Karen sat staring at the screen. ‘That creeps me out, G. Like he’s just been watching me. All my posts, all my pics.’
‘Or he set it up on an impulse then forgot about it. One way of finding out.’
Karen turned to look up at her. ‘Send him a DM?’
Gilly shrugged. ‘Worth a try.’
Karen opened up a new message box and tapped in her uncle’s name. She thought briefly about what to say. Something that would grab his attention, elicit a response. If he ever checked it. And she typed, Uncle Michael, I think Dad might still be alive. Please get in touch. Short and to the point.
Gilly said, ‘Let’s give him a little time to respond. Depends what app he’s using. Some of them put alerts up on the screen.’
They heard a door banging shut downstairs, then Gilly’s mum’s voice. ‘Gilly? Are you home?’
‘Upstairs, Mum. Karen’s here.’
Karen whispered, ‘What if she’s heard I’m missing?’
Gilly grinned. ‘Let’s find out.’ And she raised her voice. ‘Can she stay over tonight? Her mum’s away at a wedding.’
‘No problem, love. You girls want something to eat? I can order pizza.’
‘Brilliant!’ Gilly called back down the stairs, then turned to high-five her friend. ‘What topping do you want?’
‘Chorizo?’
‘Awesome!’
They sat eating the pizza, when it came, at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Karen, Gilly, and Gilly’s mum prattling inconsequentially as she made them mugs of tea. Karen had never much cared for her. She thought her vacuous, and really not very bright. Gilly got her brains from her dad, as Karen’s had come down the genetic line from hers. She was equally sure that Gilly’s mum seriously disapproved of her daughter’s friendship with the goth punk. But she smiled at Karen and asked politely how her mother was doing these days. As if she was interested. Out of wickedness, Karen said, ‘She’s doing fine since her lover moved in.’ Gilly’s mum’s mouth hung open, a slice of pizza on pause midway between it and her plate. ‘Her boss from the estate agency. Turns out they’d been having sex for years.’
When they got upstairs again, Gilly said, ‘Is that true? About your mum and her boss.’
‘Yep.’ Karen didn’t want to talk about it any more. Its shock value was all used up. She sat in Gilly’s seat and banished the screensaver. The brief message to her uncle was enclosed in a speech bubble that issued from her profile pic. The cursor was winking in the text box. But there was no reply. She sat staring at it, motionless, for too long, and Gilly became aware that something was wrong.
‘What is it?’
Karen’s voice was small and hushed. ‘What if it wasn’t my uncle I friended at all? What if it was Ergo pretending to be him so they could keep an eye on me?’
‘Oh my God!’ Gilly’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Then you’ve just tipped them off that you know about your dad.’
Karen turned frightened blue eyes towards her friend. ‘How could we be so fucking stupid!’ She raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘Christ!’ Then, ‘We’ve got to find this Billy Carr guy. And fast.’
‘Okay, let me in.’ Gilly shoved her friend out of her seat and logged out of Karen’s Facebook. ‘First thing we do is disguise my IP address. Though that might just be shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.’ She pulled up a piece of software called VPN Unlimited, and connected to an IP address registered somewhere in the south of England. ‘Okay.’ Now she logged into her own Facebook account and typed Billy Carr into the search window. A long list appeared of Carrs and Carvers and Carrolls and Carringtons, and other variations on Carr. But there were fewer Billy Carrs than either of them had expected, and it didn’t take long to narrow the list down to three in Scotland. The second one that Gilly brought up to look at in detail elicited a yelp from Karen.
‘There!’ She pointed at the screen. ‘Studied genetics and neurobiology at Glasgow University, then won a research fellowship at the Geddes Institute of Environmental Sciences in Edinburgh. That’s him.’
Gilly scrolled through his personal details, but most of them were blank. Apart from his school. ‘He went to Springburn Academy in Glasgow,’ she said. ‘So the family home must be somewhere in that catchment area. Let’s see how many Carrs there are in Glasgow.’ She switched screens and brought up the home page of the online BT Phone Book, tapping in Carr and Glasgow. ‘Twelve,’ she said, then grinned from ear to ear. ‘And only one in Springburn. A certain W. Carr in Hillhouse Street. Balornock, actually.’ She swiped to another screen and initiated Google Maps. She typed in the Hillhouse Street address and watched as a map of Springburn and Balornock materialised. ‘And just about two streets away from Springburn Academy.’
‘That must be him.’ Karen’s mouth was dry. ‘W for William; that’ll be his father. Probably named after him.’
But Gilly was back on Carr’s Facebook page on another screen. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Look at this.’ She was scrolling through an album of photographs he had posted and stopped suddenly on a group of young men gathered outside a four-in-the-block house on a street corner. A tidy garden lay beyond a black, wrought-iron fence, and a shiny new red car sat at the kerb. The young men, most of whom seemed to be in their late teens or early twenties, were gathered around it, grinning and laughing. Billy’s post read, My first car. Billy, the proud owner, was at the centre of the group, with several of his friends pointing fingers at him.
Karen leaned in to get a closer look at him. It was hard to judge his age, but the pic had been posted about eighteen months ago, and he looked around twenty-two or twenty-three. Judging by the car, he had done alright for himself after leaving the Geddes. His hair was longer than fashionable and drawn back in a short ponytail, and he sported a sparse-looking beard and moustache. But she could see that he was a good-looking boy, and with a car like that wouldn’t have trouble pulling girls.
But Gilly was pointing at the street sign bolted to the railings behind the group. ‘Look,’ she said, and Karen refocused her gaze. The sign read, Hillhouse Street. Gilly turned a smile towards her friend. ‘I knew Facebook would come in useful for something one day.’ Her smile faded. ‘What will you do? Phone? He might not be living at home any more.’
Karen shook her head. ‘No. It’s too easy for someone to hang up on you. I’ll get the train to Glasgow first thing tomorrow and go knocking on the door.’
Chapter twenty-two
The Carr family home was situated on the ground floor of the four-in-the-block house on the corner of Hillhouse Street. It stood opposite half a dozen semi-derelict corner shops which had once served a community where most people did not have cars. Only three of them were still occupied. A launderette, a Chinese takeaway and a minimarket. The rest were shuttered up and covered in graffiti and old posters.
In front of the house, a neatly manicured square of lawn was surrounded by red chippings and framed by close-cropped hedges. The original windows had been replaced by brand-new hardwood and double glazing. Shiny red paint glistened on the stone sills and on a low wall leading to a door of polished mahogany with bevelled glass and brass fittings. Scrupulously pruned roses were still in bloom, red and yellow and white, in finely turned flowerbeds.
Someone, Karen thought as she stepped from her taxi, cared about this place, and had lavished time and money on it. She opened the gate and walked up the path to the front door. Decorative blinds were half-drawn on the bedroom and living-room windows. She rang the bell and waited with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Behind this door lay what might very well be her last chance to connect with her father. And if that did not work out, she knew, there was nowhere else for her to go. No one else to turn to. She had cut the umbilical and cast herself adrift in a hostile world. And whatever happened, she would never go home again.