I hesitate. This is typical Rose, making snide comments rather than a direct accusation. It makes it almost impossible to react . . . if I say something in response I’m kind of admitting I know she’s referring to me. Which feels like it would be an admission of guilt.
I look away, still unsure what to do. By the time I look back, Rose and Minnie have gone. The situation gets worse through the day. Rose posts one of the SweetFreak private messages on YouTube: the one with the pig with Amelia’s face landing on a house that Amelia shared with a few of us the day she received it.
Rose says she’s done it in order to show everyone how nasty SweetFreak is, but I think the real reason is to put herself right in the middle of the whole drama. Whatever her motive, everywhere I go I seem to see people in small groups watching the horrible thing then looking at me with appalled faces and whispering behind their hands.
I’d seriously rather they challenged me directly.
It’s always a bit odd when Amelia is away from school – we spend so much time together and always partner up in our shared classes. But this is in another league. I don’t think I’ve ever had a day feeling so isolated and miserable in my life, and that includes my first day at secondary school – which was awful up to the point halfway through the morning when I met Amelia. We’ve been inseparable ever since.
As I leave school there’s only one thing on my mind: I have to talk to Amelia right now. And if she won’t answer my calls, I’m going round to her house. I’m aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, that this flies in the face Mum’s warning about not pestering Amelia, but if Mum had seen what it was like for me at school she’d understand. I have to make sure Amelia knows I’m innocent. At this point she’s the only person who can make the rumours that are swirling around me disappear.
I head straight for Amelia’s house. I don’t exactly know what I’m going to say, but I don’t stop to worry about it. I stand on her doorstep and ring the bell. There’s no answer at first. Which often happens. Amelia’s house is twice the size of ours.
Her mum and stepdad are away from home on work almost all the time – the Wilsons have always had someone living in: when I first met Amelia she still had a nanny, but for the past few years there has just been a succession of au pairs.
I’m anticipating one of these opening the door right now, though I’m hoping it will be Amelia, so it’s a shock when I come face to face with Amelia’s mother. She’s wearing leggings and a designer-looking smock top – she’s about half Mum’s size and wears twice as expensive clothes – and there are dark rings under her eyes. Her mouth drops open as she sees me.
‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she snarls.
Her tone is so ferocious I actually take a step back along the slate path.
‘I want to speak to Amelia,’ I say. ‘Is she in?’
Amelia’s mum shakes her head. ‘You’ve got no idea, do you? Amelia’s devastated. I’ve been up with her all night. Her brother’s upset. Her father’s furious. I’ve had to take the day off.’
‘Oh, poor you.’ The sarcasm shoots out of me before I can stop myself. How typical of Mrs Wilson to be more worried about the impact of the death threat on herself than on her daughter. ‘I understand Amelia’s upset. But I didn’t do anything. I want to talk to her, make sure she understands that, because—’
‘Go away,’ Amelia’s mum spits.
I stand my ground but inside I’m quaking. Mostly from shock. I’ve only met Mrs Wilson a few times – she’s normally at work when I’m over – and she’s never been warm or friendly, but this is outright hostility.
‘I need to see Amelia.’ I sound more upset than I want to, almost close to tears. Mrs Wilson is unmoved. She’s actually shutting the door on me, when Amelia herself appears in the background. She looks paler than ever, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.
‘Carey?’ she says, her voice breaking. ‘What are you doing here?’
I step forward, pushing the door back against Amelia’s mum. ‘I had to see you,’ I gabble. ‘I didn’t do anything. You have to believe me. I’d never do—’
‘Amelia, go to your room,’ her mum snaps.
Amelia shrinks back.
‘Wait.’ I push my way into the hall. ‘Please.’ Tears prick at my eyes. I can’t bear this: my best friend so upset. The enormity of the situation boils up inside me – our whole friendship is at stake. ‘It wasn’t me,’ I plead. ‘I think maybe it was my sister.’
Amelia’s mother shakes her head. ‘I’d like you to leave, please, Carey.’
‘Come on,’ I urge Amelia. ‘You know why Poppy might have done it.’ I meet her gaze, trying to convey, without spelling out, what Poppy’s motivation might have been in front of Amelia’s mum.
Amelia’s lip trembles. It feels like she wants to believe me. If only her stupid mother would get out of the way, but she’s hovering beside me, radiating anger.
‘Please leave,’ Mrs Wilson snaps again.
‘Wait, Mum.’ A tear trickles down Amelia’s cheek as she faces me. ‘I just don’t know, Carey.’
‘Know what?’ I ask, bewildered.
‘It’s . . . well . . . yesterday, when I got to school and showed you that horrible, horrible message . . .’ She shudders, looking down at the polished wood floor at her feet. ‘When you saw it you . . . you said “she” when we were talking about SweetFreak. How did you know it was a girl if it wasn’t you?’
‘I didn’t know . . . I just assumed because . . . I don’t know.’ I stare at her, feeling desperate.
‘And calling me Princess in the message.’ Her voice drops so that her mother can’t hear her. ‘I know you’ve called me that behind my back.’
I shake my head. But it’s true, of course, though how Amelia has found out I can’t imagine. One of the girls at school, I’m guessing.
‘Getting that last message was so awful because it was you,’ she continues softly. ‘I can’t bear the thought that you were laughing at me behind my back the whole time.’
‘I wasn’t.’ Tears bubble into my eyes. ‘And I can’t bear you thinking I would,’ I say, my voice cracking with emotion.
There’s a long pause. Amelia’s lip trembles. I hold my breath, sensing I’m getting through to her. Her mum stands between us, arms folded, tense with repressed anger. She’s clearly itching to resume her attempt to throw me out of the house.
‘I didn’t send those messages,’ I plead. ‘I’d never do anything like that.’
‘Please go upstairs, Amelia,’ her mother orders.
Amelia turns away obediently and walks towards the staircase.
‘Wait,’ I call out. ‘Please.’ My hands are clenched tight. ‘Please, Amelia. I wouldn’t believe this if someone said it about you.’
Amelia stops at the foot of the stairs. She puts her hand on the bannister as if to steady herself. For a moment I think she’s going to turn around, then her mum lets out an exasperated sigh and Amelia trudges up the stairs.
I watch, misery sinking inside me like a stone. Amelia’s mum takes the front door, ready to shut it on me. She towers over me in her heels.
‘Out.’ Mrs Wilson speaks with an icy finality.
Tears blind me as I stumble along the path, away from the house.
6
I spend the whole of the next day in a state of numb misery. Amelia doesn’t return to school and is still refusing to take or return my calls. I cling to the fact that I was starting to get through to her but it’s hard. I still can’t get my head around how quick she has been to believe I would be cruel to her.
She’s not the only one.
The rumours about me are getting wilder and wilder. Everyone’s seen the death threat video as well as the pig film now. Someone – not Rose this time but a guy in Amelia’s brother’s year – got hold of it and posted it on the main NatterSnap feed, tagging me, and it’s been reposted and commented on more times than I can see on my own feed. As far as I can make out everyone who’s seen it believes that I not
only sent the death threat but am seriously intent on carrying it out. I catch snippets of conversations as I walk along corridors and, on several occasions, when I’m in the loos on the second floor – the school’s most popular indoor hideaway.
‘She actually has a knife . . .’
‘I heard she’s made one attempt on the other girl’s life already . . . been stalking her out of school for months . . .’
‘My friend told me that she’s got a record, but her parents kept it from the school . . .’
And it’s the same online, where two of the milder comments include:
‘Apparently after she sent the death threat, she lay in wait but the other girl got away . . .’
‘She stabbed her in a fight . . . the police would arrest her but there aren’t any witnesses . . .’
It’s all untrue, of course, every last bit of it, but nobody cares about that. Scandal is like money – a way of trading things, in this case: information.
The fact that Amelia is staying off school is fuelling the hysteria; in the absence of proper information it’s not surprising wild rumours are circulating.
This is bad enough from the people who don’t know me. But what really hurts is how many people in my form who I’ve known for three whole years are joining in. Amelia might be my bestie, but I’ve always been friendly with everyone. Why does nobody stand up for me? Tell the rest that there’s no way I could threaten anyone? Is it that they think I’m guilty? Or are they just keeping their heads down, unwilling to swim against the tide and support me in the face of everyone else’s hostility?
I almost wish someone would confront me directly. At least then I’d have something to react to. But instead it’s all hushed whispers and awkward silences whenever I walk into the room.
I don’t tell anyone what’s going on. The teachers must know why Amelia isn’t here and what I’ve been accused of. They don’t speak to me directly about it, of course, but I catch plenty of sideways glances, as if they’re suspicious of me too: unconvinced I’m definitely guilty, but open to the possibility.
Mum thinks I’m innocent and I cling to that. But I don’t want to worry her about people being mean at school – she’s already looking grey with stress. I know she isn’t sleeping well. I’m not either. I wake several times a night, often with the image of the death threat picture seared into my mind’s eye. I see the knife poised under Amelia’s throat; the drip, drip, drip of the blood down her neck . . . the wild, terrified eyes . . .
Under other circumstances I would have turned to my big sister. But I’m still certain Poppy’s behind the messages. The thought that she is capable of putting me through this hurts almost as much as Amelia believing I’m capable of doing the same thing to her. Anyway, even if I wanted to talk, Poppy is keeping her distance. In fact she hasn’t spoken to me since the police officers came to the house.
At last it’s Friday and, apart from a The Sound of Music rehearsal for the group songs, which I thoroughly enjoy, it’s a huge relief to get home from school.
I dump my bag at the bottom of the stairs and head for the kitchen. As I reach the door I hear voices. I push the door open, my heart thudding. Mum is sitting at the table with the two police officers from before. She’s murmuring something in a low, strained voice, tears in her eyes.
The older male officer, DS Carter, has his arm round Mum’s shoulders and is awkwardly patting her back. The younger woman, DC Kapoor, stares daggers at me as I walk in.
‘We’d like to take you to the station for questioning, Carey,’ she says.
‘What?’ I feel winded. ‘Why?’
‘We need to conduct a more formal interview,’ DS Carter explains.
‘I don’t understand.’ I turn to Mum, bile rising in my throat. ‘What’s going on?’
There’s an awkward silence. I stare at Mum. Surely she will save me from this? Both police officers look at her too. Mum wipes her face and stands up, pushing back her chair.
‘Come on, Carey.’ Mum’s mouth gives a little wobble. She presses her lips together for a second, clearly trying not to cry. ‘The sooner we go and clear this up, the sooner we can come home again.’ She turns to DS Carter. ‘I need to pick up my son from his friend’s house by seven at the latest.’
My chest feels tight as we drive the ten minutes it takes to get to the police station. In spite of my repeated questions, no one properly explains why I’m being taken to the station. Mum sits next to me in the back of the car. She doesn’t speak the whole way. And she doesn’t look me in the eye. The two officers talk to each other in low voices but I can’t hear what they’re saying. The atmosphere is far more tense than it was when they came before. I shiver, even though it’s warm and stuffy in the car. Up until now I’ve held onto the fact that once the police find my computer is clean, everything will go back to normal, but surely if that was the case then the officers would have smiled and apologised rather than bundling us into their car and taking us to the station? What have they found?
The station is bland and beige, with chipped paint along the window ledge. Mum and I are whisked past reception, down a long corridor and into an interview room. A table containing recording equipment is surrounded by four chairs. I gaze around the bare walls. There are no windows, but a small camera peers down at us from the corner above the table.
‘This looks serious,’ Mum says.
‘Why are we here?’ I ask for the hundredth time.
The officers tell us to sit and the recording equipment is switched on and DC Kapoor is talking but she’s speaking so quickly I can’t follow what she’s saying until she pauses and coughs and says:
‘So we are now absolutely certain that the death threat sent to Amelia Wilson on NatterSnap came from your computer, Carey. And that the laptop definitely wasn’t accessed remotely.’
Mum bites her lip.
‘But I wasn’t even at home when it was posted,’ I protest.
‘Actually you were.’ DS Carter sits back. ‘The message was programmed into the computer the night before the morning it was actually sent.’
‘What?’ Something inside me crumples. How is this happening? ‘I don’t understand.’ My voice quavers. I look around at Mum. She’s frowning.
‘I don’t understand either,’ she says. ‘You said you had “proof”. How does that prove Carey—’
‘Let me explain,’ DS Carter says gently. ‘We can’t trace any of the earlier, deleted SweetFreak messages, but the last one – containing the death threat – was programmed at 10.33 p.m. on a delay function to self-post the following morning at 8.27 a.m.,’ DS Carter explains.
‘But Carey couldn’t do that,’ Mum says, bewildered. ‘That sounds highly technical.’
‘Actually it’s very easy to do,’ DC Kapoor says. She turns her mean eyes on me.
‘But Carey went to bed at ten o’clock that night as usual, she’d have been asleep by ten thirty,’ Mum protests.
DS Carter looks at me. ‘Is that right, Carey?’
I think back to the night before everything went crazy. At 10.33p.m. I was running through the streets on my way to meet Amelia. Nowhere near my laptop. I look down at my lap. I know I have to tell the police – after all it proves my innocence. But it’s hard to admit in front of Mum that I was sneaking out.
‘Carey was in bed. Asleep.’ Mum sounds emphatic, but I can hear the note of doubt creeping into her voice. ‘Weren’t you, Carey?’
I hesitate.
‘Carey?’ DS Carter coughs. ‘It’s important you tell us the whole truth.’
There’s something in his voice that tells me the police already know I wasn’t at home. Of course. They’ll have talked to Amelia. She’ll have told them. Plus they’ve got my phone. I might have deleted the messages between me and Amelia that night, but the police will still be able to see exactly where I was from my phone’s location history. I take a deep breath.
‘Actually Amelia was really upset about . . . stuff, so I was out meeting her, because s
he needed a friend.’ I don’t look Mum in the eye but I feel her stiffen next to me. I sit up straighter. ‘But that means I wasn’t even at home at 10.33. I sent Amelia messages when I was waiting to meet her. You can see on my phone where I was.’
‘We’ve seen,’ DC Kapoor says icily.
‘You went out?’ Mum’s voice is hollow with shock. ‘Through the bathroom window?’ She glances at me, furious. I’m certain that if the police weren’t here she’d already be ranting at me. I know she’s remembering how I was caught before, a few months ago, and how I promised I wouldn’t ever sneak out again. However, the inevitable row this will lead to is the last thing on my mind.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I say.
Mum blinks rapidly, her emotions rampaging across her face. She’s clearly torn between anger and hurt that I broke my promise and fear that perhaps I sent the messages to Amelia after all.
‘So I left the house at about twenty past ten,’ I persist. ‘Can’t you see from my phone records where I was?’
‘We can only trace your phone when it was switched on,’ DC Kapoor says. ‘And it appears to have been turned off between 10.21 p.m. and 10.40 p.m..’
My heart sinks. Of course, I turned the mobile off as I left the house in case I got an alert, and didn’t turn it on again until I was at the swings. ‘I put it on when Amelia didn’t show up so . . . so I could send her a text,’ I say. ‘I was waiting in the park. But it was the wrong place. Amelia was at the rec. So I wasn’t at home at 10.33, it just took me longer to get to the rec than it should.’
DS Carter sighs. ‘You’re claiming you were in the park at half past ten and that you stayed there for roughly ten minutes on your own, messaging Amelia at 10.41, then leaving to go to the bus shelter where you met her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Trouble is, Carey, that the park is on the way from your house to that bus shelter,’ DS Carter says. He gives a grim smile. ‘I know Cornmouth like the back of my hand, so I know it would have been perfectly possible for you to have programmed the message on your computer at 10.33, then race to the Old Cornmouth Rec bus shelter for 10.50, stopping briefly at the park on your way to message Amelia. We only have your word for it that you spent ten minutes in the park.’