Pip returned to the scrap of paper in her hand, running her eyes over the list she’d scribbled half an hour ago:
Leila Leyla Laila Layla Leighla Lejla
‘This is impossible,’ Connor said, sitting back from Pip’s desk in defeat, in a chair she’d borrowed from the kitchen.
Pip spun impatiently in her own chair, letting the breeze disturb the list in her hand. ‘Annoying our catfish chose a name with so many bloody variant spellings.’ They’d tried searching the name on Facebook and Instagram, but without a last name – or even knowing the proper form of the first name – the search results were numerous and useless. Nor had reverse image- searching all of Stella Chapman’s Instagram photos led anywhere. Clearly Leila’s versions had been manipulated enough that the algorithm couldn’t locate them.
‘We’re never going to find her,’ Connor said. There was a faint triple-knock at her bedroom door.
‘Go away,’ Pip said, scrolling down a page of Leighlas on Instagram. The door skittered open and Ravi stood there, lips pursed in affront, one eyebrow raised.
‘Oh, not you.’ Pip looked up, a smile breaking across her face. ‘I thought it was Josh again. Sorry. Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Ravi said, an amused half smile on his face as he raised both brows in greeting to Connor. He walked over to the desk and sat up beside the laptop, resting one foot on Pip’s chair, tucking it in under her thigh.
‘How was the rest of trial today?’ Pip looked up at him as he wriggled his toes against her leg in a hidden hello that Connor couldn’t see.
‘It was OK.’ He narrowed his eyes to look at what they were doing on her screen. ‘Final victim gave her testimony this morning. And they presented Andie Bell’s burner phone to try prove it was Max who regularly bought Rohypnol from her. Then the defence kicked off after lunch break, called Max’s mum to the stand first.’
‘Oh, how’d that go?’ asked Pip.
‘Epps asked her about Max’s childhood, when he almost died of leukaemia aged seven. His mum talked about his bravery during the illness, how sensitive and caring and sweet he was. How quiet and shy Max was in school after the all-clear because he’d been held back a year. How he’s carried these traits into adulthood. She was quite convincing,’ he said.
‘Well, I think that’s because she is quite convinced that her son isn’t a rapist,’ Pip said. ‘Epps is probably ecstatic, that’s like hitting the goldmine. What’s better than childhood cancer to humanize your client?’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Ravi said. ‘We’ll record the update later, yeah? What are we doing now, looking for the catfish? That’s not how you spell Leyla,’ he added, pointing.
‘It’s one of the many ways,’ Pip sighed. ‘We’re hitting blanks here.’ ‘What about the sighting from the bookshop guy?’ Ravi asked.
‘Yeah, I think it’s legit,’ she said. ‘11:40 walking halfway up Wyvil Road. Four eyewitnesses.’
‘Well,’ Connor said quietly, ‘they didn’t agree on everything.’ ‘No?’ Ravi said.
‘Slight conflicting accounts on what Jamie was wearing,’ Pip said. ‘Two saw him in the burgundy shirt, two thought he’d been wearing something like a hoodie instead.’ She turned to Connor. ‘Small inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts are normal. Human memory isn’t infallible. But four people swearing they saw your brother with otherwise matching accounts, we can trust that.’
‘11:40,’ Ravi thought aloud, ‘that’s over an hour from the last sighting.
And it doesn’t take over an hour to walk from Highmoor to Wyvil Road.’ ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Pip picked up his thread. ‘He must have stopped
somewhere in between. And I’m betting it has something to do with Layla.’ ‘You think so?’ Connor asked.
‘He speaks to Stella at the calamity,’ Pip said. ‘Finds out
Leyla has been catfishing him. He’s next seen outside with his phone, where he appears agitated and mentions calling the police. He had to be calling his Laila, confronting her with what he’d just found out. Jamie would have felt betrayed, upset, hence George’s description of his behaviour. What happens afterwards, wherever Jamie was going, it has to be relevant to that. To Leighla.’
‘She’s had to explain that more than once, I can tell,’ Ravi said conspiratorially to Connor. ‘Heads up: she hates doing that.’
‘I’m learning,’ Connor said.
Pip flashed Ravi an angry look. At least he could read her eyes, reacting right away. ‘She’s also, annoyingly, always right, so . . .’
‘Right, next plan,’ Pip said. ‘Make a Tinder profile.’
‘I just said you were always right,’ Ravi replied, voice shrill and playful. ‘To catch a catfish.’ She whacked him on the knee. ‘We’re not going to
find Laila by blindly searching that name. At least on Tinder we can narrow down the search field by location. From Stella’s interview, it didn’t seem that Jamie was surprised at seeing Leyla in Little Kilton, just specifically at the calamity party. That makes me think she told him she was local, they’d just never met up IRL because, well . . . catfish.’
She downloaded the Tinder app on her phone and set about making a new profile, her thumb hovering over the name box.
‘What name should we go for?’ Ravi said.
Pip looked up at him, the question already in her eyes.
‘You want to put me on a dating site?’ he asked. ‘You’re a weird kind of girlfriend.’
‘It’s just easier because I already have photos of you. We’ll delete the profile right after.’
‘Fine,’ Ravi smirked. ‘But you can’t use this to win any future arguments.’
‘Right,’ Pip said, typing in the bio now. ‘Enjoys mannish things like football and fishing.’
‘Aha,’ Ravi said, ‘catfishing.’
‘You two,’ Connor remarked, flicking his eyes between them like he was watching a tennis match.
Pip clicked through settings to alter the preferences. ‘Let’s keep it local, within a three-mile radius. We want it to show us women,’ she said, tapping the slider button beside that option. ‘And the age range . . . well, we know
Jamie thought she was older than eighteen, so let’s put the range between nineteen and twenty-six?’
‘Yep, sounds good,’ Connor said.
‘OK.’ Pip saved the settings. ‘Let’s fish.’
Ravi and Connor huddled forward, watching over her shoulders as she swiped left through the potential matches. Soph from the bookshop was on there. And then a few swipes later so was Naomi Ward, grinning up at them. ‘We won’t mention that to her,’ Pip said, continuing, moving Naomi’s photo aside.
And there it was. She wasn’t expecting it so soon; it crept up on her and she almost swiped past it, her thumb stalling just before it hit the screen.
Layla.
‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Layla, with an A-Y. Twenty-five. Less than a mile away.’
‘Less than a mile away? Creepy,’ Connor said, shuffling closer for a better look.
Pip scrolled through the four photos on Layla’s profile. They were pictures of Stella Chapman, stolen from her Instagram, but they’d been cropped, flipped and filtered. And the main difference: Layla’s hair was ash blonde. It was done well; Layla must have played with the hue and layers on Photoshop.
‘Reader. Learner. Traveller,’ Ravi read from her bio. ‘Dog-Lover. And above all other things: Keen Breakfaster.’
‘Sounds approachable,’ Pip said.
‘Yeah, she’s right,’ said Ravi. ‘Breakfast is the best.’
‘It is a catfish, you were right,’ Connor spluttered over a sharp intake of breath. ‘Stella – but blonde. Why?’
‘Blondes have more fun, apparently,’ Pip said, flicking through Layla’s photos again.
‘Well, you’re brunette and you actively hate fun, so yeah. True fact,’ said Ravi, affectionately scratching the back of Pip’s head.
‘Aha.’ She pointed to the very bottom of the bio, where it said: Insta @LaylaylaylaM. ‘Her Instagram handle.’
‘Go to it,’ Connor said.
‘I am.’ She swapped over to the Instagram app and typed the handle into the search bar. Stella’s edited face peered up at them from the top result and Pip clicked on the profile.
Layla Mead. 32 posts. 503 followers. 101 following.
Most of the photos were ones taken from Stella’s page, her hair now a natural ashy blonde but the same piercing smile and perfect hazel eyes. There were other photos without Stella; an over-filtered shot of the pub in Little Kilton, looking quaint and inviting. And further down, a photo of the rolling fields near Ravi’s house, an orange setting sun clinging to the sky above.
Pip scrolled down to check the very first post, a photo of Stella / Layla cuddling a beagle puppy. She’d captioned it: Overhaul: new aesthetic oh and . . . puppy!
‘The first post was uploaded on February 17th.’
‘So that’s when Layla was born,’ Ravi said. ‘Just over two months ago.’
Pip looked at Connor and this time, he was able to read what she was going to say before she did.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That fits. My brother must have started talking to her mid-March, that’s when his mood changed and he seemed happier again, always on his phone.’
‘A lot of followers in that time. Ah –’ she checked down the list of followers – ‘Jamie’s on here. But most of them look like bots or inactive accounts. She probably bought her followers.’
‘Layla does not mess around,’ Ravi said, typing at Pip’s computer, now in his lap.
‘Hold on,’ Pip said, fixating on another name in Layla’s followers. ‘Adam Clark.’ She stared at Connor, both widening their eyes in recognition.
Ravi picked up on the exchange. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘That’s our new history teacher,’ Connor said as Pip clicked the name to double-check it was him. His profile was set to private, but the display picture was clearly him, a wide smile with small Christmas baubles attached to his ginger-flecked beard.
‘I guess Jamie isn’t the only person Layla’s been talking to,’ Pip said. ‘Stella doesn’t take history and Mr Clark’s new, so maybe he wouldn’t know he’s talking to a catfish, if he is talking to her.’
‘Aha,’ Ravi said, spinning the laptop on the heel of his hand. ‘Layla Mead has a Facebook too. The very same pictures, the first also posted February 17th.’ He turned the screen back to read on. ‘She did a status
update that day saying: New account because I forgot the password for my old one.’
‘A likely story, Layla,’ said Pip, returning to Layla’s page and Stella-not- Stella’s glittering smile. ‘We should try to message her, right?’ She wasn’t really asking, and both of them knew that. ‘She’s the person most likely to know what happened to Jamie. Where he is.’
‘You think she’s definitely a she?’ Connor asked.
‘I mean, yeah. Jamie’s been speaking on the phone to her.’ ‘Oh, right. What are you going to message her, then?’
‘Well . . .’ Pip chewed her lip, thinking. ‘It can’t come from me, or Ravi, or the podcast. Or even you, Connor. If she has anything to do with Jamie, she might know how we’re connected to him, looking into his disappearance. I think we have to be careful, approach her as a stranger just looking to talk. See if we can gradually work out who she really is, or what she knows about Jamie. Gradually. Catfish don’t like to be rumbled.’
‘We can’t just make a new account, though, she’d be suspicious seeing zero followers,’ said Ravi.
‘Damn you’re right,’ Pip muttered. ‘Um . . .’
‘I have an idea?’ Connor said, phrasing it like a question, the end of the sentence climbing up and away, abandoning him below. ‘It’s, well, I have another Instagram account. An anonymous one. I’m, um, I’m into photography. Black and white photography,’ he said with an embarrassed shrug. ‘Not people, it’s like birds and buildings and stuff. Never told anyone ’cause I knew Ant would just take the piss.’
‘Really?’ Pip said. ‘That could work. How many followers?’
‘A good amount,’ he said, ‘and I don’t follow any of you guys so no connection there.’
‘That’s perfect, good thinking,’ she smiled, holding out her phone. ‘Could you sign in on mine?’
‘Yeah.’ He took it, tapping away at her keyboard and handing it back. ‘An.On.In.Frame,’ she read out the account’s name, eyes sweeping down
the first row of his grid, no further, in case he didn’t want to share. ‘These are really good, Con.’
‘Thank you.’
She re-navigated her way back to Layla Mead’s profile and clicked on the message button, bringing up an empty private message page and an input box, waiting for her.
‘OK, what do I say? What vocabulary do strangers typically use when they slide into the DMs?’
Ravi laughed. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘I never DM-slid, even before you.’
‘Connor?’
‘Um. I don’t know, maybe we should just go with a Hey, how are you?’ ‘Yeah, that works,’ Ravi said. ‘Innocent enough until we know how she
likes to talk to people.’
‘OK,’ Pip said, typing it in, trying to ignore that her fingers were shaking. ‘Should I go for the flirty Heyy, double Ys?’
‘Y-not,’ Ravi said, and she knew immediately the pun he was attempting. ‘Right. Everyone ready?’ She looked at them both. ‘Shall I press send?’ ‘Yes,’ Connor said, while Ravi shot her a finger gun.
Pip faltered, thumb hovering over the send button, reading back her words. She ran them through her mind until they sounded misshapen and nonsensical.
Then she took a breath, and pressed send.
The message jumped up to the top of the page, now encased in a greyed- out bubble.
‘I did it,’ she said, exhaling, dropping the phone in her lap. ‘Good, now we wait,’ Ravi said.
‘Not for long,’ Connor said, leaning over to look at the phone. ‘It says
seen.’
‘Shit,’ Pip said, raising the phone again. ‘Layla’s seen it. Oh my god.’ And as she watched, something else appeared. The word typing . . . on the left side of the screen. ‘She’s typing. Fuck, she’s already typing.’ Her voice felt tight and panicked, like it had outgrown her throat.
‘Calm down,’ Ravi said, jumping down so he could watch the screen too.
typing . . . disappeared.
And in its place: a new message. Pip read it and her heart dropped. Hello Pip, it said.
That was all it said.
‘Fuck.’ Ravi’s grip stiffened on her shoulder. ‘How did she know it was you? How the fuck did she know?’
‘I don’t like this,’ Connor said, shaking his head. ‘Guys, I’m getting a bad feeling about this.’
‘Shhh,’ Pip hissed, though she couldn’t hear if either of them were still talking, not over the hammering that now filled her ears. ‘Layla’s typing again.’
typing . . .
And it disappeared.
typing . . .
Again, it disappeared.
typing . . .
And the second message appeared in a white box below.
You’re getting closer : )
