by Luca Veste
The bed was between single and double sized. A bookcase, filled with what he imagined was the past decade of Emily’s reading habits. He scanned the titles, recognising some of the more well-known names. He’d never really been a reader, so it impressed him somewhat that Emily seemed to be. The small flat-screen television perched atop a chest of drawers next to it looked dusty and unused. Compared to everything else in the room, it looked as if it were the only thing that wasn’t kept to a certain… standard.
There was a desk-slash-dressing table underneath the window, a few nick-nacks left behind on the surface. A mirror on a pedestal towards the back of the desk had been swivelled around so its back faced into the room.
He looked around more, noticing the absence of anything beauty-related. No hair straighteners or dryer. No make-up or nail varnish bottles. Mark pursed his lips and shook his head slightly. What on the surface looked normal began to strike him as odd.
He moved to the bedside cabinet and opened the drawers slowly. Inside, a few things had been left behind by the uniforms who had initially investigated her disappearance. Mark knew some items would be waiting for his further inspection now, the uniforms handing over evidence to the Major Crimes Unit. For now, it would be his job to piece it all together.
From the report, he knew notebooks had been taken. They had been checked for a possible note left behind, but he imagined it would have been mentioned if one had been found. Another thing he would have to go over – the task of poring over its contents, trying to ascertain whether the words of a teenage girl meant anything in relation to her disappearance.
Mark sat down on the bed, pausing for a second and sighing loudly. He stood up, pulling back the covers, then the sheet underneath. Against the mottled white of the mattress lay a navy blue-coloured diary, a small sticker on its cover. One word scrawled across the white of it.
THOUGHTS
He picked it up, turning it over in his hand, noting its thickness. He tucked the sheet back in with one hand, then lay the duvet over it, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
The first page was blank, but the next one was filled with tiny, slanted handwriting, taking up all the available space. He continued to flick through the pages, seeing most of the same writing, interspersed with thick, black blocks of words. Words which took up entire pages by themselves.
The notebook was almost to its end, with only a few blank pages left to fill. Mark turned back to the beginning, reading a few lines and immediately feeling a sense of guilt for doing so.
I’m seventeen years old and no one has even looked at me. They barely know I exist. If I wasn’t a twin, I reckon everyone in school would have had trouble picking me out of a lineup. S has never had that problem, of course. Everyone knows who she is. They’ve never bothered with me though. I could be invisible for all I know. It would explain a few things, I suppose. Even the geekier boys leave me alone. I’m not even good enough for them. I thought it would get better once out of high school, but if anything it’s got worse. I have no friends, I have no boys interested in me. I’m alone. I don’t have anything to look forward to. I don’t have anything to remember. I wake up every single day and wonder what the point of all this is? I wonder if it’s worth it. Whether I should even try anymore.
Mark read on, scanning the pages, also filled with similar feelings of woe and loneliness. The handwriting began as precise and neat, before slipping into angry block capitals, the ink almost bleeding from the page.
Further in, there was a list.
Initials. He wasn’t sure what they meant.
JS
MK
AP
He wanted to reach out to the person writing these words and tell them it would be okay. Then, a thought came to him thick and hard. A realisation.
It was probably already too late for that.
‘Enjoying the read?’
Mark’s head shot up towards the voice from the doorway, closing the notebook in his hands with a snap. ‘I… I found it under the bed. Thought it might be important.’ He didn’t know why he was trying to justify himself, but couldn’t help it.
Stephanie leaned against the doorframe, seemingly studying him for something. ‘Well, I guess it might be.’
‘You’ve read it?’
Now it was Stephanie’s turn to look towards the floor. ‘Yes, a while ago. I wouldn’t expect to find many answers in there. Emily… she was troubled.’
‘How troubled are we talking here? Because I thought before that it was just, you know, the normal amount for a teenager?’
Stephanie sighed deeply, then looked up at him. ‘If I tell you something, do you promise it won’t change your opinion of her? That you won’t let them stop looking for her, even if it means Emily isn’t who you thought she was?’
Mark swallowed, trying to work out the best answer to her questions. ‘No one will stop looking for her, Stephanie. But, this is the kind of thing we need to know. What kind of trouble was she in?’
‘No, you’ve got it wrong,’ Stephanie replied, a small chuckle escaping from her lips. She walked into the room, her voice dropping lower as she spoke. ‘She wasn’t the one who was in trouble. She was the trouble. I think… I think she might have done something stupid.’
Seventeen
‘So you can see why I say she was trouble,’ Stephanie continued, sitting down next to Mark on the bed. The perfume he’d smelled in the car earlier had faded somewhat now, but a little still lingered.
‘How?’
‘You were reading her book,’ Stephanie replied, a hand gesturing towards the notebook in his hands. She was looking down at the floor, not at him. Her blonde hair covered the side of her face, cascading down like a waterfall of colour. ‘You can see her state of mind.’
‘I didn’t get very far.’
‘We used to share this room before I moved away. Just the two of us in here, every day. Barely enough room for both of us. Looking at it now, I don’t know how we managed it. Everyone expected us to be like two peas in a pod because we’re twins, but we were very different people. We had to share a room when we both wanted our own space. I remember the first night in student halls. My own room. It was like the noise finally came to an end. I’m not talking like Emily was noisy, it just… You live so close to someone, you can’t help but hear every single sound they make. Even when they’re quiet as a mouse.’
‘I shared a room with my younger brother for a few years,’ Mark said, still looking at Stephanie in profile as she continued to stare at the floor. ‘I know exactly what you mean. You’re never alone. I couldn’t wait to move out. We were constantly getting into fights and stuff. Did that happen with the two of you? Was this book an outlet?’
‘We never fought,’ Stephanie replied, shooting him a glance. ‘Nothing like that. We just tolerated each other, I suppose. We knew there was no other way, so that’s just how things were. No other option but to grin and bear it. I guess if we’d actually had things in common, then it would have been different, but we didn’t. Nothing at all really. Other than DNA.’
‘Tell me how she was trouble, as you said.’
Stephanie nodded, gripping the edge of the mattress. ‘You can tell from the first page that she wasn’t happy. That she thought she deserved more than she had. I found the book accidentally. I couldn’t help myself. I… I read it, because by then I didn’t know who she was anymore. I remember feeling sorry for her. Also, really pissed off because she says some nasty things in it about me. I understood, though. I knew it was hard for her at school. What she never understood was that it was hard for me as well.’
Mark kept his face straight, but wondered how true that actually was. It might have been just over a decade since he was in school, but he remembered girls like Stephanie. The popular ones. They never had to work at it, it just seemed like one day the hierarchy was decided and that was that.
He imagined being a twin where one had a certain social status and the other was forgotten. It would have be
en hard to live with for Emily.
‘We went to different colleges in the end,’ Stephanie continued, sliding a manicured fingernail through her hair, sweeping it back behind her ear. ‘I stayed in the school’s sixth form, while she needed to go somewhere else. She needed the change. I don’t think it got any easier for her. I know it didn’t.’
‘So she struggled to fit in at school and college. That doesn’t sound too different to thousands of other kids out there. Why was she in trouble?’
‘No, I told you, she caused the trouble,’ Stephanie replied, her tone sharp suddenly. ‘You keep getting it wrong. She wasn’t some little innocent. I guess she decided enough was enough one day and decided to start fighting back. You ask me, it was about six years too late.’
‘She fought back against who?’
‘Other kids in the college, people from her old school, anyone she was angry with, basically.’
Mark could hear something being left unsaid. Thought for a second or two, then decided to ask, ‘You?’
Stephanie didn’t answer immediately, smoothing her jeans down over her thigh. ‘She must have bottled it all up for so long. I wish she’d said something to me sooner. Instead of letting me read it in there.’
Mark noted the non-response to his actual question. ‘You didn’t know what she was going through in school?’
‘I had an inkling, of course. She wouldn’t really talk to me about it though. Even when we were on our own. We were close in some ways – like, we always looked out for each other academically and whatever. She’d help me with English, I’d help her with maths, that sort of thing. When it came to our social lives, we just never talked about it. We were in different classes, different circles. We just didn’t socialise in that way. I know it sounds bad, but we just weren’t into the same things.’
Mark held up a hand, sensing Stephanie slipping away from what he needed to learn from this conversation. ‘It doesn’t sound bad at all. I understand what you mean. Everyone thinks twins should be exactly the same, but I guess it’s not always true. Me and my brother – we couldn’t be more different. We don’t watch the same stuff on telly or listen to the same bands. We have a few things in common, but not much, and only more recently, as we’ve got older. When we were younger and sharing a room, we didn’t like the same things at all. In my teenage years especially. Doesn’t mean we’re not still close now. Things can change. There’s still time, but I need to know everything.’
‘I think she hated me,’ Stephanie said in a low voice. ‘I know that now. She always did, I guess. She wanted what I had, but didn’t know how to get it. I wish she’d said something. Maybe I could have changed things. Instead of letting her fight a battle she had no chance of winning.’
‘How did she fight back?’
‘She was vindictive eventually,’ Stephanie replied, relaxing a little on the bed, as her voice lowered even further. Mark had to lean forward to hear her. ‘I think she just wanted to get back at people she believed had done her wrong. She would spread rumours online. Catfish people, that sort of thing.’
‘Catfish?’ Mark said, the term vaguely ringing a bell.
‘It’s where you pretend to be someone you’re not online. Talk to people, become friends, then get in a relationship with that person, but all the time you’re pretending you’re someone else. Fat people usually do it so they can have nice-looking boyfriends and girlfriends.’
‘How do you get away with that, though?’ Mark said, ignoring the fat comment. Stephanie’s filter seemed to be non-existent. ‘Wouldn’t it be all over the second they met each other?’
‘Some people can keep the pretence going on for years. Problems with webcams, no video calling on their phones, whatever.’
‘And Emily did this?’
Stephanie nodded, catching his eye for a second before looking away once more. ‘Loads of times. She would string people along for months, before breaking their hearts. She seemed to get off on it. When I found out about it, I went off my head at her. She didn’t seem to care though. It was like she’d finally found a way of being noticed that didn’t take any effort. Nothing I said to her seemed to make any difference.’
‘How did you find out about it?’
‘She was going after people we knew. People from high school, lads and girls. She must have had dozens of accounts on the go. Someone worked it out and realised it was her.’
Mark shook his head, trying to work out why this hadn’t come out sooner. ‘This could mean something. If she hurt the wrong person, it could mean someone decided to get their own back on her.’
‘I never thought about it like that,’ Stephanie said, suddenly seeming smaller. ‘I suppose you’re right. I just thought it was all ridiculous, but she did hurt people. It was all online though, so I didn’t really think much of it. It’s not really real on there.’
‘Did anyone threaten to do anything?’
There was a moment of hesitation, as Stephanie seemed to turn over the question in her mind before answering. ‘Not that I know of, no. I’ve got no idea, though, really. You’ve got her computer, maybe you’ll be able to find out.
‘I didn’t really make much of an effort,’ Stephanie continued, standing up from the bed and crossing the room to the window. Mark turned to look at her, seeing only the back of her as she looked out over the back garden. He opted to stay quiet as she continued to talk. ‘I suppose I could have tried harder. I should have tried harder. I’ve just had my own stuff to deal with over the years, you know? I couldn’t carry her. Now I wish I had.’
‘You can’t look back and start questioning yourself now,’ Mark replied softly. ‘You’ll drive yourself mad if you do that. You have to concentrate on what’s best now. And that’s telling us everything you know about what kind of things she was doing before she went missing, no matter how small you think they might be. We need to know everything.’
Stephanie nodded without turning around, but Mark could see her reflection in the window. The vacant look she had on her face as she stared out.
‘She spent so much of her life online,’ Stephanie said, breaking the silence. ‘If there are answers to be found, I bet they’re there. I just… I’ve had this thought in the back of my mind since the beginning. That this could all be just some kind of game she’s playing with us all.’
‘You think she’d do that?’
He was struggling to hide his growing sense of unease at what he was hearing. The revelations about Emily’s life. It was exciting, but daunting. More questions to investigate.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ Stephanie said, breaking into Mark’s disordered thinking. ‘I just want her to come through the front door like nothing’s happened. It doesn’t matter why she’s gone; I just want her to come back. I want to try again. Be a better sister this time.’
Mark stayed quiet, letting Stephanie process the emotions she was battling to keep under the surface.
Waiting for the moment he could get out of that place and start finding answers to the multitude of questions he now had.
Eighteen
The clouds had parted at some point during his return to the station, yet Mark couldn’t enjoy the cool autumn evening. He was instead back at his favourite place at work – his desk. Although this was tainted somewhat by the fact that he seemed to be working on the case alone. The others were distracted by the small matter of Joanna Carter’s body being found.
There was limited information to work with: her online accounts, the little contact she had outside her home, dropping out of college a few weeks earlier. She hadn’t told anyone, which suggested to him that she was trying to keep something quiet at least. Didn’t want to disappoint her family, he guessed. He knew her mum worked, and maybe didn’t notice her daughter wasn’t in college, but it still seemed a big thing for Emily to have been able to keep quiet. Which made him wonder what she was doing after leaving college, the people she was talking to.
Then he’d started reading through Em
ily’s social media accounts.
He had access to Emily’s main Facebook page, a Twitter account and Instagram. The Instagram page was blank, so she obviously hadn’t been one for taking photographs. The Twitter account had followers barely in three figures, most of which looked like spam accounts. The Facebook page was similarly empty.
It was her email account that got his attention.
Mark wasn’t exactly in touch with all the tricks of the online trade, but he knew enough to struggle through. He accessed the account with the information the family had provided for the security questions, but it turned out they’d already done that when they’d realised she was missing. What he noticed instantly was the number of times her main email address was used as a recovery address for another email address. A result of the family trying to gain access to her various social media accounts after she’d gone missing, he guessed. He began making a list of each individual email address, so he could collect them all in one place, before working on getting access to each of them.
The inbox also had messages from Emily’s Facebook messaging account.
Dozens of individual messages. Some group chats.
All of them from people she’d catfished.
It was difficult to read for the most part – an unending litany of badly spelled, hate-filled messages, which didn’t seem to ever generate a response.
U NEED TO STP DIS!
Y????? I NVR DID ANYTHIN TO U!!!!
JUMP OF A BUILDIN OR SOMETIN. I H8 U
KILL URSELF!! UR SCUM