‘Can you repeat that?’
‘I said, we’ve found another body. Another girl.’
Chapter 11
Day 3 – Chloe
Chloe Hedges sat on the edge of her bed and checked her phone for the twentieth time in the space of five minutes. She had been caught on the horns of this particular dilemma for the last few hours – Jess had not returned her calls or texts since they’d parted after last night’s vigil. This in itself wasn’t unusual – Jess was the touchiest of all Chloe’s friends and could be offended at the drop of a hat, leading to a period of cold-shouldering for perhaps three or four days. And they had argued after the vigil – Chloe had got annoyed with Jess’s bizarre and irreverent behaviour. After the singing ended, Jess had got the giggles during the two minutes’ silence for Rose, when Chloe had suddenly found that tears were pouring down her own face, even though she hadn’t known Rose in real life. It was the sight of Rose’s poor parents that had set her off. She imagined it was her who’d been brutally murdered, and that it was her mum and dad up there at the front of the small gathering, looking as though their lives were over too. Already annoyed because Jess wouldn’t tell her why she was acting so weird, she’d snapped at her friend, who had then stormed off, leaving Chloe to get the bus home in tears on her own.
But before that, they’d made an arrangement to meet this afternoon, to go to the Rotunda – mainly because there was this boy who always hung out there that Jess had the hots for. Jess had been a no-show. Chloe waited for ages, trying to call her friend, before giving up. In the couple of hours since then she had sent a series of increasingly worried messages, apologising for the row and begging Jess to let her know she was all right. Silence.
She tried to take her mind off it by returning to the story she’d been working on for over a week – it was her best yet, much better than anything she’d written before, she thought. Miss Jameson, her English teacher, told Chloe she needed to write from the heart, and Chloe was finally doing that, now she felt brave enough to write about the C-word. But she found that her thoughts kept drifting anxiously back to Jess, and after ten minutes’ staring at the screen without adding a single word, she gave up. She decided to check the forums instead, but only got as far as inputting her login – F-U-Cancer – when her mum yelled up the stairs.
‘Supper, Chloe!’
Chloe grimaced, closed her laptop and bade a silent farewell to the poster of Shawn from OnTarget sellotaped to the back of her bedroom door. She trudged downstairs. ‘What is it?’
‘Quorn fillets in tomato sauce,’ said her mother, sliding three empty plates out of the top oven where they had been warming.
‘The ones in breadcrumbs? What kind of tomato sauce?’
Her mother sighed. ‘No. Not the ones in breadcrumbs. Normal tomato sauce, like pasta sauce.’
‘Eurgh. I only like the ones in breadcrumbs. Where’s Dad?’
‘He’s not back from the match yet. Probably gone to the pub.’
They sat down at the table. Chloe’s little brother, Brandon, was already seated, quietly tinkering with a Transformer. He looked up when he saw his mum dishing up the food. ‘Oh no, not broccoli.’
Chloe’s mum slammed a plate down in front of him and glared at them both.
‘For heaven’s sake, can we not have just one meal where you two don’t complain about everything?’
After that they ate in silence. Chloe wanted to ask her mum’s advice but was afraid she would get on the phone to Jess’s mum, and it would be really embarrassing, especially as they didn’t even know one another. She imagined her mother doing her posh phone voice and squirmed. Also, Chloe might then have to admit that she had got the bus home by herself after the OnTarget concert, which was strictly verboten. They only lived three miles away from Twickenham Stadium, but her dad would go mad if he knew she’d got the bus by herself after nine o’clock at night. Not to mention getting Jess into trouble too, for leaving her after the vigil. Jess might never talk to her again.
But what if Jess was in danger? Rose Sharp’s face flashed into her head. No – if she’d gone missing like Rose Sharp, they’d know about it by now. It would be on the news and everything – appeals circulating on Twitter and Facebook. Jess was probably just still in a strop with her.
Then why did Chloe feel so anxious? She glanced at her mum, who was still looking cross, then opened her mouth to say something. ‘Mum—’
Brandon interrupted her. ‘Can I get down, Mummy? I’m full.’
‘Eat your broccoli first.’
Chloe had so known her mum would say that. It was as predictable as being told to put her iPhone outside the bedroom door every night at 10 p.m. She decided to wait until Brandon had left the table.
Her phone beeped with an incoming text and she snatched it out of her back pocket as Brandon gingerly poked a stem of broccoli into his mouth, making disgusted faces throughout.
‘No phones at dinner, Chloe!’ admonished her mother.
‘It’s urgent!’
‘I don’t care. Put it away.’
But Chloe had seen that the text wasn’t from Jess. She must have looked upset because her mum gave her a long searching look, and let Brandon get down without clearing his plate. He scampered off immediately with his Transformer, thumping up the stairs to his bedroom before she changed her mind again and made him sit there until the broccoli was cold and limp and even less appealing.
‘Everything all right, Rog?’
‘Don’t call me that!’
Her mum smiled. Chloe’s dad had a habit of adapting everyone’s names, so Chloe had, as a baby, become Chlo, which he had lengthened into Clodagh Rogers – who had apparently been some sort of ancient singer – and then shortened again to Rog. She hadn’t minded it when she was little, but now she loathed it.
‘Sorry. Is everything all right? You seem a bit on edge.’
Chloe swallowed hard, still undecided about whether or not to unleash this potential shit storm. Her mother pressed her advantage, knowing that it must be something major if Chloe hadn’t immediately bitten off her head and told her to mind her own business.
‘Are you still upset about that poor girl who was killed, honey? You know, I thought it was really sweet of you and Jessica to go to the vigil last night.’
At the sound of Jess’s name, Chloe knew she couldn’t dither anymore. Worst case scenario, Jess never spoke to her again – well, she could deal with that. There were plenty of other OnTarget fans she could hang out with and chat to. Jess didn’t go to her school, so she wouldn’t have to face her ire in person if she really got her into trouble. And sometimes she was a bit of a pain anyway.
‘It’s just that me and Jess were meant to meet up today and she didn’t turn up,’ she blurted. ‘And now I can’t get hold of her.’
‘You haven’t fallen out, have you?’
‘No. We did sort of have a fight – but, like, it wasn’t a real fight . . .’
Her mother looked thoughtful. Chloe knew that her mum didn’t much care for Jess. On the couple of occasions that Jess had been to her house, she hadn’t made much of an effort to be polite to her mum, and hadn’t even thanked her for the flapjacks that she had made specially for them one day when they’d come back to hang out in her room and watch the new OnTarget movie.
‘I wouldn’t normally be worried,’ Chloe said. ‘But after what happened to MissTargetHeart . . . Rose.’
‘Do you know her home phone number?’
‘Oh. Yeah, I do actually.’
‘Why don’t you call it, then?’
Chloe pulled a face, she was a bit scared of Jess’s mum. Jess’s mum was vague and a bit of a hippie, but not a mellow one – a sort of bitter, neurotic one who drank too much and didn’t tell Jess off when she said ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’.