I haven’t seen Ellie in some time. It would mean a lot if you could help me find her.
All in all, it sounds plaintive and overly formal. I send it anyway and spend a long time on Ellie’s Facebook page, looking at her last post – the picture of Rose reflected in the shop window. Yasmina, a girl with bright red hair I’ve noticed commenting on Ellie’s posts before, has written, Can’t wait for you to come back, baby girl. We need to hit those margaritas again.
Come back from where?
I look at Yasmina’s profile photograph. She’s lounging on cushions in a rooftop bar, a mauve sky behind her, though I can’t tell if it’s dawn or dusk; hot air balloons rise from the ground like bubbles. It’s not a view I recognise, nor one that gives any clue of where Ellie might be. Yasmina’s account is private but I ask to Friend her. It’s something I would have been shy about once, but I don’t care about that any more.
At work the next day, the mood is cheerful. It’s still just three days after Christmas, though it feels like weeks have passed. With most people at home with their families, we’re busy only in bursts, with clusters of shoppers on post-prandial walks or, in lonelier cases, looking for company, lingering at the till and stringing out their small talk with us. At ten to one, Gareth and Brenda exchange a look and he announces, with forced jollity, ‘You two should take your lunch break together. Treat yourselves to a drink.’
‘Are you up for that, Fran?’ asks Brenda promptly. ‘The Phoenix does a lovely mulled wine.’
I have to say, their little performance is quite touching. It’s clear they’ve discussed me. Poor Fran and her problems. We must look after her.
Sure enough, a couple of sips into her mulled wine, Brenda asks, ‘How are things? Gareth said they’d been difficult.’
She doesn’t say any more – whether Gareth had mentioned any specifics about the newspaper report. Some days, all I want to do is talk about Ellie, but things have developed so strangely now, I don’t know where to begin.
‘I had some upsetting news,’ I say vaguely.
‘It can be a difficult time of year.’
I recall, for a moment, my Christmas Day, staring down at the Serpentine, leaping around to Gilbert and Sullivan on my own, as high as a kite, the phone call from Meilin, the footprint on my doorstep.
‘Yes,’ I agree.
‘For me it can,’ Brenda says. ‘Without children.’
It’s a relief that she’s distracted from the subject of Ellie. I make a sympathetic noise and remember my precious time alone with Daisy in the café. What it had been like to be mistaken for a mother. Just for a few minutes.
‘It was better this year,’ she continues. ‘Because we finally made a decision to give up on IVF, to explore a different route – adoption or surrogacy, we’re not sure which yet.’
‘How long have you been trying?’ I ask.
‘For years,’ she says bleakly. ‘For years and years.’
I’m briefly ashamed that I never really asked about it. All those doctor’s appointments. Her move from the children’s department. Unexplained tears. I was so busy wanting something of my own that other people’s desires slid past me.
‘It’s a terrible thing,’ she says. ‘Nothing took. Thousands of pounds it cost us – for each cycle. It wiped out almost all of our savings, and my parents’ savings too. But each time the drugs arrived, it felt so exciting. Like Christmas. That this time it might work. So many drugs – I can’t tell you. Boxes of the stuff. Boxes of needles. It was so extreme. I was obsessed – as soon as one round failed, I would want to get going with the next. But none of it worked.’
As she takes a large gulp of mulled wine, I wait for her to continue.
‘I don’t mind telling you,’ Brenda says. ‘Because I think you might have an inkling of what it’s like: to get to our age and be childless.’
With Daisy, there’d been a flash of happiness so strong and sudden it had taken me by surprise – a glimpse of a place on the other side of the mirror. But as for a wish – to have children, to be a mother – that has never been mine or, at least, not at any cost. Perhaps I couldn’t allow myself to want that. Perhaps I sensed where that kind of overwhelming desire might lead for a person like me. What I feel is different – not a longing for children of my own necessarily but for Rose: to read her stories or give her advice or stroke her head as she falls asleep. It’s family I want more than anything. Intimacy.
‘You discover a hatred you didn’t know you had,’ Brenda says quietly. ‘You notice things – mothers passing you in the street with five kids in tow, snapping at them, not appreciating them. It’s primal. You just can’t understand why they have something that you want so badly.’
To want something someone else has. I know what that feels like.
‘Your friend understood,’ says Brenda. ‘There are so many of us these days. It’s the curse of our generation.’
It’s funny, Caroline never mentioned any difficulties conceiving, but maybe it was something that came up in conversation between them. When Brenda goes to the bar again, I check my phone. There are three missed calls from Caroline and a couple from the journalist. I drain the last of my mulled wine.
Caroline is breathless as she answers the phone. ‘Are you at work today?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Just on my lunch.’
‘Can you come to mine tonight?’
‘I don’t know – I want to see if Roberto has messaged me back.’
‘You can check that here,’ she says impatiently. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about. Something I’ve discovered.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t tell you over the phone – I have to show you.’
‘OK,’ I agree. ‘I’ll come around later.’
After I’ve spoken to Caroline, I listen to Kat’s message. ‘I wondered if you’d had any luck getting hold of your sister?’ she asks. ‘It would be really great if you could let me know.’
The words are polite, but her brusque tone gives her away. I can tell she’s onto me, that she suspects I’m hiding from her. Perhaps it’s a good thing I’m away from home tonight, in case she turns up again. I don’t want other people snooping any more into Ellie’s affairs until I’ve had the chance to find out first.
I return, distracted, to Brenda, but the message on the phone leaves me spooked.
On the drizzly walk to the tube after work, I glance over my shoulder more than once. Kat is clearly not going to give up on the story easily. Spotting a woman in a hooded coat several metres behind me, I pick up the pace, just to be sure.
Caroline already has her laptop on the counter in the kitchen with Ellie’s Facebook page up on the screen.
‘I’m sorry to sound so cloak and dagger,’ she says. ‘But it’s really been bothering me. I’ve been looking at your sister’s photos on Facebook, going through them, one by one, and I found something extraordinary.’
She’s speaking quickly, tripping over herself.
‘Have you heard of a reverse image search?’
‘No.’
‘There’s a TV show – Catfish – I binge-watched it while I was pregnant … They’re always doing reverse image searches on that.’
I wish she’d give me the chance to take my coat off, to sit down. Her words are coming at me too fast; I can’t process them.
‘Can you slow down?’
‘Fran,’ Caroline says gently. ‘This is important. You need to see it for yourself.’ She grabs me by the arm and pulls me towards her laptop. ‘I don’t want to shock you, but, look, see this image of Rose …’
She clicks on the photograph taken before Christmas – Rose looking through the shop window, in her red coat and white tights. She saves it onto her desktop.
‘Now watch,’ she continues.
Caroline opens up Google Images and drops the photo of Rose from her desktop into the search bar.
‘You have to follow the link through,’ she says as the photo appears on the screen, �
��and it will show you where else the image can be found.’ She checks to see I’m paying attention and clicks on Rose, then clicks again. ‘Here’s the same photo,’ she says.
I take a step closer. The image is for sale in a photo library. It’s titled ‘Little girl window shopping’, with a price next to it – twenty pounds or three credits. Beneath the photo of Rose, there’s a longer description and a list of words, starting with child, children, shopping, Christmas and going on to include happy, beautiful, cute.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Look at this one,’ says Caroline.
She finds another photo of Rose – the one of her on the tricycle – and goes through the same process. It turns up for sale on a different photo library.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say again. ‘Why has she been selling photos of Rose?’
Ellie’s photographs of her daughter are so beautiful, well lit, professional-looking. But still, I think, it’s not like Ellie to sell something she loved. It’s simply not the kind of thing she would do.
‘Maybe that’s not the question,’ says Caroline quietly. ‘You could ask: why has someone been buying library photographs and passing them off as Rose?’
I frown. ‘Why would Ellie do that?’
Caroline is silent for a long time. She’s miles ahead of me, I realise. I’m stumbling after her in the dark, frantically trying to catch up.
A memory, unbidden. It’s as if Caroline has disturbed something in my subconscious, shaking it like a hedge to see what might fly out. The thing is this: Ellie never called me sis. Not in real life. Not until she went away.
I curl my fingers around the kitchen counter to steady myself. ‘Are you saying it’s not Ellie at all?’
54
The fridge in Caroline’s kitchen hums, an enormous Swan in eggshell blue. There’s the faint buzz of the overhead lights, the tick of the clock. I try to focus on these sounds to distract myself from the panic rising in me.
What is happening? Where is my sister?
I’m not sure if I say these words out loud or not, but suddenly Caroline is beside me with a hand on my back, saying, ‘It’s OK. Take a few deep breaths.’
She fills up a glass at the tap and I drink in swift gulps.
‘We’ll deal with this methodically,’ she says, pulling up a stool for me next to her at the breakfast counter. ‘We’ll go through every photograph on her Facebook page. I’ve made a start – some of the photos of Ellie seem to be genuine.’ She pauses. ‘It’s the pictures of Rose that come from photo libraries.’
I hold my palms flat against the solid granite surface. ‘We still don’t know where they are.’ I take another couple of deep breaths. ‘Is this something we need the police for? To track her down?’
‘Maybe,’ Caroline says. ‘I don’t know – we’ll need to show them more than a strange Facebook account.’
‘But no one’s seen her – she’s run away from everyone.’
‘Let’s check what Roberto has to say.’ Caroline pushes her laptop across the counter towards me.
Heart pounding, I log onto Facebook and see Roberto has replied. I read his message silently to myself and then out loud to Caroline.
Thank you for your message. I haven’t seen your sister since she moved away with my daughter three years ago. I send them money from time to time but I’m sad to say that’s our only contact. I’m sorry not to be more help.
‘Fuck,’ says Caroline. She gets to her feet.
‘But he’s sending them money,’ I say. ‘That counts for something.’
‘Good point,’ she says. ‘Ask him where he sends it. I’ll get Dickie’s laptop out and carry on checking the photos.’ She glances over her shoulder as she leaves the room. ‘It would be an idea to message her other friends, too – the ones who say they’ve seen her recently.’
It feels as if my brain has vacated my body, so I follow Caroline’s orders. She’s good at this. Her line of work must help – she knows just what to do. I reply to Roberto and get in touch with everyone who mentions seeing Ellie recently. Yasmina, the red-headed girl who says she’s missing their margaritas; a tall chap with steel-rimmed glasses and a bow tie; a mum friend of hers, who poses with a toddler on her hip in front of the Eiffel Tower.
I ask them all, in as undramatic fashion as I can manage, When did you last see my sister?
Next to me, Caroline returns with another laptop and begins to unravel Ellie’s Facebook account. ‘Look at this,’ she says at a photo of avocado on toast swiped from another Instagram account. Minutes later, she tuts disapprovingly at a stolen image of the Astronomical Clock in Prague, which matches the one on another account, right down to the couple posing with a bunch of balloons below it.
It’s a magpie’s nest, built from pilfered things.
I stare at the photograph of Rose on the tricycle that had caused me such consternation. It’s not even Rose. A thought rises like a bubble in my head, rapidly followed by another one. Whoever posted the photographs was clever enough to find plenty of the back of a child’s head, or her profile, or a half-hidden reflection. That’s why the photos of Rose’s face were so few and far between, so we wouldn’t be able to tell it was always a different child. I don’t even know what Rose looks like.
A message pops up from Yasmina. A pulse thrums at my throat as I read it.
I haven’t been in touch with Ellie for a couple of weeks. The last I heard she was on her way to Paris.
I close my eyes and see Tom in the water, shouting, perhaps – calling for help. Ellie standing over him, looking down from the bridge above, her hair wild. Doing nothing to help him. Her face impassive, unknowable.
‘We’ll get to the bottom of this,’ says Caroline soothingly.
‘You keep saying that.’ My voice sounds high, unfamiliar. ‘But it keeps getting worse. Worse and worse. If Ellie is in Paris, that can only mean one thing …’
Another message pops up from Ellie’s tall friend. He thinks Ellie is in Paris too, but he’s more specific – he mentions the Marais, the district Tom was last seen in.
The fear takes hold of me, spreading through my limbs like pins and needles.
‘I could fly out there,’ I say. ‘Fly out and find her.’
‘Hang on,’ says Caroline. ‘Let’s think this through.’
She leans on the counter, resting her head in her hands. Then she clicks on the profile image of Yasmina – the one of her on the rooftop with the hot air balloons. ‘Let’s try something.’
Moments later, we’re staring at the Instagram account of someone called Roksana Kowalska, with the same red hair and sharp features as Yasmina. And eleven thousand followers.
‘As I thought,’ says Caroline a touch smugly.
I’m lagging behind again. ‘Why does she have all of Yasmina’s photos?’
Caroline gives me a pitying look. ‘I don’t think Yasmina’s real.’
She goes through the same process with Ellie’s other friends. The results are the same – every single one of them has a double: another person on the internet with identical photographs, except more of them – more friends, more chance, Caroline says, of being the real version.
‘They’re all fake accounts.’
We stand, staring at each other. A thought nags at me. Something incomplete like the last crossword clue that wakes you in the night, the answer on your tongue.
Then I realise what we have to do. I know it – but I don’t want to.
Caroline looks up at me, as if she’s had the same thought.
‘Roberto,’ I say. ‘Is he real?’
My mouth is dry as paper as she clicks through to Roberto’s profile, choosing the photograph of him with his daughters lined up next to him like ducklings. All with the same dark, handsome features.
But, of course, Roberto isn’t Roberto at all. His name is Michel Billeaud-Chaussat. He has properties in Paris and Saint-Tropez, a yacht and four daughters.
He also has more than eight hundred f
riends on Facebook. Not one of them is Ellie.
55
A fat fly lands on the laptop and pauses to clean its legs.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, still staring at Michel’s profile.
‘This is quite worrying,’ says Caroline.
‘You think so?’ I snap.
‘We need to work through this logically. When did you last see Ellie?’
My nails dig into my palms. I don’t want to think about that day. The low winter sun coming through the front room of our flat, blinding me as I walked in. Two figures on the sofa, folded over each other. The light in Charles’s hair as he did to Ellie what he’d done to Juliet all those years ago. Physical love of the kind I’d never known. That, even when offered to me, I’d pushed away.
‘I hate remembering that time.’
‘But Fran, we have to.’ Caroline taps the counter impatiently. ‘Perhaps, because of your fight with Ellie, you weren’t thinking clearly – perhaps there was something you missed.’
I glare at her. How dare she? How dare she pull apart everything I’ve loved all these years?
‘You didn’t know her at all,’ I say. ‘She’s mine. My sister. I don’t know why you’ve taken over like this.’
Caroline stiffens. ‘Why do you think?’
I know the answer, but I don’t say it.
‘Because I want to find out if she hurt my husband,’ she says at last. ‘If she pushed him.’
We glare at each other. The kitchen clock ticking through the seconds of silence between us. I remember the first time I saw Caroline, before I knew it was her – the way she tracked me down, watching me like a ghost in the rain. I’ve been foolish to think we were friends. She’s always had her own agenda. I look at her pale, freckled face. I wanted a friend so badly I didn’t stop to ask myself why she sought me out.
I try to keep my voice calm. ‘She wouldn’t,’ I say at last. ‘You don’t know her, but she wouldn’t.’
‘I don’t know what to think.’ Caroline begins to pace. ‘It’s possible Ellie could have been in the crowd on the platform. That she could have pushed him. There’s a chance. But not if …’
You and Me Page 23