He reaches over to take his phone back, and I jerk away from him so abruptly, it jumps out of my hands, clattering to the pavement. Quickly, I duck down and snatch the phone back, but now it’s locked, and the video has stopped playing.
‘I’m so sorry – I just dropped it . . . I didn’t mean to—’
‘Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s fine,’ says Ansh, wiping a bit of dirt off of his screen once I pass it back to him. But his eyes are still narrowed as he slips the phone back into his pocket.
Then he focuses on my face. ‘Why are you so red?’
CHAPTER 32
Chloe
The photos open on Tom’s laptop in his bedroom are selfies of girls posing in bikinis. Not just one, but hundreds and hundreds of different women. Pouting, pushing their boobs out, winking seductively at the camera.
I stare, dumbfounded, as he clicks through them – his ears turning pink.
‘This is why I deleted my Instagram,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to have to show you.’
My eyes are flitting across the screen as though searching for answers.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, wincing at the thump in my head. ‘Why do you have so many photos of girls in bikinis?’
‘They were sent to me – hundreds of them. I started getting them a few days ago.’
‘From who?’
Tom frowns. ‘I don’t know. Probably a spambot. I just didn’t want you to see them on my phone . . . Look.’ Tom spins the laptop towards me. ‘At first, I started blocking these girls, thinking they were a prank, but they kept coming. I got Rishaan to track the IP addresses of each of the accounts though, and they all come from the same place. They couldn’t even be bothered to use a proxy.’
Tom sees my face and sighs. ‘I’m sorry. It’s so messed-up.’
I look down at my hands and see my fingers are shaking slightly.
Tom follows my gaze.
‘Hey, it’s OK.’ He comes over and wraps his arms around my shoulders. ‘It’s fine – I’ll run a virus scanner and reinstate my account once it’s cleaned up.’
But there’s a tightness in my throat. It’s like this madness is seeping into every part of my life. How can I stop these things from happening?
Is it Louise? Or Sven? J, even? Who at school would want to do something like this?
It feels humiliating that someone has the power to do this to me. I don’t want to tell anyone, I just want to make them stop.
I sniff hard and shake Tom’s arms off me.
‘It’s just a spambot, no big deal,’ he says.
My bottom lip starts to quiver. ‘It’s not just that. I think . . . I think whoever did this has sent messages to Louise too, or the other people at school. Everyone thinks I got with Jerome. And at school – today I got called into Ms Benewood’s office and was accused of sending topless photos of Louise that have been going around class from my email address. I’ve been suspended for five days.’
Tom steps back. His face has changed slightly. ‘You what?’
My eyes widen. ‘I didn’t send them. At least I don’t remember . . . I don’t know what’s going on!’ I say, and tears spill down my cheeks.
* * *
An hour later, after finishing two cups of tea, Tom is sitting at the edge of his bed a little way across from me, elbows resting forward on his thighs, staring into the mug in his hands.
He frowns. ‘So you honestly didn’t get with Jerome at the party? Or send those pictures?’
For a second, I open my mouth and tilt my head to one side, ready to admit the truth: I don’t know – I can’t remember. But then I look up and see his jaw is set. No, I don’t want to lose Tom again. I can’t deal with that – not now.
‘No. I . . . Yes, I’m sure I didn’t.’
Tom’s lip curls. ‘Sure?’
‘Definitely sure! I wouldn’t have done something like that.’
You might have . . .
Tom looks at me for a few seconds and then sighs. ‘Fine. If you genuinely didn’t do it—’
‘I didn’t. I promise!’
‘Well, yeah, sure. If you actually didn’t, then something’s seriously going on, and we need to sort it.’
I gnaw the inside of my cheek. ‘But how? We can hardly go to the police and say someone is spreading rumours about me, sending nudes from my emails, pretending to be me?’
Tom raises one eyebrow. ‘Well actually, we can – if you have proof. It’s not just school stuff – this is identity theft. There’s no way this is legal. I don’t know the law that well, but it’ll fall under something. Harassment – stalking, maybe.’
I’m beginning to feel a glimmer of hope. Maybe we can go to the police and get them to make this stop. Tom’s right – it can’t be legal to completely wreck someone’s life like this.
But what if there’s not someone else doing this to you? What if you’ve done it all yourself . . .
I shake my head as Tom goes on. ‘They’ll have ways of looking into this. Tracking what people have done. It’s all there, online. They’ll be able to find evidence.’
‘What if there’s no proof,’ I say before I can stop myself.
Tom’s face hardens. ‘Why would there be no—’
‘No, no! Sorry, that’s stupid. You’re right – they’ll be able to find something. Definitely.’
‘Well, yeah, if someone’s behind this, they will.’ Tom looks right at me.
Moving across the bed, I wrap my arms around him and rest my head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath his T-shirt, wishing this would all disappear.
CHAPTER 33
Amber
When I get in from school, I don’t say hello to Mum, Dad or Seb before going up to my room and slamming the door shut. It’s like my mind is screaming silently. I can feel the horror of what I said to Ansh. Him knowing I’ve looked at his Instagram, thinking I’m a sad, lonely stalker with no friends.
I force my face down into my soft duvet and let out a wail, muffled, so no one downstairs can hear. It’s like my thoughts are working on overdrive. I can’t make them stop; my whole body is flushing hot.
I need something to relax me. I need to feel better.
Frantically I pull out my phone and click through Ren’s social media pages. But there’s nothing new to distract me. I try a few of his friends’ Instagram profiles, but I’ve seen them all.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Wait a minute . . .
My eyes fall on a new image posted from one of the guys he plays football with. The image is tiny, and Ren is way, way in the back – you can only just about make out his face – but I instantly dash to my laptop and flip it open.
Biting my lip so hard it hurts, I screenshot the image on my phone, Facebook Messenger it to myself, and within seconds, I’ve downloaded it onto my laptop and added it to my slideshow.
I feel weirdly calm as I watch the images flick from one to another. But the more I watch them, the less it works, the more my back stiffens.
I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror. My eyes are slightly bloodshot from staring at the screen, and I have a huge pimple beneath my lip, which is so big, it almost looks like a second chin. Looking away, I focus on the dark wall of my room, realizing I never bothered to turn the light on when I came in.
As I look away from the screen, I feel a bit weird. To be honest, ever since I started trying to find out about whether Ren has been set up by Jerome, I’ve felt a bit weird.
It’s like . . . I shouldn’t be doing this.
No, not just that. It’s like I’m a freak.
I think again of my stupid comment to Ansh, and my eyes burn with tears of humiliation.
He’ll think I’m a freak, which I am. He’ll think I’m this obsessed stalker, which I also am.
I grimace at my black reflection in my phone screen. On the laptop, my tabs from last night are still open, and each one of them is on one of Ren’s social media p
rofiles.
Rhythmically, I click through them, in the same order I always do. Instagram main photos. Then tagged photos. Then the photos of his close friends. Their tagged photos. Then, once I’m sure there are no new posts, onto Twitter.
Next: the leisure centre. Their blog, Facebook page, any updates.
And finally I check his Facebook. He doesn’t use his Facebook that much; it hasn’t been updated in two months, which is why I always check it last.
Idly, I click refresh on his page.
A message pops up: One new update.
My heart actually skips a beat.
An update? But he hasn’t posted in the whole two months I’ve been watching his page.
I almost headbutt the screen, I lean forward so quickly to click on it. It’s a status post – a very long block of text.
Christ. And he’s mentioned the gym. This could tell me everything.
I grip the laptop so hard, it almost topples over my lap as I crane my neck to read it. I skim the post in double-quick time. He’s talking about his life, the last few months, how grateful he is to the people who actually believe him, how betrayed he feels, but how, despite everything, he’s staying strong and not going to let ‘pathetic liars’ get him down.
For the next ten minutes, I reread Ren’s words until they start to blur into one black smudge on the screen.
A girl from school, Tabetha, has commented underneath.
Tabetha Melton Pathetic? @IuliaAlexe have you seen this? You’re the only one who’s lying, mate.
In response, Iulia has just written one line:
IuliaAlexe This is too pathetic to respond to. We both know what you did to me.
I click on Iulia’s profile. Is she the third girl?
She’s the other trainee at the gym, the one with wavy, thick red hair. The one that helped me when I got stuck on the exercise bike. Who said hi to me at the garden centre.
My eyes dart across the screen.
The one who is down on the rota to open up the gym tomorrow.
CHAPTER 34
Chloe
Tom’s mum lets us borrow the car so he can drive me to the police station. We don’t tell her where we’re going – we just say we ‘fancy a drive’, as I can’t bear the thought of explaining the situation to even more people.
We drive in silence the whole way there, Tom clutching the steering wheel and staring ahead. I can’t work out what he’s thinking: whether he believes that I didn’t do any of it; or whether he secretly thinks (as even I do) that I might have.
Sitting in the passenger seat, it feels like every cell of my body is made of glass, and I could shatter at any moment.
‘This is it,’ says Tom, pulling the car up at the side of the road and squinting at his phone. ‘Yeah, this is the pin location. We’re here.’
The chill of the cool night air is seeping through the glass car windows. I shudder, and he glances over at me.
‘You OK?’
The tall building has Ferrington Town Constabulary written on a plaque to the right of the double wooden doors.
‘Mm-hmm,’ I mumble.
Tom leaves the car before I have time to hesitate. Gnawing the inside of my cheek, I hurriedly follow him inside.
There’s just one police officer sitting at the front desk, grinning and shouting something over his shoulder to one of his mates. When he sees us, he doesn’t stop laughing. In fact, he turns around and shouts something else.
We stand there silently for a moment before I clear my throat.
The round, fat-faced police officer glances at me with a grin.
‘Just a minute, darling,’ he says, and he gets up to go over to the officer behind him.
Tom reaches over and takes my hand. ‘You OK?’ he mouths.
I nod.
There’s a chill in the grey walls of the station, which is making me shiver. I pull the sleeves of my hoody over my hands and rub them together, fabric-to-fabric, to try to warm myself up.
After what seems like forever, the police officer returns.
‘Sorry about that,’ he wheezes, not sounding sorry at all. He sits down heavily on the other side of the desk. ‘What can I do for you two?’
Tom takes out his phone and opens his mouth, but I don’t want him to say it for me. I take a deep breath.
‘I’d like to file a police report. I think I’m being . . . well, I am being . . . um, harassed. Online.’
‘And she’s a victim of identity theft,’ adds Tom.
‘Harassed?’ says the officer, his eyebrows shooting up. ‘And identity theft?’
‘Yes. Well I think so,’ I say.
I glance over at Tom, who nods encouragingly.
Slowly, I tell the police officer everything. As I speak, Tom points to screenshots, emails and notes we’ve collected on his phone. The police officer doesn’t take any notes. He eyes both of us with a bored look. After a couple of minutes, he speaks.
‘Miss – what was it? Mac . . .?’
‘MacNeil.’ My voice is oddly quiet.
‘Miss MacNeil.’ He stands up and begins to walk across the room. ‘Come through here, please. I’ll need to ask you a few questions.’
He nods to indicate that Tom can accompany me, and we follow him into a bare side room with a table and three cheap plastic chairs. He pulls one out and sits down, indicating for us to do likewise.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he says.
I shake my head.
He leans back slowly in his chair, raises his eyebrows at me, and sighs.
‘None of what you’ve just described to me is a crime.’
I glance at Tom, whose cheeks are turning pink.
I raise my eyebrows. ‘None of it?’
The police officer shakes his head. ‘Sadly, no.’
‘What about impersonating me? Contacting people I know?’
The police officer’s eyes are lolling around, glancing at the walls.
‘Look. Pretending to be someone – for a bit, on social media – just isn’t a crime.’ There’s starting to be an edge to his voice. ‘And do you have any evidence of who is behind it?’
A chilled feeling rises in my throat. ‘No, but you can . . . look at people’s phones. For evidence.’
The police officer bites his lip, apparently to stop himself laughing. ‘We can’t do that without a warrant. And we don’t have any evidence to justify that kind of intrusion into people’s privacy.’
I can feel the familiar stirring in my stomach returning.
‘What about the harassment?’ I say suddenly, nodding to my phone. ‘Tom got hundreds of requests from naked girls on his Instagram.’
The police officer looks like he is trying not to laugh. He shakes his head at Tom and turns to me. ‘Have you ever felt scared for your life?’ he says.
There’s a pause. I think back to the fear I felt looking at my phone. The crazy, out-of-control feeling of not knowing what’s happening.
Scared for my life?
‘No.’
‘Did any of these people ever physically threaten you?’
‘Um, no—’
The police officer presses on, seeming to enjoy this.
‘Have you ever been sexually intimate with the guy you suspect is behind this?’
My eyebrows shoot up.
‘What? No! I don’t even know—’ But even as I say it, I can feel my cheeks inflaming.
The police officer takes a sip of his tea and leans forward. ‘Now, how old is Louise? And what exactly do the pictures that were sent round of her show?’
An icy chill trickles down my spine. ‘How old is Louise?’ I whisper.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘If she’s under eighteen, and the image is sexual in nature, then the person who sent that is breaking the law.’ He puts down his pen. ‘It is illegal to make, distribute, possess or show any indecent images of anyone aged under eighteen, even if the image was created with the supposed consent of that young person.’
My mouth
drops open. Why on earth did I come here? Those images were from my email address – I’m going to end up in prison . . .
The police officer misinterprets my silence and sighs. ‘I’m not trying to upset you. I’m just asking routine questions that make it possible for me to file a report. I can speak to your school if you like, to find out more.’
The thought of people at school looking into who actually sent those messages, knowing for certain whether it was me, makes me feel like I’m really going to throw up.
‘No! No—’ My voice cracks. ‘It’s fine. I’ll just keep an, um, record.’
‘Yes. And if you receive any physically threatening messages, let me know.’
‘I will – I will,’ I mumble.
The police officer stands up, pushing back his chair, and claps his hands together.
‘Right, then. There you go.’
He smiles broadly, and all the tension from before comes pulsing back.
CHAPTER 35
Amber
The next morning, I don’t even notice the icy chill of the air as I walk towards the leisure centre. Or the fact that my eyes are stinging, head is thumping, from lack of sleep. It’s just after 6.30 a.m., and I stayed up until 2 a.m. last night trying to work out how I’m going to get Iulia to tell me what happened.
I mean, I can hardly just rock up and ask her what she thinks of Ren, can I? I’ve got to do something cleverer. I’ve got to think. But my brain is thick like treacle. And there’s this aching crick in my neck from staring at all those screens that I can’t shake.
I huddle down lower into my coat and refresh my Snap Map page a few times, though Ren is stubbornly offline. Stepping into the leisure centre, it takes me under a minute to rush to the changing room and get into my PE outfit.
Pretty soon I’m standing by the running machine, with Iulia perched the other side of the room. I keep glancing at her, and after a while, she catches my eye. I quickly put my head down – but she’s already making a beeline for me.
I jab the buttons on the pad at random. There’s a bleep from the machine, which makes me jump.
‘Hey,’ says Iulia in a soft, light tone, her red hair bouncing either side of her round face. ‘Do you need any help with your fitness routine?’
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