Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists. Erin Knight
‘I need you on board, Soph. I don’t have techy colleagues like you. You said you’d help.’
‘I should never have told you about all this. Just because some IT boffin who couldn’t take a joke managed to catch out one of our stupid interns doesn’t mean we should start gallivanting around like Sherlock and Watson. This whole idea is totally fucking stupid . . . Sorry.’
‘You’re right, it is.’
‘I should never have told you about it,’ Sophie repeated. But her revelation had galvanised Isobel, just at the right moment. There was a way to track the monster.
‘This idea dragged me out of the dark, Soph. The thought of wearing a deerstalker hat and puffing on a big old pipe was just too tempting.’ Sophie wasn’t in the mood for jokes. She hated it now, her own throwaway suggestion, every last part of it. And so she should. Any sister would. And yes, the landscape had changed since, but a fact was still a fact: Isobel would still be sitting in Jenny’s therapy sessions if Sophie hadn’t told her there were ways to hook a troll. ‘For the first time in nearly two years I feel like I’m taking control again, Sophie. Like I might take something back from him.’
She’d stared at DEEP_DRILLERZ’s profile picture until her eyes ached. It hadn’t shown his face of course, just his arrogance. She’d committed the image to memory. Ocean in the distance, war memorial on the right. Guitar slung across his back while he peed up a postbox painted gold in honour of the town’s resident Paralympian. He’d casually desecrated that monument the way he’d casually desecrated Isobel’s life, just because he could.
‘Okay, Isobel. Okay. Tell me what I can do to help this stupid idea along.’
Isobel returned the image of DEEP_DRILLERZ’s profile to that dark place in her brain where she kept it tucked into a little forensic file. ‘I was kinda hoping you had that side of things covered actually, Soph.’
‘Yes. I thought you would be. Okay, Isobel, if we’re going ahead with this, here’s what I think we should do. First, I’m going to set you up on Facebook again.’
‘Wait, I don’t want—’
‘I’ll set up some fake friends for you, too. Play out a little interaction between accounts.’
‘But won’t other people see? People who know me, I mean? They’ll think I’m online again.’
‘No, they shouldn’t do, because it’s fake. Yes, it’ll be your name and stuff, but there are millions of Facebook accounts and this one’s not going to be linked to anyone we know, so no one will get a suggestion to hook up with you. It’s just for background. Fake background.’
‘Sounds so easy. Faking it.’
‘I’ll do the same with a few other networks, but it’s the blog that’s the critical bit. That’s where we’ll look out for him.’
Heat crept up Isobel’s neck. This had all been hypothetical, until now. Now it had legs. She would have to log on again. Tumble down the rabbit hole where all the dirt and darkness and crap had nearly suffocated her last time. ‘How often will I have to go on all of these pages?’ Tiny beads of sweat were pooling behind her knees. She jimmied the iron latch beside her and pushed the cottage window open. Cool air greeted her.
‘Never by yourself. That’s the deal. I’ll man the accounts, buffer anything unpleasant if it comes. You are not doing anything that could undo any of the progress you’ve made since last summer, understood? Or I’m out.’
The coolness blowing through the cottage and Sophie’s no-nonsense stance were strangely calming. ‘Understood.’
‘So we need to catch his attention. It’s not like he’s going to spot you hanging around and ask if he can join you for brunch.’
‘Wasn’t actually planning on letting him get that close, Soph.’
‘Good. That’s good. So we need to draw him out. First online, then . . .’
‘Then?’
‘We’ll think about that if we get to it. So I’ll set everything up, get Isobel Hedley back out there again, living, breathing, doing normal stuff. Enjoying life. See if it’s enough to prick his interest. Chances are he’s not going to just stumble across Isobel Hedley, not unless he’s still looking you up. Which is a pretty freaking creepy prospect. My guess is he’s moved on to his next target. Scrotbag.’
The thought of him ‘looking her up’ made Isobel want to heave. ‘Then what? Either way, I mean? What if he’s not looking out for me? What if he is?’
‘Either way, we bait the hook. See what bites.’
Cleo thought she could taste a hint of blood at the back of her throat. Any second now she’d cough up a lung. ‘Good God, Evie, people do this for fun?’
‘Doesn’t Sarah do it for fun?’ panted Evie.
‘Sarah? Will and Max’s mum Sarah? Not likely!’ One of the reasons Cleo had quickly become drawn to Sarah (aside from Harry and Will’s mutual love of karate-chopping Evie’s Barbie lunchbox on their very first day at Hornbeam) was their shared hatred for exercise. Cleo actually went one further and harboured a quiet loathing for exercisers themselves, specifically those women who spent their mornings in gym gear, transforming themselves like little keep-fit butterflies into full make-up and Uggs by afternoon pickup.
‘Mr Hildred’s always telling the Year Eleven boys how men flirt with her. Does she go running over the bluff with him? She is quite trim . . . for an older woman.’
‘Who, Sarah? She’s thirty-nine, Evie.’ God, it was too hard to speak. She was going to collapse on the sand in a minute, give herself to the shore like a resigned whale. The thought alone weakened her. She held a hand up in defeat. ‘I think I’m dying, Eves.’
Evie slowed and planted both hands on her knees. ‘Come on, Mum, just down to the jetty and back. One last push.’
Push? Push? Cleo had pushed two 6lb babies out of her body with only the midwives to scream at – that was pushing. This was plain horrific. ‘I can’t, Eves, I can’t make it. I know I probably look like a runner, but this . . . this was never for me.’ She batted a hand weakly at Evie. ‘Go on without me, I’ll watch.’
Evie straightened up and winced towards the ocean. Cleo caught a glimpse of the little girl she used to watch paddling along the shore, dipping her bottom in the water, shrieking with delight as the tide slid over her feet. She’d been going to save this for later. ‘Eves, I was thinking, in bed last night . . .’ Evie set her hands on her hips, Cleo’s little girl gone again, a frowning teenager with boobs and dilemmas in her place. ‘These remarks, on your Facebook account and things . . .’
Evie looked towards the ocean. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Surprise, surprise. Teenage girls didn’t want to nip nasty little social issues in the bud with help from the school shrink, they wanted to do it with alcopops and tremulous diary entries. Sam thought Cleo was overreacting of course, but what if it wasn’t just a bit of name-calling? What if Evie really was teetering on the edge of some seismic social shift at school? What then? One mismanaged move and all this Facebook business could throw a great big jagged fault line right down the middle of her GCSEs.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of, Eves. So Dad and I were wondering if, just hear me out, if you wanted to . . .’ How was she going to put this? ‘ . . . go and have a chat with Mr Hildred? If you’ve anything on your mind? You don’t have to come to me or Dad, although that’s obviously what we’d really like you to do, but if you don’t want to there are other options, and Jon, Mr Hildred, is so easy to talk to and he’s very discreet. He has to be, doesn’t he? And he knows the laws of the school jungle and, well,