‘Don't worry,’ Suzie said, stroking her thumb along Adam's hand. ‘I'll sort this. Leave it to me. I'll make it alright darling. I will fix you; fix it all. I'll find the cash, make it right. I'll do whatever it takes.’ She rubbed at her face and gripped his hand, ‘I love you so much. Nothing is going to change. Nothing.’
21
Rachel
‘I don't understand.’ I looked at the photograph as if it had bitten me. ‘What is this? This isn't her. It’s not Katie, it’s not!’
But it was.
Her face stared back from where the photograph had fallen, caked in make-up, her expression false. Pouting red lips, backcombed hair, exposed chest. It was my daughter posing like a bad page-three girl from the eighties. Her hip bones visible beneath the taut black lace, jutting forward; her small waist only just beginning to curve. The awkward shape of her juvenile legs as they hung from the stool, large knees, white flesh. God, she looked young, like a fawn, all bony limbs and the way she was dressed, the way she was posing, the thought of what she was suggesting… It winded me; I couldn't get a full breath.
Katie was not this girl in the photograph. She locked the bathroom door for fear one of us would walk in on her naked body. She screamed if I went into her room unannounced. Only last year I'd asked if she wanted to go shopping for a bra and she'd blushed. Told me that she'd already done that, a group of them had gone together. Got themselves measured at Marks and Spencer and she'd bought herself a couple of non-padded things with her monthly allowance. Jessica wasn’t even allowed into her room uninvited.
And yet, here was her childish body trussed in black lace and red nylon. Her adolescent nakedness that she kept hidden from even me, her mother, claiming embarrassment and an awkwardness I could identify with from my own experience at that age. I looked to Phil, his face full of an indescribable expression as he watched me, softened with sympathy along with a fearfulness and I pushed the photograph away, batted and slapped at it, my hand working hard to get it off my lap and out of my sight.
‘Where did you get it?’
Phil picked it up and put it back in the envelope.
‘Where did you get that?’ I repeated. ‘Phil, you tell me now where you got that picture of Katie dressed like that.’
‘I had nothing to do with them,’ he hissed. ‘For fuck's sake, Rachel,’ he looked down at the envelope. ‘I found them.’
‘Who took this?’ My voice was brittle. ‘Was it was Olivia, or Tara, or one of the other girls she knows? A friend we haven't met? Did Jessica have something to do with them? Was it one of her friends from college?’ I knew the answer. Katie had been in front of a white backdrop, a studio light to the side of her. They were professional photographs.
He went over to the bedroom door, opened it slightly and listened. After a moment, he closed it and came back toward me.
I held out my hand for the envelope.
He shook his head. ‘You need to calm down.’
‘Give it to me,’ I demanded. ‘I want to see them all.’
He paused, debating whether to show me. I leaned forward and snatched it from him, pulling out the photographs. There were three of them. My hands shook as I studied each one. Katie on a white fur rug, lying on her tummy, one leg bent at the knee, lacy knickers covering her bottom. Katie stood with her legs wide apart, wearing a mini dress. A mini dress that she'd bought for a school disco earlier in the year. I gasped as I saw her wearing it. I thought I’d sent it back to the catalogue. We’d argued over the length, she’d sulked in her room for a week over that. My stomach rolled, I was going to throw up.
‘Is this it?’ I asked and Phil turned away. ‘Is this everything?’ I demanded. ‘Phil?’
He took a moment.
‘She doesn't know,’ he said. ‘Katie. We can't let her know that we've got these pictures.’ He started to put them away, sliding each one back into the brown envelope. ‘This is important, Rachel.’ He was staring at me. ‘Do you understand? It's too late to ask Katie about it. Too late to confront her. After what I did,’ he took a breath in. ‘After what I did, it's too late. We can’t tell her or Jessica, we can’t involve the girls in this.’
I was under a waterfall, my head being pounded by the force. I was close to drowning.
‘After what you did?’ I whispered and he stared at me, then after a moment, nodded.
It came tumbling back.
The gruesome display of images that I'd been battling with for the past two days. I heard the crack of bone, the violent screech of the car. The body as it landed on the tarmac.
‘You?’ My voice was barely audible.
‘Me,’ Phil said. ‘I did it.’
I could see the red caps and aprons of the staff as they came running out of the restaurant to the body on the ground. I could hear the woman's scream.
‘But you were at Crewe train station, you said your car was stolen, you gave the police your train ticket…’ I stared at him. ‘It was you in the car that day,’ I said. ‘You did the hit and run.’ My cheeks were wobbly, my tongue too large for my mouth. I'd been right all along. ‘Why?’ I asked, my throat tightening. ‘Why would you do that?’
Phil slowly lifted the envelope and placed it back on my lap. It took me a moment.
‘Katie?’ I asked. ‘You did it because of these pictures?’
‘Last week,’ Phil said. ‘I came home early, do you remember? You were meeting Suzie at some coffee house in town,’ he prompted. ‘I'd travelled back early to surprise you, thinking you'd be at home.’
I recalled the time I'd met Suzie and had the missed call from Phil. I’d rushed home after listening to his voicemail, cutting the meeting with Suzie short. I'd been elated that he was back midweek. It had been a lovely surprise. We'd opened a chilled bottle of Chardonnay and I'd cooked steak. We'd had sex. I nodded and motioned for him to go on.
‘The house was empty. Apart from Della, she was cleaning the downstairs lavatory. I went to get a coffee and what I thought was Della's phone was on the worktop. It made a sound. An alert of some kind, so thinking she had a message I took it through to her. Della explained that it wasn't her phone. She found it in the downstairs bathroom when she was cleaning.’ He took another deep breath and ran his hand over his face. ‘Shall I get us a brandy?’ he asked. ‘Whisky?’
I shook my head.
‘I need a drink,’ he went to stand up and I grabbed his hand.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Just tell me.’
He took a deep breath before continuing. ‘It was an old Samsung. Galaxy something or other.’ He shook his head. ‘I opened it up to see whose phone it was and suddenly I'm on Twitter. I’m in an account, looking at a small profile picture of Katie.’
‘Katie?’ I leaned forward.
Phil nodded. ‘It was Katie's phone.’
‘Impossible,’ I interrupted. ‘Katie’s phone isn’t a smartphone. We made it that way so she can only do emergency calls and nothing else, cyber-bullying, you remember? She knows…’
Phil held up his hand. ‘It was Katie's phone. I was on her Twitter page. I didn't realise at first, it took me a while to figure that out. I should’ve just closed it down, told you, got ready to confront her, but…’ he shook his head. ‘To be honest, it seemed harmless at the time. A few messages on Twitter, some texts to her friends, nothing that any teenager wouldn't have.’ I went to interrupt, but he stopped me. ‘Of course she shouldn't have had another phone,’ he said. ‘She knows she's not allowed, and I meant to tell you immediately but…’ he stopped then. Swallowed.
‘So why didn't you?’ I asked. ‘Why didn't you tell me?’
‘Work,’ he said. ‘I intended to deal with it that night, but then work called and I put Katie's phone in my pocket. Forgot about it. Forgot to tell you, forgot to tell Katie. You came back, full of your meeting with Suzie and the night got away from me. The deal with the drug for Alzheimer's was on the cards, we were negotiating that massive order and I was back in London the next day. I forg
ot I had the phone at all. It wasn't until I was back in London and I hear this alarm. This sound and I realise it's coming from my pocket, it's coming from Katie's phone.
He took a deep breath. ‘It's a message from someone called Rob,’ Phil went on, and I could see that he was struggling. ‘A photographer at a modelling agency.’
I gritted my teeth, bracing myself.
‘So, I go to her messages and I see a whole heap of them. From him.’ He ran a hand over his face, looked up to the ceiling.
‘Phil?’ I prompted.
‘They went back months. The messages from him, Rob, they started back in August.’
I took a sharp intake of breath.
‘He'd met her somewhere, talked of how it was nice to make contact. They were all innocent at first, just chatting about TV shows. About what she's doing at school, what options she's taken and what she wants to do when she leaves.’
I closed my eyes. Hadn't I warned Katie of this often enough? Talked about it with her, explained that this was why we'd banned phones, banned the Internet?
‘I read them all,’ he said, ‘and it was easy to see why she liked him. He flattered her, at first about her taste in music and books and then on her looks. They'd been messaging about four weeks before he tells her how pretty she is, how she could be a model. He tells her how he works for modelling agencies. He's a scout. Tells her about the jobs he's doing with other girls, fashion stuff, how they'll be in magazines. He made it sound very glamorous.’
I put my hands to my face as he talked.
‘And at first, Katie's replies are all thankful and full of those smiley faces. She says that she can't, that we won't allow her. That she'd love to be a model but how she's not pretty enough.’
My head started to pound. It was so clichéd, what Phil was telling me was something I'd see on the news. A report I'd shake my head at and then congratulate myself on having my own daughters upstairs in their rooms. Safe in the house when all the time they hadn't been safe at all.
‘But then she asks about his website, Remote Models, and Katie's messages are all about what a great photographer he is. How his site is really good. He tells her about jobs he's doing, what fashion models he's signing up. He talks a good deal, Rach, I even went on his site and took a look. A few alluring pictures but nothing too bad, it would easily fool a fourteen-year-old girl. Hell, it might even have fooled me.’
‘So those pictures,’ I pointed to the envelope, ‘this man, this Rob took those pictures? He got Katie to meet him?’
‘Katie asked to meet him,’ Phil shook his head. ‘All his talk about what jobs he was getting for his other models, it worked. Katie wanted to do it. She asked him.’
I squeezed my eyes tight. ‘Stupid girl,’ I hissed and Phil reached out to me. Put his hand on mine.
‘Haven't we told her?’ I asked him. ‘Haven’t we said all this to her? Warned her.’
‘The last message,’ Phil said. ‘The one that he'd sent that night, that made the sound? The one that reminded me I had Katie's phone? That message said that the photographs he'd taken were fantastic but he needed more before he could sign her up. So I searched through the Remote Models site, I looked but couldn't find anything of Katie, so I replied to him. As if I was Katie.’
‘You sent a message back as if you were Katie?’
He was silent a moment. Then nodded. ‘I asked where the pictures were, if I could see them and he sends a link. A link to a part of the website that isn't published. And that's where I found those,’ he pointed to the envelope.
‘You found those pictures,’ I looked at the envelope. ‘When was this? Last week, last Friday? Why didn't you tell me? Call me?’
A door slams from downstairs and we're both quiet for a moment, listening. The toilet flushes and heavy footsteps run back toward the lounge. We stay still for a second, and then hear the drone of the television.
‘It was late, past midnight,’ Phil said. ‘What was I going to do? Wake you in the middle of the night and tell you that Katie had been meeting strange men? A strange man I was talking to via Twitter?’ he shook his head. ‘And what would you have done? Gone hysterical, woken up Katie and Jessica, and done God knows what whilst I'm in London. You’d try to sort it all out yourself, in your usual hyper way, you’d go on overdrive.’ I went to protest but he sighed heavily. ‘I'd just seen those pictures of her, Rach. I realised that he'd already met Katie, already seen her. What I was seeing was after the event and I wanted to deal with it. Me.’
‘We have to inform the police,’ I said. ‘We need to tell them. Tell them right now.’
‘Of course,’ Phil said, he was still holding my hand and I pulled it free to wipe my face. I was suddenly hot.
‘I should’ve gone to the police immediately. Reported him and spoken to Katie and you. I should’ve dealt with it rationally.’ He reached for the envelope. ‘But it was Friday night, what police station is open to deal with this kind of stuff at that hour? And, I couldn't help thinking; what if the police didn't deal with it effectively? What did I have to give them, a few photographs and some messages on Twitter?’ Phil shook his head. ‘You hear about people getting away with this kind of stuff all the time and I was still speaking to this monster. He thought I was Katie and he wanted to meet up.’ He looked at me, his eyes heavy, ‘I should've gone straight to the police, I know that now, but I was so angry, Rachel. I was furious. I thought I was doing the right thing.’
He paused and I realised I was holding my breath. Imagining Phil seeing our daughter dressed like that, in those poses whilst he was away from home, late at night, drinking to console himself. I heard myself whimper.
‘What did you do?’ I asked quietly.
He looked at me. ‘I just wanted to make sure, Rachel, that was all. I wanted his name. His car registration. I wanted to record him admitting it. Take his photo. Make sure the little bastard couldn’t get away once I'd reported him.’ Phil looked off toward the wall, his face hard. ‘So I arranged to meet him on Tuesday. I just wanted a word with him before I went to the police. At first I thought I had the wrong person, he was all dressed up. Full works, smart suit and all this professional camera equipment. And he was our age. Maybe a little older. He shook my hand when I approached him, didn't flinch.’ He paused for a second. ‘I showed him the pictures of Katie. Explained I was her father.’
I waited. My breath stuck in my chest.
‘You know what he does? He laughs like he didn't know how young she was. Tells me it was her idea. That Katie told him she was eighteen, that she had ID, that she must be a tearaway and if he'd known her real age he'd have never have taken the photographs.’ Phil gritted his teeth. ‘So I told him I was going straight to the police and that's when the wheels came off.’
I saw a muscle work at the side of Phil's jaw, tight and pulsing.
‘He threatens me. Tells me that I've entrapped him, that me and Katie have been working together. That Katie knew what she was doing and he can prove it. He tells me that if I go to the police, he'll ruin Katie's life, says he’s got other pictures of her and he’ll put them out there. I had to walk away,’ he shook his head. ‘Because I knew if I’d started on him then I wouldn’t be able to stop. I was so angry. I meant to drive straight to the police. You have to believe me. I really intended to go to them. I sat in my car and tried to calm down. And then I saw him. Buying some food. As if he'd done nothing wrong. My God, Rachel, I didn't know what he did to her. I didn't know if he touched Katie or what he’d done with her, and I realised I didn't have any proof. I had nothing, I hadn't taken a picture of him, got his car reg. I'd done nothing. I was sat there, watching him, wondering if Katie had lied to him, if she had told him she was eighteen. I was thinking how to put the case to the police, how to make sure he was arrested.’
I saw the torture in Phil's face and for a second I was there. I could see how it was for him. Watching this man who'd taken our precious girl and made her into something else, perhaps even abused her.
Made her into something for other people to leer at, stood, casually choosing from the menu whilst Phil was crippled with anger. The hopeless feeling, the belief that the police might not get it right. That justice might not prevail and you have the opportunity of revenge right in front of you.
‘Then I get a message on Twitter whilst I’m sat in the car,’ Phil said, his voice quiet and low. ‘He thought I’d left, didn’t know I was watching him. He's on his phone and I get a notification, a private message to Katie's phone again but it was addressed to me. Her dad.’
I waited for him to go on, my breath caught in my throat.
Phil stared at me. ‘It says, “Here’s the proof about Katie. Here's the proof that she was willing, that she knew what she was doing.” It was a video clip, Rachel.’
I went cold. As if the blood was freezing in my veins.
‘An attachment. He sends me a video clip and says that if I go to the police, he'll put the video up everywhere. And everyone will know exactly what Katie is like.’
I'd stopped breathing, had become paralysed with fear. A video clip. A film of my daughter. I'd thought the pictures were the worst of it, but looking at Phil's face I realised there was more.
‘What was it?’ I whispered and Phil shook his head.
‘You have to tell me,’ I insisted, my voice quiet. ‘Tell me what was in the video.’
Phil looked away from me.
‘Was it of him taking pictures of her?’ I asked. ‘Was it a film of the photo shoot, was Katie posing for the camera, was it of him and her together?’
Phil slowly nodded.
‘What were they doing? Talking? Was she kissing him? Phil!’ My voice had become high as I imagined the worst. His silence was terrifying. ‘Phil, please! Tell me what she was doing?’
‘I didn't watch it all,’ he said quietly. ‘Just a few seconds until I realised…’ he trailed off and then took a deep breath, ‘it was Katie. You couldn't see him. Couldn't see his face. He was filming her, filming Katie from above and she was…’ he faltered for a second. ‘She was on her knees. He was naked, had his hand on her head, pushing her. Katie was… he was pushing her head, forcing her to touch him, to… and she was,’ he stopped. ‘Fucking hell Rachel, do you need me to spell it out? She was on her knees and he was filming her, forcing her to give him a…’
If He Wakes Page 17