Chapter 17

Present day

Anna

I leave Ivy’s bedroom and pad down the long, narrow landing.

When I click on the light switch just inside the door, I immediately spot the computer and printer on a low table in front of the window.

Liam’s room.

Posters of elaborately chromed motorbikes cover the walls. Piles of motorcycle magazines and manuals are stacked precariously next to his single bed and wedged into the shelves next to the computer.

The bed is unmade, and the floor is littered with dirty laundry. It looks like the bedroom of your average, messy teenage boy.

It appears that Ivy hasn’t cleaned the room at all while Liam is in hospital. Even more annoyingly, she had instantly turned down my offer of help yesterday, claiming she could manage when she very clearly needs assistance.

I would like nothing more than to scoot around here with my cloth and lemon cleanser. Clearing out those dusty magazines and reorganising the furniture to maximise the space would make it all look a bit more grown-up.

I’m certain Liam would be delighted with the results.

But I can hardly take that job on this evening. I’m not even supposed to be here in the middle of all their mess.

Above the headboard is a poster taken from the middle of a magazine, complete with staple marks. Some slapper in a tiny pair of denim shorts, virtually showing what she’s had for breakfast.

I had expected Liam to have better standards, if I’m honest, and I fight a sudden, inexplicable urge to tear it down.

I have to remind myself that he’s in a difficult position. It’s probably not his choice to live with his gran, especially since his bedroom looks as if it’s caught in a time warp.

He probably doesn’t even notice there are posters still up that have been there since he was an immature young man.

It goes without saying that Liam would obviously prefer his own place, if he had the chance.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and take a couple of photographs of the room from different angles, so I can study them later at home.

Over at the narrow window, I pull down the thin roller blind for a bit of privacy.

I notice the computer station is neat and organised, contrasting with the rest of the room.

A sign on a coiled, bouncy wire protrudes from the top of the monitor declaring,

‘Quiet! Genius at work!’

I run my fingers across the dusty keyboard and touch the buttons. I wonder if Liam used the computer on the morning of the accident.

Most people are obsessed with checking their emails or Facebook on at least an hourly basis. It was quite possible Liam had done just that before he left home on the morning of the smash.

His fingers might have touched the keys where mine rest now, and he’d have been totally unaware of the terrible danger he would soon encounter.

I sit down on the chair, trying to imagine Liam here, in this very space.

It brings home the sobering thought that none of us know what’s waiting around the corner, what awful events fate may have planned for us.

Until tragedy drops on you like a ton of bricks.

I understand how that feels.

A tiny green light winks at me, indicating that the computer isn’t turned off; it is merely on standby. I click a switch on the tower and it cranks into life. The monitor flickers, displaying a screensaver of a Harley-Davidson, peppered with numerous desktop icons.

I adjust the keyboard slightly to suit my seated position and a small white piece of paper slips from underneath it. I slide it out and peer closer to try and read the cryptic scrawl.

At first it means nothing, just senseless words and phrases. Then I realise just what it is that I’m looking at.

A list of Liam’s usernames and passwords.

I’ve never really been a ‘friends’ sort of person. I just can’t see the point in forging associations with people who take up all your time and want to know all your business.

Mother never allowed us to bring friends back to the house; it wouldn’t have been right, what with her mood swings and all the other stuff.

The terrible stuff I didn’t know about at first.

Don’t get me wrong, part of me would have liked to get friendlier with others at school. Having people to sit with at breaks and lunchtimes would have made a nice change but let’s face it, if you start getting close to others, you just end up saying stuff you wish you hadn’t.

Stuff that people can bring up and use against you later on.

That’s what I think about when Roisin tries to get chatting to me at work. She seems a perfectly nice woman but, of course, you never quite know.

I can see the appeal of Facebook in that it’s perfectly possible to maintain controlled contact with people on your own terms. Still, even within that framework there is the potential for humiliation.

You can add people as friends all you like but it doesn’t mean they accept you on to their friends list. No, you wait and wait until you realise they have quietly rejected your request. Then you have to go into work the next day and see them in real life and pretend it’s hasn’t happened or that you haven’t noticed yet.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me doing things wrong. I don’t claim to be an IT expert but I can just about find my way around using the basics.

I click on a desktop icon and the Facebook login page comes up. I enter the email address and password that’s written on the piece of notepaper, labelled ‘Fb’.

I’m preparing myself for failure, but within seconds Liam’s profile page loads in front of me.

I sit back and take a few breaths.

It’s important I don’t do anything rash. I don’t want Liam to see that someone has been meddling with his information when he is well enough to come home, although I feel sure he won’t mind that I’ve been concerned enough to take a look.

There might well be people on here who don’t know what’s happened to him, people that are trying to contact him and wondering where he is. I understand the importance that people attach to their social media, but Ivy wouldn’t have a clue about it all.

A small box pops up to inform me that Liam has eighty-five notifications and one new private message from someone he doesn’t know.

There is a link that must be clicked if he wants to accept the message.

Before I can overthink it, I click on the link and wait while the message inbox loads. When it’s ready, and before I can change my mind, I open the envelope icon and take in a sharp breath.

The message is from her.