. The school will want to help you all avoid that course of action.’

  ‘Having said that,’ the man says, ‘we felt it important to look into this “disagreement” –’ he says it in an exaggerated way, like he’s making air quotes with his fingers – ‘and it’s brought up some interesting things, Aiden. Very interesting.’

  Aiden has gone very quiet again.

  ‘Do you want to tell us what happened on the night of your Year 11 Leavers’ Ball?’

  I can hear his heart sink from here.

  ‘Aiden?’ his mum prompts, after an uncomfortably long silence.

  ‘We got in a bit of a fight,’ he says slowly.

  ‘A bit of a fight?’ The officer sounds kind of mocking now. ‘Kind of a light way to describe something which landed you both in hospital, don’t you think?’

  So they’re still talking about Deacon. Not about Lizzie. Not yet.

  ‘What was the fight about, Aiden?’ the woman asks.

  ‘He – erm… he thought I was flirting with his girlfriend.’

  ‘That’s –’ I hear a few pages of a notebook being flicked through. ‘Lauren Choosken.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The same Lauren who just got a part on Spoilt in the Suburbs, right?’ the male officer chimes in.

  ‘Yeah.’ You can tell the word really sticks in Aiden’s throat.

  ‘The same show as Lizzie’s sister, right?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the one.’

  ‘Small town,’ the officer says, in a casual voice that’s meant to imply he doesn’t mean it casually. There’s the sound of more pages being shuffled, but even without seeing him I feel that the chances he’s actually reading from them at this point are relatively slim. ‘Not the first time you’ve found yourself in this kind of situation, is it, Aiden?’

  There’s another awkwardly long pause. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he says eventually.

  ‘No?’ The guy seems to be really enjoying himself now. ‘You don’t know what I mean? Slipped your mind, has it? The incident at your last school? The one that got you excluded? Permanently?’

  Aiden doesn’t reply.

  ‘Let me refresh your memory,’ the officer says. He’s the one doing all the talking now. ‘On the evening of June 12th, 2013, you were involved in an altercation with a fellow student, during which you hit him so hard that you dislocated his jaw. You had to eventually be restrained by three fellow students, and, when questioned later, four separate witnesses described the attack as “unprovoked”. That about cover it?’

  ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’ Aiden’s mum says, trying to sound combative, tough. She doesn’t manage it. She just sounds scared. Tired.

  ‘Well, it’s just that we’ve got a boy here who clearly has a temper. We’ve got a missing girl who we’re hearing might have rejected him. Interesting, isn’t it?’

  I have to agree. It is interesting.

  ‘Ple
ase,’ Aiden says. ‘It isn’t like that.’

  There’s a moment’s silence, and then, in a voice so low I almost don’t hear it, the female officer says, ‘We know it was you, Aiden.’

  ‘This is ridic–’ Aiden’s mum starts, but the other officer interrupts. He sounds kind of tired, too.

  ‘We know you’re Hal, Aiden.’

  What?

  ‘He’s what?’ His mum says it like she hasn’t heard properly, or like she hasn’t understood, but it clicks before they can reply, because the next thing she says is almost a whisper. ‘Aiden?’

  But Aiden doesn’t say anything. I lean closer, because surely he is going to say something. It’s totally illogical for him to be Hal.

  Finally, he does speak.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and his voice is very small.

  What?

  ‘Oh my god,’ his mum says, but already I’m clicking through everything in my mind. The distracted look on his face all the time; the look that, now I think about it, is actually a lot like guilt. The way he’s been careful to keep suggesting that Lizzie going missing is nothing to do with the Hal account, that we need to keep looking for other options.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Aiden says, sounding a bit like he’s going to cry. But before anyone can actually say what they’re thinking, the front door opens behind me.

  ‘What’s going on in here?’ Aiden’s stepdad is wearing a suit and Converse, like he always does. He takes one look at me, sitting on the step, and then at the closed door, and then he strides towards it, his face set like stone. He pulls it open, a vein pulsing at his temple.

  ‘Can I help you, officers?’ he asks, and he does manage to sound combative. And polite at the same time, which is kind of impressive.

  ‘Just having a chat with Aiden here,’ the officer says, not sounding concerned.

  ‘In what capacity?’ Kevin leans casually against the doorframe but his voice is tight and tense now. ‘Because, as you’re well aware, you’re aren’t able to conduct an interview without our legal representative present.’

  ‘Well, Mr Cooper, I suggest you get in touch with your chosen representative,’ the officer says, and there’s a soft slap as he closes his notebook, and the fancy white sofa squeaks as he gets up. ‘Because Aiden here will be accompanying us to the station.’

  ‘No,’ Aiden says, and his mum starts crying.

  I expect Kevin to argue, or to flat-out refuse to let them take Aiden, but instead he just looks at the two officers and then at Aiden, and all he says is, ‘You don’t need to cuff him. At least give him that.’

  ‘Kevin –’ Aiden starts, but Kevin puts up a hand to stop him.

  ‘Don’t say anything. Just go with them, Aiden. I’m right behind you.’

  Aiden looks at me as they lead him past. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, but I don’t reply.

  WE SIT IN the lobby of the police station for what seems like days but is in fact two hours and fifty-seven minutes. Aiden’s mum cries almost continuously and this makes me feel uncomfortable.

  ‘How could he?’ she asks me, but that’s a question I’d like to ask him myself. ‘I don’t understand,’ she says, but I think I do. I do understand, and it turns my stomach.

  Aiden’s stepdad never stops moving. He paces back and forth, making phone calls, sending messages, which is probably in my best interest because I get the impression he’s not very keen on me being here. The fancy lawyer he called in the car on the way here turned up about thirty seconds after we did and was ushered in by the officer on duty. After the first hour of waiting, she comes out and speaks to Kevin in a whisper so we can’t hear. About seventeen minutes after that, the female police officer, who’s now been introduced as DS Mahama, comes and gets Kevin and they disappear back into the interview suite. I straighten up. Something has happened. Something is happening.

  ‘He’s my son,’ Aiden’s mum, totally oblivious, says to me, after blowing her nose for the thirteenth time since we arrived. ‘I don’t understand why he’d do that to her.’

  ‘He got expelled,’ I say. Seeing as we don’t actually know yet what it is he has or hasn’t done to Lizzie, I decide to get answers on something that is certain.

  She looks at me and her eyes narrow. ‘That’s totally irrelevant.’

  ‘The police don’t think so.’ I don’t either. All this time, I thought I knew all of Aiden’s secrets. And now it turns out that prom night was just one of his many lies. I feel like an idiot for even starting to feel sorry for him.

  ‘He’s a good boy. He’s your friend,’ she says in a little voice. ‘He wouldn’t hurt her.’

  I think about this for a while, the clock ticking, the policeman behind the desk flicking through a magazine. I think of the way Aiden looked when he lost his temper with Lauren Choosken this morning. I think of the way Deacon Honeycutt limped past me in town, a week after the prom.

  It’s not just that. I keep remembering the night last week when he showed up at my house, babbling about Marnie Daniels and the messages they’d found. How he’d made me sit down and try to figure out who was behind the Hal profile. In the car on the way here, I wondered why he’d do that if it was him all along.

  But now I see. It wasn’t because he wanted to know who was behind the profile; it was because he wanted to know who else could figure it out, how easy it would be to trace it back to him. And when he saw how easy it was for me to start to unpick it, he deleted the whole thing.

  I’ve underestimated Aiden this whole time, and that does not make me happy.

  After another thirty-three minutes the door opens and Aiden’s mum jumps up like she’s been electrocuted. The two police officers come out, followed by Kevin; none of them are speaking. Kevin has a grim look and a pale sheen of sweat on his face, but when he sees us standing there, he nods.

  And then he stands aside, and lets Aiden past him.

  ‘Aiden,’ his mum says, and she sounds half relieved, half upset. I don’t say anything, because that’s much easier.

  ‘He isn’t being charged,’ Kevin says, and a kind of smugness sneaks into his voice, like he’s just won a new business contract. ‘He has a solid alibi.’ He turns to the officers as he says that part, as if he’s underlining it in their thoughts, too.

  ‘He isn’t being charged yet,’ the officer I now know is DCI Hunter says, stamping out that smugness. ‘We’ll be requiring your continuing assistance with our investigations, Aiden. There are still a lot of questions we need to ask you, so don’t go anywhere. And there’s the matter of the assault at the school this morning. We’ll be in touch if the victim decides to press charges.’

  ‘He is not a victim,’ Aiden hisses, but Kevin holds up a hand and he falls instantly silent.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Cooper,’ DS Mahama says. ‘Mrs Cooper.’ She nods to me as they turn and head back into the station, while Kevin ushers us quickly out into the car park.

  ‘But the profile?’ Aiden’s mum is saying, flapping at her face with a tissue. ‘The messages? The guy she was talking to – Hal? Was it Hal? Was that you? Aiden, did you do that?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter now,’ Kevin says, unlocking the car and holding the door open for her. ‘He made a mistake; we’ll stick by him.’

  ‘A mistake?’

  I scramble round to the other side of the car and slide into the back seat so I can hear the rest of what she has to say. Nobody pays me any attention. Aiden sits beside me, silent, his mouth set in a straight line. ‘He tricked her, that’s what they were saying, wasn’t it? He pretended to be this Hal person, he talked to her.’ His mum won’t let it drop.

  Kevin starts the engine and reverses, his hand on the back of her headrest as he cranes round to check through the rear windscreen. The tyres screech.

  ‘Aiden, why would you do something like that?’ she says in a whisper.

  He looks down at his hands. ‘I don’t know.’

  But he does. And so do I. Lizzie rejected him, and he couldn’t accep
t it.

  ‘I just don’t understand,’ she says again. ‘I don’t understand how you could do that to someone. Why you’d do that to your friend.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kevin says, swiping at the back of his neck with his hand. ‘The point is, he isn’t responsible for her going missing. They can’t blame him for that.’

  ‘But the papers, the news – they all say she went to meet someone she’d been talking to online.’

  This is an excellent point. If Lizzie didn’t go to meet ‘Hal’, where did she go?

  ‘Kate, leave it,’ Kevin says, his voice suddenly hard. ‘Aiden feels bad enough about deceiving Lizzie,’ he adds, glancing at her.

  I look sideways at Aiden. His face is totally blank. He doesn’t look like he feels bad enough to me.

  ‘And the fight,’ his mum says. Apparently she has no intention of leaving it. She’s not crying any more, and she’s starting to sound pretty angry. This I feel more comfortable with. ‘You promised, Aiden. You promised not again.’

  Kevin indicates and turns off the main road. We’re almost back at their house. ‘I’ll sort it,’ he says, brushing at the back of his neck again. ‘I’ll give Rick Honeycutt a call. There’s no need for this to go any further. We can sort it out without the police being involved, same as the last time.’

  Aiden lets out a snorty sort of breath and looks out of the window as we drive slowly down their long, quiet street.

  ‘The police are involved,’ Kate says. ‘It’s happening again. After everything we went through last time.’ Oh. The tears are back.

  Kevin swings the car into their curved drive and kills the engine. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he says. ‘We’ll talk to Deacon. We’ll make it right, won’t we, Aiden?’

  But Aiden doesn’t answer, because he’s already scrambling out of the car, his own car keys in hand.

  ‘Aiden, where are you going?’ Kevin yells, but Aiden’s halfway down the drive, the headlights on his car flashing as he clicks the button to unlock it.

  Seeing as I’ve got nowhere else to be, I follow him.