She drummed her fingers on the table, deciding.
Decided.
As quietly as she could, she grabbed her phone and started a circuit of the room, snapping pictures as she went. She took a few shots of the noticeboard on the wall, close enough so she’d be able to read all the little notes, receipts, postcards and trinkets stuck on there. She flipped through the little piles of paper that sat on the countertop – the post, probably picked up from the hall and dropped here. Bills mostly, addressed to Michael Kerr, and a couple of Jiffy Bags with Natalie’s name handwritten on them in Sharpie. One had been stamped with the name of a well-known magazine and another with the logo of a high-end department store. She took photos of both, just in case. She checked cupboards and peeked quickly into junk drawers. For what, she didn’t quite know, but she knew she would if and when she found it.
This just felt like something she should be doing.
And also something that she shouldn’t be doing.
Which, when you worked on the Ents desk at the ThePaper.ie, was about exactly right.
Audrey noted there were no fewer than three different places to leave a note in this kitchen: a floral memo pad on top of the microwave, a chalkboard magnetically attached to the fridge and a reporter’s notebook wedged between two travel mugs on the dresser, complete with pen threaded through its coil. And those were just the old-fashioned ways of doing it.
She saw a thin, cornflower-blue hardback book sitting on one of the other kitchen chairs, facedown. It looked like it’d been flung there, mid-read. At first she thought it was one of those Ladybird-style children’s books, but when she turned it over she saw that it was in fact a book of poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley selected by Fiona Sampson. She flipped through it. The pages were clean and smooth. No one in this house was obsessively reading their Romantic poets, that was for sure. There was a slightly off-kilter sticker on the inside cover that said, Keats-Shelley House Rome. Someone – Natalie, she assumed – had written For my M on the title page.
She put the book down on the table and positioned her phone over it so she could snap a pic.
‘What are you doing?’
A male voice, but not Mike’s.
Audrey looked up. There was a man standing in the doorway. Tall – taller than Mike – with tightly cut black hair. Mid-thirties. Nice eyes, blue ones. Wearing a dark navy suit and standing with his hands in its pockets, impatiently awaiting Audrey’s answer.
‘I was just …’ She could feel her cheeks colouring. ‘I’m interviewing Mike. I work for ThePaper.ie.’
‘Delighted for you,’ the man said flatly. He took what looked like a little wallet from his pocket and flipped it open. All Audrey could see from where she stood was the emblem of An Garda Síochána. ‘Interview’s over.’
‘But I wasn’t finished. We weren’t fin—’
‘You can direct any outstanding questions to the Garda Press Office.’ He gestured to the hall behind him, towards the front door. ‘Off you go.’
Audrey considered digging her heels in and demanding that she speak to Mike himself, but everything about this man – his stance, his tone, his cool authority – told her that would be a pointless exercise. Instead, she sighed grumpily, theatrically, and collected her things.
When she walked past him into the hall, he turned to follow her out.
The door to the living room was nearly fully closed. With her escort following behind her, Audrey didn’t have a chance to stop and look in. She could hear the low murmur of voices, including Mike’s, but couldn’t make out any of the words.
Outside, it was spitting now and there was a third car parked in the drive – unmarked, D-reg – squeezed in lengthways so it blocked the exit of the other two.
She turned back to face the Garda. He had his hand on the front door and was already pulling it closed.
‘Can I just—’
But Audrey had to swallow the rest of her complaint.
The door had closed in her face.
_________
‘More than eight thousand views,’ Joel said, reading from a printout, ‘in under an hour.’ He looked up. ‘That’s great, Audrey. Really great. Well done you.’
‘Thanks.’ She was standing in the doorway of Joel’s office again, but this time it was because ThePaper.ie’s analytics said she’d just written the site’s best performing content that day by far. She was feeling so proud of herself that she feared she might be literally beaming. Wait until she told Dee about this. But smug wasn’t a good look so she waved a hand and said, ‘Well, there was a readymade audience for this. I can’t take all the credit.’
‘I agree,’ Joel said, deflating her smugness like a pin in a balloon. ‘But it’s still a good story.’
She smiled. She’d take that.
The piece that had gone live on the site just before four o’clock that afternoon was actually Audrey’s second draft. Joel had handed her back her first with half the lines crossed out and a scribbled note that said, What do YOU think happened? Decide then arrange facts to imply without getting sued. Don’t spell out.
Audrey thought what had happened was obvious: Mike and Natalie had had a blazing row about something and she’d stormed out of the house in a huff. It explained everything: why she’d cancelled an event and posted the suitcase message but hadn’t told her husband where she was going or answered his calls. Why he’d waited to report her disappearance to the Gardaí and why he now seemed so reluctant to speak to the press. In fact, it was the particular strain of his reluctance – embarrassment – that had convinced Audrey of this scenario over, say, him having killed her and buried her body under the patio. He just seemed mortified about the whole thing.
But she couldn’t write any of that, of course.
Her second piece had briefly recapped Natalie’s career as an Irish Instagram star, showcased a few of her most popular posts and then stated the facts about her disappearance. Audrey included a few quotes from Mike about not reporting it because he didn’t want to embarrass her and his belief that she had left and was fine. She finished by embedding the suitcase post from Instagram and noting that Natalie had left no note or message for her husband. The average ThePaper.ie reader – suspicious, cynical, convinced of their own cleverness – would surely think there was something to put together out of that juxtaposition.
And then they’d put it together.
Clickity-click.
‘So what should I do now?’ she asked. ‘I thought I could track down her best friend, Carla. She’s tagged in a few of Natalie’s posts; I should be able to find her online. And maybe I could find out more about that woman who visited the house. That could be a whole separate thing, actually: the crazies who stalk Irish Instagram stars. And I know that guard was being sarcastic but maybe I actually could get something out of the Garda Press Office? I mean, I could try?’
Joel shifted in his seat. ‘Ah, Audrey, look. You’ve done great work here. Really. You went above and beyond. I mean, none of us expected you to talk to the husband. Upstairs know you exist now and I know the bossman was personally impressed. That’s great for you in the long run. But tomorrow morning, you’re back on the Ents desk, okay?’
‘What? But there’s loads more I could dig out on this.’
That had come out far more whiney than Audrey had intended, but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t ready to go back to the click-factory yet. She’d got a taste of what it felt like to write an actual story and now the mere idea of typing flaunts her curves or steps out amid made her feel a bit sick.
‘The story here,’ Joel said, ‘is that an Irish Instagrammer is missing. And thanks to you, we’ve covered that. If she doesn’t come back, there’s nothing to write about. If she does, boring. If anything else happens, that’s a crime story that our crime reporters will cover, not you.’ His expression softened, probably because he’d realised that the look on Audrey’s face was one of abject despair. ‘This was the deal from the beginning, Audrey. I’m not bre
aking news here.’ Joel turned to the screen of his laptop, squinted at it, then started typing.
Their conversation was over.
Dejected, Audrey trudged back to her desk.
The chairs on either side of hers were empty but Audrey could see a couple of the Ents team approaching with steaming coffee cups. She put on her headphones to signal that she was Do Not Disturb, booted up her laptop and put her head down. It was nearly five o’clock. Half an hour and she’d be able to leave here, go home and wallow in her own misery.
Then she remembered that it was T-minus three weeks to her having nowhere to live. She’d have to spend the evening figuring out what the hell she was going to do. Searching Daft.ie. Doing her sums.
God, things were so bad she couldn’t even wallow.
Idly, Audrey opened up her email account.
And immediately saw that something was wrong. She had almost 500 unread messages, all of which had come in since her Natalie O’Connor piece had gone live.
What the …?
Audrey went to ThePaper.ie homepage. The headline of her story was at the top of it. Directly underneath was her name and thumbnail-sized headshot. Directly beneath that was her email address.
Anyone who read the article could contact her and, apparently, many of them had.
She went back to her email account and started scanning the messages.
Most of them fell into the category of feedback, if you were being generous with the term. Someone had actually taken the time to go to their phone or computer and type out the words Was there supposed to be a story here? Must have missed it. Or I hope your school wasn’t fee-paying because you are entitled to your money back. So many grammatical errors I couldn’t get through the first paragraph. PROOFREAD YOUR WORK, idiot. Or Nice pic bet yr cunt tastes nice. Ignore. Delete. Block. Repeat as required. Audrey kept going, scanning each one, just in case there was something there.
And there was.
An Orla Sheridan had sent a message at 5:02 p.m., about an hour after the story had gone live. She was a waitress in a café in Shanamore, she said (wherever that was), and she claimed she’d talked to Natalie on Tuesday, the day after she’d disappeared from her home.
It was definitely her. I have her business card. We talked about Instagram and Mike and stuff. When I saw the thing online this morning I rang the Garda number and told them about this and they took my number but no one has called me back. The reason I’m telling you is because I think it’s a bit weird. She said Mike had been here recently and asked me if I’d seen him. (I hadn’t.) And she said she didn’t want anyone to know where she was and asked me not to post anything online about her. She said she was here for ‘peace and quiet’ but TBH I didn’t buy that. And there’s a guy here, bit of a creep, who she said tried to come on to her down by the beach. I don’t know if that means anything. And the cottages she stayed in are a bit of a weird place to stay by yourself. I don’t know, it’s all just a bit off.
As she read, Audrey felt a tingle travel down her spine.
She Googled Shanamore. It appeared to be a glorified crossroads near a seaweed-and-stones-strewn East Cork beach that was half an hour’s drive from everywhere else. Audrey vaguely recalled a primary school friend from Cork who’d spent her summers there and the rest of the year complaining about having to.
The village appeared to have a church, two pubs, a petrol station and some sort of arty-farty ‘design centre’ but not much else. Audrey could imagine that, on nice summer days, Shanamore was the quintessential Irish seaside day out. Sand and splashing and maybe a carton of chips for the drive home or a rapidly melting 99. But this was the dead of winter. The place must be cold and desolate and cloaked in darkness by five o’clock. Why would anyone go there now? Natalie’s Instagram chronicled mini-breaks to Paris and Rome, monthly trips to London and ‘me time’ in every spa resort on the island of Ireland. Why would she? And go there without telling her husband, and then start asking the locals about him once she’d arrived?
Before Audrey could let her imagination off the leash entirely, she needed proof that Orla wasn’t a whacko. She hit REPLY and asked for a scan of Natalie’s business card and Orla’s phone number.
Five minutes later, she had them.
Orla had also sent a link to a place called Shanamore Cottages. Clicking on it, Audrey discovered a complex of weird-looking holiday homes that definitely didn’t conjure up images of the Irish seaside. They stank of Celtic Tiger optimism and looked like they’d suffered neglect since. They were closer to the village than the beach and, according to the pictures on the website, there were only six of them, arranged in a U-shape. Their interiors, however, were modern and striking – or at least they appeared to be in the well-lit images on the website. Popular Instagrammers were always being offered free stays and comp’d trips, weren’t they? Was it possible that Natalie had been offered a free stay there? Could there be a legitimate reason why she’d kept that a secret?
A thought struck her: what if Natalie O’Connor was there right now?
Audrey pulled off her headphones and picked her phone up, then put it back down again. What was she doing, exactly? Joel had told her in no uncertain terms that she was done with Natalie O’Connor. Case closed. Or passed to proper reporters if and when something happened. Tomorrow, for Audrey, it was back to reality.
But …
What harm was there in making a phone call?
She picked up her phone again and tapped out the number from the Shanamore Cottages website.
It rang three times before a male voice answered with a dull ‘Hello?’
‘Hi,’ Audrey said. ‘Is that, ah, Shanamore Cottages?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Great. I hope you can help me … I’m trying to get in contact with my sister who I believe might be staying with you? We’ve had a family emergency and she isn’t answering her phone. Her name’s Natalie O’Connor.’
A beat passed. Then: ‘She’s not here.’
‘Oh.’ Audrey made a tut-tutting noise. ‘Damn. Maybe she left sooner than she planned to. Was she there?’
Another beat passed. But this one was followed by a click, then the irritating bleep of an engaged tone.
Whoever was answering the phone at Shanamore Cottages had just hung up on her.
Jennifer is in the back office when the email comes in. A bubble of hope rises in her heart when she sees Mike’s name, but then pops when she realises the message is just a Google Alert linking to an article that went live on ThePaper.ie an hour ago.
Gardaí appeal for information on missing Instagram star, the headline reads.
Jennifer mumbles some excuse to David, her assistant duty manager on second shift, and walks out of the back office. They’ve been allocating rooms – or trying to – for a group of ten pensioners arriving on Monday, all of whom want ground-floor rooms in a property that has only four and no lift. It should’ve been sorted out last week but Jennifer’s discovering that while she was off, everyone apparently decided to down tools and take a break.
Only after she’s locked herself into an empty cubicle does she click on the link.
Underneath the headline is a picture of Mike and Natalie on their wedding day. Jennifer scrolls past it and starts scanning the text.
There are quotes from Mike. He has participated in this article.
Jennifer doesn’t know how to feel about that.
She keeps reading.
After some crap about Natalie’s ‘success’ and a rehashing of the Garda appeal, they’ve pasted in the Instagram post. The suitcase one, Natalie’s last. Jennifer knows the caption off by heart, she’s read it so many times, convinced on each occasion that this time she’ll see something different, some word or phrase that suggests Natalie knew, that she’d found out about Mike and Jennifer and that’s why she’d walked out of the door that morning.
She reads the caption again now, her brain saying the next word before her eyes can see it.
Taking a fe
w days to myself. I hate to be one of those insufferable people who tell you they’re taking a break from their phone and social media by posting to social media using their phone, but I don’t want you thinking I’ve mysteriously disappeared. Sometimes I just need to live up to my own brand. Back soon! #outoftheoffice #timeout #andbreathe
Jennifer shakes her head and thinks, What a truckload of absolute shite. ‘Sometimes I just need to live up to my own brand’? What does that even mean?
The Paper understands that Ms O’Connor did not inform her husband, family or friends of her plans. Mr Kerr says he learned of them as Ms O’Connor’s online followers did: from her final social media post (above).
Then there’s a quote from Mike:
‘Natalie values her privacy. I know that seems like a weird thing for someone in her position to claim, but everything that goes up online is carefully chosen.’
Carefully chosen. That’s a dig at Natalie, it has to be. This makes Jennifer smile.
In response to questions about why he waited a week to report his wife missing, Mr Kerr said he believed his wife had planned to leave their home and was not in danger. He maintains that he didn’t want to ‘embarrass’ her with unnecessary media attention. The Paper has confirmed that Ms O’Connor cancelled an upcoming appointment via telephone and email before she left her home on the morning of 5 November.
Jennifer scrolls back up to the wedding picture and puts her thumb over Natalie’s face. Mike looks so handsome in a tux. He’ll look even better in one on their wedding day.
They haven’t spoken about it yet, but they don’t need to. There’s an understanding: this is it, for both of them. They’ve made enough mistakes on the way here. They won’t make another one by letting each other go now.
But their wedding will be small and special. Intimate. Private. Not the fucking tasteless sponsor spectacle The Influencer Bitch forced him to suffer through.
Jennifer is suddenly gripped by a desperate need to speak to Mike, so bad that she feels a sharp pain in her chest.
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