Follow Me Back

by Nicci Cloke

  I look at Scobie. My friend. My best friend, looking back at me as if I’m scum. My best friend who’s been lying to me all this time. Who just pushed me in front of a train. Who I’ve been lying to, too.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ I ask.

  We’re clogging up the flow now, standing at the foot of the escalators, people tutting and shooting glares at us as they have to skirt round. Scobie leans closer.

  ‘We’re going to find out what happened to her.’

  ‘Me and you?’

  ‘Me and you. You owe her that.’

  And because I know he’s right, I follow him onto the escalator.

  LIZZIE

  THE DAY THE phone rang, I was home alone, watching a re-run of Spoilt in the Suburbs while I fried a Nutella sandwich in a pan. I was hungover and feeling lonely, I guess, but in that weird way when you know that if someone actually did show up, you wouldn’t feel like talking to them. I flicked through Facebook while I ate my sandwich. Messages from Lauren, who’d been sick on her new suede boots the night before and – less surprisingly – cheated on Deacon. And from Oli, a guy from the Upper Sixth who I’d been hanging out with at the party. I’d let him kiss me, and I’d gone upstairs with him, but then I got bored. His messages were boring, too – but not as boring as having nobody to message.

  So I replied, lying on my front on my bed, laptop and half-eaten sandwich in front of me, the TV on for company. Spoilt in the Suburbs was over so I watched some cooking dating show thing and thought about how the girl on it was too pretty for the guy she was making dinner for. I told Oli I was watching a horror film and I was scared, and he said I could hide behind him anytime I wanted.

  Predictable.

  I rolled onto my back and found my phone under the pillow. I had a text from my mum – they’d be home late, they’d ended up meeting some friends in town for lunch. I saw one from Marnie that I must have opened half-asleep that morning.

  Are you okay? it read. Just got your voicemail. Call me. Followed by about a million kisses. Which probably meant I’d called her drunk and cried about Aiden. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to talk to him all the time and I couldn’t, because he’d ruined it.

  And then my phone rang. A number I didn’t recognise, so I normally wouldn’t have picked up. But I suddenly remembered the guy with the pretty eyes I’d met on my way home the night before, so I answered, one hand wandering for the other half of my sandwich.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi.’ His voice so calm, so gentle. ‘Lizzie?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s Hal.’

  Hal. I sat up, my heart thumping. He called. He actually called. I’d been waiting for this moment since the beginning of summer.

  ‘Hi.’ Be cool.

  The truth is, there was something special about Hal. He knew how to make me laugh, knew instinctively the things that would annoy me and the way to cheer me up about them. When I had a bad day or a good day, it was Hal I wanted to speak to, Hal I immediately typed a message to. He’d started out as second best to Aiden but he was so much better.

  Except for the fact that he wouldn’t meet me. He wouldn’t call either, and he always had a good reason – his phone was broken or the reception was bad or all of the above – and I couldn’t argue with it. But he was there, even late at night or early in the morning, when I wanted, needed, to talk. And that was worth way more than the boys with pretty eyes or the ones I kissed in back gardens or bathrooms.

  But now he had called. Now I was hearing his voice. Without even thinking, I put a hand up and smoothed down my hair.

  ‘How you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m good.’ Did I sound breathless? I felt breathless.

  ‘Good.’ The hint of a smile in his voice. I clicked on his profile picture on Facebook, imagined the corners of his mouth twitching.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m okay. Listen, I’ve got the whole day free. Do you want to meet up?’

  I got up and started rifling through my wardrobe. ‘Umm. Today? I don’t know if… In London?’

  ‘Yeah babe.’ Babe. It went through me, a bolt of the best feeling ever. ‘Just a little train ride, right?’

  He was quoting my words back to me. I’d said it to him so many times, trying to persuade him to come and see me. I could hardly argue.

  ‘Okay. Yeah, I think I could make it.’ I’d already plugged my straighteners in, had half a face of foundation on. ‘Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘There’s a bar,’ he said. ‘Up in Angel. It’s not too far from King’s Cross. The Winchester?’

  ‘Can you send me directions?’ I asked, already Googling it.

  ‘Sure, babe,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  When we hung up, I looked at myself in the mirror. This is it, I thought. This guy is perfect.

  AIDEN

  THE SUN CREEPS out from behind the clouds as we sit in the square, not looking at each other.

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell me you knew?’ I ask. ‘Why pretend to be my friend?’

  Scobie scuffs his trainers against the pavement, looks away. ‘I was your friend. I just… I didn’t realise how much it upset her until we got back to school. And you didn’t do anything. You didn’t even care. And then she disappeared, and you just seemed like you wanted to get away from her, put as much distance as you could –’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I say, hotly. ‘I’ve been trying to find her! It’s all I’ve been thinking about.’

  ‘Only because Marnie asked you!’

  I shake my head. ‘No. That’s not true, Scobie. And what you said, about coming back to school after the summer – I tried so hard, all I wanted was to make it right. But she wouldn’t let me, she shut me down. She ignored my calls, my texts, everything. She told me to leave her alone. And I didn’t want to hurt her any more, so I did.’

  He scoffs. ‘That’s not why. You were a coward, so you took the easy way out and let her ignore you.’

  I’m about to argue, but the words feel weak in my mouth. Because he’s right. Her rejections hurt too much, so I just stopped trying. And look what’s happened.

  ‘I never knew you cared about her,’ I say softly.

  He glances at me. ‘You never asked.’

  I look at the people waiting to cross the road, the sky turning a violent purple behind them, the sun making orange bands across it as it sinks.

  ‘Always,’ Scobie says suddenly. ‘Even at primary school, I reckon. She was so kind. To everyone, you know? And quiet, but not in a shy way, not like me. Just quiet because she didn’t need to be loud.’

  I nod. I know.

  ‘When we were at Aggers, she didn’t pay much attention to me,’ he continues, looking out at the sky, at the clock on St Pancras as time ticks by. ‘But I didn’t mind. I was happy to just be her friend. And I was happy when you two made friends.’ He shoots me a look. ‘I thought you were a decent bloke.’

  I close my eyes. I thought so too.

  ‘If I could take it back –’

  ‘Yeah, well, you can’t,’ he says briskly. ‘So you’re going to have to make up for it instead.’

  I look at him warily. ‘How can I do that?’

  He gets out his phone, unlocks it, and shows it to me. I take it from him and I need a minute to process what I’m seeing.

  ‘Is this –’

  ‘The Facebook page we made. Yes.’

  ‘But, Scobes, this has like, half a million followers.’

  He nods, unsmiling. ‘I know.’

  I gape at him. ‘How did you do this?’

  He shrugs. ‘I got Aimee Burton from Spoilt in the Suburbs to tweet the link. And then some guy off that Chelsea programme retweeted her tweet. Then things started getting busier.’

  I look back at the page. You can say that again. It’s packed with posts, people writing places they think they saw Lizzie, people sharing the page on their own newsfeed – I see Aimee Burton’s name again: Guys, please che
ck this out… FIND LIZZIE! In the comments, hundreds of people have tagged their friends.

  ‘This is incredible,’ I say, more to myself than to him.

  ‘Yeah, so, obviously there’s too much stuff to sift through,’ Scobie says, taking the phone back from me. ‘So I decided to be more specific.’ He scrolls the page to a post from him, and shows it to me.

  Thanks for all your support. Lizzie was seen getting on the 18:06 train on Saturday 8th October. It was a slow train, which means she would have arrived at London King’s Cross at 19:03. Were you in the area? Please share your photos – any sighting of Lizzie might help.

  PLEASE SHARE

  He posted it at 11:36 today. Less than four hours later, it’s been shared 10,000 times. It has 236 comments underneath it. My eyes widen.

  Photo after photo of King’s Cross, from all angles. Crowds and crowds of people; inside the station, outside the station, posing in the foregrounds, weighed down with suitcases. Five posts in a row that feature a hen party, all posing round the bride, bright pink sashes slashed across their bunny girl costumes. Loads and loads of the Harry Potter trolley that’s glued to the wall inside the station, people of all ages and races posing with it. Hope that helps! people write, and Thinking of Lizzie!

  I think she’s there on the left, maybe? a girl’s commented on one. Could be her just by that door… someone’s put after another.

  ‘This will take hours to go through,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ Scobie says, taking his phone back. ‘It did. Thankfully for you, I already have.’

  He opens the gallery on his phone. ‘I’ve saved the important ones. You might have to zoom.’

  In a folder entitled ‘Lizzie KingsX’ there are three photos. My heart skips at the thought that three strangers have, without realising, seen Lizzie since she left. My hands feel damp as I open the first. It’s one of the Potter shots, a group of lads messing around, pretending to be running at the wall. There’s a crowd of people waiting their turn, and I zoom in further and push the photo around the screen, checking each person in turn. It’s not until I go round a second time that I see her. She’s coming out of the gates from the platforms, so she must have just got off the train.

  ‘No luggage,’ Scobie says, from over my shoulder, and he’s right. Just Lizzie in a navy coat, skirt, tights and boots, with a yellow handbag no bigger than my fist strung across her body. I’m frozen for a moment, looking at her. She’s almost looking at the camera, her attention caught by Harry’s trolley, and there’s a trace of a smile on her face; the beginning or end of one. I think, without meaning to, of our conversation about St Pancras again, and I wonder if she paused outside the station and looked up at the red bricks, at the clock. I wonder if she thought of me.

  Scobie reaches over and slides to the next photo, as if to say, We haven’t got all day.

  This one is outside the station, and in the foreground is a group of teenagers, girls and boys, all wearing red hoodies with a logo that’s too small to make out in one corner. They’re all good-looking and tanned and grinning, with huge, overstuffed backpacks lolling on the floor in front of them. A school group, maybe from somewhere overseas. I zoom in and scan the crowd behind them, and then I see Lizzie over one guy’s shoulder. She’s heading for the camera, her face determined. I glance behind me, in the direction she’d have been looking.

  The row of bus stops.

  ‘And then –’ Scobie flicks over to the last photo.

  This one is the best quality, the closest shot. It’s two guys taking a selfie at a bus stop, one of them kissing the other’s cheek, both of them grinning. Behind them is Lizzie, or three-quarters of her face, one corner just blocked by the guy holding the camera, the one on the right. She’s turned towards the camera, but not looking at it – looking at something beyond it, her hair blown back from her face.

  ‘A bus,’ I say. ‘There was a bus coming.’

  ‘I think so,’ Scobie says.

  I scan the photo, zoomed out this time, but because it’s a selfie there isn’t much in the frame. It’s too close to see which bus stop they’re at. I look beyond Scobie, towards the edge of the square. There are three bus stops, and another set on the other side of the road. At least twelve different buses stop here.

  ‘I wrote back to the guy,’ Scobie says. ‘They didn’t see which bus she got on. But they got on the 30, so they were waiting at that stop.’ He points to the first one in the row. ‘Six different buses stop there.’

  ‘Well, it’s something,’ I say, although it doesn’t feel like much.

  Scobie takes his phone and clicks on his inbox. ‘There’s something else,’ he says. ‘Some guy sent me a private message – look.’

  I scan over it quickly.

  hey. saw ur page n it got me thinkin cos it was my bday that night, and we were around kings cross n angel, up the road. anyway, i checked the photos & i think lizzie *might* be in one of em. see what you think – im gonna send to the police too.

  I look at the photo he’s attached. It’s really blurry, like the person who took it was moving, and the bar is really crowded too – a big smudge of faces. But there is a blonde girl, caught in profile, a dark bulk which I think is a jacket over one arm.

  I zoom in closer, but that just makes the image all pixellated, so I zoom out again and study it. It could be Lizzie; the same shaped face, same hair. And then I see it.

  ‘The handbag.’

  Scobie nods. ‘Yeah. It’s the same one, right?’

  Small and yellow and strung across her body. ‘Yeah.’ I look at the photo some more. ‘It’s got to be her, right?’

  He makes a face. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s worth checking out.’

  ‘Where is this place?’ Before he can answer, I scroll the page down and see him asking this guy that exact thing.

  angel, he’s replied. bottom of essex road.

  I look at Scobie. ‘And I suppose you know exactly which bus goes there?’

  He rolls his eyes at me, as if this is the stupidest question he’s ever heard. ‘Three of them, actually.’

  ‘And they all go from –’

  ‘That stop, yes.’

  On any other day, in any other situation, I would find it funny how Scobie’s always one step ahead. But with ‘Autumn’s’ words still fresh in my memory, Scobie’s handprints still burning on my back, I’m finding it anything but.

  But then I look at Lizzie. I flick back and look at the picture of her at the bus stop, of her coming out of the station. And I feel something. I feel as if she’s beside me, as if she’s whispering right in my ear.

  Follow me, she says.

  SCOBIE

  I SHOULD FEEL bad, but I don’t. Then again, maybe I should feel glad. And I don’t.

  Seeing his face when he turned round and realised should have felt great, but it didn’t. Instead I just saw Lizzie on that night, running through the bushes at the back of the Rec car park. Just the moonlight behind her, blood running down her face.

  I was out there looking for Aiden. Some people would call that ironic, although it isn’t ironic, just a coincidence. Not even a coincidence. A funny little side note: I was out there looking for Aiden, while Lizzie was out there trying to get away from him.

  She stopped when she saw me. She was breathing fast and crying.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Are you okay?’ And she fell into my arms and she cried and cried. ‘Follow me,’ I said, and I led her away and found us a bench. She told me everything.

  When I got back, the car park was flashing blue and Aiden and Deacon Honeycutt were being loaded into separate ambulances.

  Maybe I would’ve said something the next day when I went round there, if I’d seen him. But I didn’t. His car was on the drive but when I knocked on the door, his stepdad said Aiden and his mum had gone to London for the day. Seemed a funny thing to do – a day trip, when everyone was saying him and Honeycutt were going to get kicked out of sixth form before they’d even started,
when Lizzie had told him that she was pregnant. But families are funny, I guess.

  So I went to Lizzie’s instead. I sat in her room, on the end of her bed, while she stayed tucked up under her duvet. Her eyes were all puffy from crying, but the cut on her head was just a scratch, scabbed up already – it didn’t look so bad in the daylight.

  But he didn’t know that.

  She did the test that day. I bought it for her, from the little chemist out by the garage, where I didn’t think anyone would know me. Not that it mattered. Nobody in this town knows me.

  The test was negative. But he didn’t know that either.

  I asked if she’d spoken to him, and she shook her head and started crying again. I didn’t like that. I did not like that. He’d hurt her and then he’d just run away from the whole mess. Lizzie is a good person. A kind person. She didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Nobody deserves to be treated like that.

  It made me hate him, which is not a feeling I’ve really felt before. It was interesting.

  I left Lizzie’s that day and waited for Aiden to call me, but he didn’t. The next time I spoke to him was on Facebook, and he told me he was at his dad’s. They’d shipped him off to London a week early, and he was going to spend the whole summer there. Which was the normal routine, I guess. But it was all normal. When I saw him the day he got back, he was normal. He didn’t act like someone who might have got a girl pregnant, or had pushed that girl down the stairs, or who had stained the Rec car park with his and another kid’s blood (from what I hear, it was mostly Deacon’s blood) and who might have lost his place in sixth form for it. He was normal. We played Call of Duty. I won. We played FIFA. He won. We went and sat by the river. We walked around town. He drove us to McDonalds.

  The hate turned to something a bit colder, but a kind of cold that burned. I wanted to push him. I’d watched Lizzie’s Instagram pictures get less like her and more like Lauren; I’d watched her change because of him and I wanted to push him more. So I started to think about the ways in which I could get to him. Just in case. I started collecting my own pictures; photos of a pretty girl he almost knew. Someone who could sweet-talk her way in.