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 she 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.’
‘But . . . how would I know to go to all that trouble to hide my tracks?’
‘In my experience teenagers are capable of a lot more than they let on,’ DS Carter says with a frown.
I turn to Mum. ‘I didn’t do this, Mum. I swear I didn’t.’
Mum nods, but what she’s not saying is clear: how can I believe you about one thing, if you’ve lied about another?
DC Kapoor narrows her mean eyes. It’s clear she doesn’t believe me either.
My mind races about, trying to think what else I can say to convince them.
‘I just remembered something.’ My stomach gives an uneasy twist. It feels horribly disloyal to accuse my sister of being SweetFreak, but what choice has she left me? ‘When I got home after seeing Amelia I was sure someone had been in my room. My laptop was open though I’m sure I left it shut.’
‘Carey!’ Mum’s voice sounds a warning note. ‘Stop right there.’
‘I think my sister, Poppy, must have come into my room while I was out,’ I persist. ‘I think she used my computer to make it look like I sent that horrible message.’
Mum glares at me.
‘Right,’ DS Carter says, clearly unconvinced. ‘I’d say there might be easier ways to frame someone, wouldn’t you?’
‘It’s also interesting that since we took away your phone and laptop the SweetFreak messages have stopped,’ DC Kapoor says drily.
‘And we haven’t found any fingerprints other than yours on the keys,’ DS Carter adds. ‘Does your sister even have the password for your laptop? Does anyone?’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘But Poppy could have seen it over my shoulder.’
‘For goodness sake, Carey,’ Mum mutters. She turns to DS Carter. ‘What about street cameras? If Carey was running around the streets like you suggest, they’d have picked her up.’
‘I’m afraid there isn’t any local CCTV, apart from on the main roads. If Carey stuck to backstreets as we suspect, she wouldn’t have been seen,’ DS Carter says. He sighs. ‘Cutbacks.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’ Panic rises wildly inside me. It’s like I’ve been thrown out of an aeroplane without a parachute. I’m spinning, whirling through space, lost and confused. ‘I didn’t do this.’
Mum frowns, her face suffused with doubt.
‘Did you have some reason to be angry with Amelia, Carey?’ DS Carter asks.
‘No, we’re best friends.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t Amelia herself?’ Mum asks.
‘Absolutely. She was nowhere near any electronic device other than her own phone, which we’ve examined thoroughly. She did not send herself a death threat.’
‘But somebody sent it,’ DC Kapoor adds. ‘And all the evidence points to you, Carey.’
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I protest. ‘No way.’
‘Oh, Carey.’ Mum’s voice trembles. ‘Is this something to do with Dad leaving? Now you’re getting older without a father around I—’
‘No,’ I snap, now embarrassed on top of everything else. ‘I’m not upset, I’m fine. And I didn’t do anything. Please, I’m telling the truth.’
But as I look into Mum’s eyes I see that she no longer believes me.
There’s a tense silence, then DS Carter clears his throat. He explains that there is no public interest in pursuing a prosecution against me and, anyway, he’s confident I do not pose a credible threat to Amelia, that I’m just acting out. ‘So all we are doing for now is giving you a serious warning, though I would strongly urge you to take responsibility for your actions.’ He turns to Mum. ‘We can recommend a local counselling service. Sessions are subsidised as part of the local initiative on zero tolerance for bullying I told you about before.’
Mum nods. I stare at my lap.
‘But make no mistake,’ DC Kapoor chips in. ‘Any further threats of this nature and we’ll be forced to consider charging you under the Malicious Communications Act.’
Mum is tight-lipped and stern-faced as we leave the station. The sun shines in my face as I lean against the rough brick wall while we wait for a taxi. Neither of us speak. I’m still in a daze and Mum seems lost in her own thoughts.
‘Carey?’
I turn.
Mum is frowning, clearly exasperated. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes. No, I . . . I didn’t hear what you said.’
‘I said that I have no idea what to say to you. I don’t know who you are any more. I can’t begin to think of a suitable punishment, though you’re definitely not getting your phone back.’
‘What? You can’t be serious. Mum, I didn’t do anything.’
‘How could you, Carey?’ Mum says. ‘To Amelia of all people? Your best friend. I brought you up better than this.’
‘But I didn’t.’
Mum shakes her head. ‘This is the worst thing, that you persist in refusing to take responsibility for—’
‘How many more times do I have to tell you it wasn’t me?’ All my pent-up rage bursts out of me. ‘You believed me until that stupid police officer came out with all that rubbish about my laptop and fingerprints and delay functions.’
Mum shakes her head. ‘If you’d just admit what you’d done—’
‘I didn’t do it!’ I’m shouting now, tears stinging my eyes.
Mum looks away.
It’s the last straw. At least when she believed me I felt less alone. Now I’m totally isolated. I clench my fists. Poppy is going to pay for this.