The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
46
September 2018
Kim watches Sophie flying around the internet, her fingertips clicking lightly across the keyboard, chasing this person called Cherry.
‘Cherry,’ Sophie is saying. ‘It’s got to be Scarlett, hasn’t it?’
Kim stares at her blankly.
‘Red,’ says Sophie. ‘They’re both red.’
‘Oh God,’ says Kim, realisation dawning. ‘Of course. Shall we say something to Dom?’
Sophie sighs. ‘I don’t know. The police are using their own techniques to locate Scarlett and her family. Maybe we should just stick with this for a while. Keep out of their way.’
Kim nods. She feels instinctively that Sophie is right.
Sophie scrolls through the Instagram accounts of the main players again: Liam, Lexie, Mimi, Scarlett. Then she scrolls through the Instagram accounts of people who have commented on or liked anything in their Instagram accounts. She mutters the word Cherry repeatedly under her breath as she does so, and then suddenly she stops. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘Look!’
She angles the screen towards Kim and points.
‘Whose account is this?’ asks Kim.
‘Ruby Reynolds. Roo. One of the Scarlett Jacques clique. She still lives in the area, according to the photos, look.’ She clicks on a photo of a dark-haired girl standing by a tree, wearing a battered leather jacket over a short dress. ‘That’s just over there, isn’t it?’ Sophie gestures towards the village. ‘On the common?’
‘Yes,’ says Kim, peering closer at the photo. ‘Yes. Just to the left of the duck pond.’
‘This was posted only ten days ago. And look.’ She jabs the screen with her finger. ‘Someone called Cherryjack has liked it. Cherryjack. Scarlett Jacques.’
The icon is a photograph of two red cherries hanging off a stalk and a tongue poking at them. The tongue is pierced. Sophie glances at Kim. ‘Scarlett has a pierced tongue,’ she says, breathlessly. ‘I spotted it in another photo on Liam Bailey’s account.’
Sophie clicks on the profile picture and an account comes up. Amazingly, it’s not private. ‘No followers,’ she says. ‘That’s weird.’ She scrolls down through the photos, faster and faster. The girl called Cherryjack appears to live on a boat. The shots are abstract: sunsets over endless ocean, the frothy tips of waves, the gleaming nub of a dolphin’s beak held in the palm of the photographer’s hand, tanned legs outstretched on cream leather with a dog’s large paw resting on her calf.
Kim peers more closely at the photo of the legs. ‘Can you zoom in on that?’ she asks.
Sophie enlarges the image and Kim stares at it. ‘There,’ she says. ‘There. On her foot, look, can you see it? That black smudge. Look.’
Sophie nods. ‘Is that …?’
‘Yes, that’s where the tattoo was. The TM tattoo. Oh my God,’ she says. ‘This is Scarlett. This is Scarlett Jacques! What dates are these photos from?’
Sophie scrolls quickly through them. The latest one is dated the previous day. The oldest one, just two weeks before.
Kim pulls back from the screen and exhales. Scarlett Jacques is on a boat. She’s on a boat with her dog and her phone and her perfectly pedicured feet, posting pretty pictures to Instagram. She feels a wave of hot anger pass through her and she swallows it down.
They both turn back to the screen and Sophie clicks on all Cherryjack’s images in turn. Each has a handful of likes and Sophie clicks on the profiles of every user. ‘Recognise any of these people?’ she asks Kim.
‘No,’ says Kim.
But then they both stop and draw in their breath hard when they scroll down to a name that is familiar to both of them.
@lexiegoes.