“Listen.” His voice is gentle. “If you like each other, it’ll all be OK in the end.”
And therein lies the problem. Because I’m not sure if Jackdoeslike me anymore. I showed a side of myself that I rarely—with the exceptionof Mum—allow anyone to see. I ruined it, just by showing him a glimpse of myself.
Which is where Alice comes in. I tried every trick that I knew with Jack, but when the chips were down, it wasn’t enough. I was audacious and loud, bold and brash, flirtatious. I was Marcie. But it has become ever clearer that Marcie is not what he wants. What he wants is harder for me to emulate. What he wants is Alice.
“These things have a way of working themselves out. If he’s not talking to you, is there someone you could reach out to, to check he’s all right?” Mick says, patting me on the shoulder again, and—though his nails are rimmed with dirt—his words spark against something I hadn’t previously thought of. Something that ignites a tiny nugget of hope in my chest. “Why don’t you go home?” Mick continues. “Honestly, you’re no use to me today. Offending all my best customers.”
I nod gratefully, give him a watery smile that I hope does not belie my mounting excitement. Going home is exactly what I need right now.
I sanitize as soon as I reach the street, then march home. My tears dry instantly. I don’t detour past Jack’s. There’s only so much staring at the wrong side of a curtain one can do.
I let myself into Mum’s ten minutes later and head straight upstairs. She’s not home again. That’ll be the third time this week, but I don’t have the time to dwell on her whereabouts. Because, to align myself with Alice, I will need to do more than simply comb the internet for mention of her. I need to speak to someone who actually knew her.
I need to speak to Jack’s mother.
There are a few messages waiting for Sally when I log in to Facebook, but I ignore them and go straight to Jack’s profile. I click on his friend list, type the name Reynolds into the search bar. There are a few, likely cousins, but only one woman of the right age with the right sort ofstature. Catherine.
Sally won’t work for these purposes, so I log out and use Hollyinstead. I don’t like using Holly if I can help it. She doesn’t have quite the same level of benign inoffensiveness as Sally, whose achingly boring life can dupe even the most suspicious of stalkees. But she’s too old for this, for what I need her for. So Holly it is.
Holly is a little zanier. She’s young and has several piercings, and a tattoo that travels up one side of her neck. She only came into the café once, and looked as though she’d stumbled in by accident. No doubt she’d expected something a little cooler, but—once inside—she ordered a coffee out of politeness and took a seat by the window.
In her profile picture, she’s staring out of it, a wistful expression on her face. Like she wishes she hadn’t come into this particular shithole. She’s looking wonderfully arty; all credit to the photographer, of course. She was easy to create a backstory for: all poetry and tortured expression. A bit like Billy, actually. She’s perfect for the task at hand.
I type Catherine’s name into Facebook, add her as a friend, then compose my message.
Hi Catherine, I hope you’re well. I think we met a few years ago at Jack and Alice’s wedding (I was a good friend of Alice’s—at school with her). I don’t want to trouble Jack with this, but me and a few old friends were hoping to pull something together of Alice to remember her by. Like a sort of digital photobook. I don’t suppose you have anything you could share? Any memories? Voice notes? Photos/videos? Anything like that? We’ll send you a copy, too, of course, when it’s ready. Thanks so much!
Perfect. Casual. Believable. Now I wait. It’s going to be a tough one.
That done, I log back in to Sally’s profile. There’s a message from Tilly, rambling on about something or other. Some issue she’s got with her husband, who is fifteen years older than her. Tilly is Sally’s closest friend. A best friend adds to the veracity of Sally’s profile, and she canalways rely on Tilly to step up to the mark, commenting on each new post with an abundance of exclamation marks, Liking every status update, sometimes posting something funny to Sally’s timeline. Having someonerealas a friend relieves the pressure on me to constantly generate believable content.
I keep Tilly sweet by listening to her insensitive complaints about her husband, though frankly it sounds as though she has it good. He’s older than her, sure, and she does like to go into detail about his old-fashioned habits in the bedroom, but he sounds committed. Like he’s a good father to their two children. Which, from experience, is not always a given.
She’s a good distraction, though, so—to keep my mind off waiting for Catherine’s response—I tap out a sympathetic reply and watch as those three dots bounce along the bottom of the screen.
Twenty-one
Downstairs, the doorclicks. Mum’s home. I go out to meet her, encouraged by my message to Catherine. Usually, we avoid unnecessary interactions as though the other is contagious, but I’m in a better mood now and I can’t deny Mum’s recent absences have spiked my curiosity.
She doesn’t see me instantly. I stand at the top of the stairs, watching her. She’s unwinding her scarf from round her neck in the hallway. It’s one I haven’t seen before—a chunky knit—though I could have sworn she hasn’t been shopping in years. Mostly, she keeps the same old, ratty items on rotation. The same faded jeans, jumpers stretched with age and peppered with moth holes. Stained T-shirts. When things were really bad, an old pair of Dad’s pajama bottoms.
Under her coat, which she hangs on the peg, she’s wearing a bright red dress, cinched in the middle to show off her tiny waist. Another piece I’ve not seen before. Maybe she’s met someone. Maybe I’ve given her too little credit and she’s spent the last few years squirreled away in her room swiping on dating apps. I hope so. Anything to put her in a better way.
She must sense my presence, because she looks up as she’s removing her coat.
“Where’ve you been?” I ask, leaning casually against the banister. She doesn’t scare me as much as she used to. I stopped trying to make her love me years ago, and some of her power died with that impulse.
“Out,” she says, evidently not in the mood to talk, but I go downstairs anyway and follow her through to the kitchen.
“Nice dress.”
She pats her hair. It’s looking suspiciously clean. In the light, I can see she’s wearing makeup.
“I thought it was time for a change. Can’t be wearing the same old tatty stuff all the time.”
“It suits you,” I say generously. It does. I’d forgotten how pretty she could be. How like Marcie she looked. “You should mix things up more often.”
“Thank you.” My flattery doesn’t seem to be working. Her tone is clipped.
