Hey, c’mon, Tiff. Jus tryin’ 2 b mates. I seen u round.
Yeah, yeah, they had already said that.
Who r u?
Aside from a loser.
Name’s Justin. Just moved here. In year above u @ school.
Justin. Justin? She didn’t remember anyone new at school. But it was big, so hard to keep track. Plus, she tended to live in her own world. Which was why she didn’t get many texts, let alone at midnight.
Buzz.
Be gr8 to get 2 know u better. U r gorgeous. So peng.
At the bottom was the most loser-ish emoticon, with eyes bugging out of its head.
Tiffany huffed. Put the phone down, turned off the light and closed her eyes. No way was she going to reply. The compliment had infuriated her, sarcastic thoughts ricocheting round her brain. Gorgeous? Peng? Yeah, right. With her puppy fat still clinging to her like a rabid Rottweiler, and acne that Clearasil struggled to cope with, she reckoned she was a real catch.
The waspish buzz of her phone came again. She ignored it. Screwed her eyes shut even tighter, trying to block out World of Warcraft too. At least the television was silent downstairs; her mum must have gone to bed.
Another buzz.
‘Grrr! Go away!’ she huffed. Then threw off the duvet and turned her bedside lamp back on. Read the two messages.
Hey, where’d u go?
Please, I only want 2 chat. Wots the harm? Tell me ’bout yourself.
Yeah, what was the harm? Wasn’t like she’d be getting any sleep anyway. And how often did anyone ever ask her about herself?
Right, you might regret asking that. What you want to know?
It wasn’t long before the phone went again. Tiffany laughed at the image Justin had sent. One of the Minions, dancing for joy.
Yeah, funny guy. I prefer vampires.
She shot back.
Soon they were batting texts back and forth. In between, Tiffany doodled idly. A phoenix with a long plumed tail. A stack of books, with a flower growing out of the top. She didn’t know why she liked that image so much, but she did, and drew it in all her notebooks. It gave her something else to think about as she tried to play it cool with Justin, almost kidding herself that she wasn’t interested in trying to make a new friend. Even in a large school, people like her were few and far between.
Eighty-Six
The newspaper article lured me back again. I was drawn to this mother’s pain, so similar to my own, although the circumstances were very different.
There were some photos of Tiffany clustered together at the far left of the page. As a toddler, all gorgeous rolls of flesh and cherub-faced. Older, on her bike, posing awkwardly. Then the school photo, obligatory and now made famous because it was the one which was used to accompany every news report on television and in print. This girl looked more serious. Her round glasses gave her a slightly owlish and studious look, but they suited her. Glossy dark brown hair was centre-parted and fell to her shoulders.
She was pretty, but clearly wasn’t aware of it; she had that hunch-shouldered, slightly apologetic set to her body that gave it away. A couple of spots marked her face, but nothing more than the average teen.
Almost despite myself, I read on.
‘She always had her head in a book,’ Tiffany’s mother told the reporter. This girl sounded a lot like you, Beth.
‘Her dream was to be an author, and she was constantly scribbling ideas in her notebooks. They had to be the same brand, too; bright pink Moleskine ones. Reading her stories gives comfort to me. But the one she had just started was never found. The killer must have taken her notebook from her – she wouldn’t go anywhere without it. It probably only had a couple of pages of her story in it, but I hate the idea of him stealing her dreams along with her life.’
A bright pink Moleskine notebook. Like yours. Like the kind Glenn incongruously always wrote in.
I pulled the bottom of the newspaper closer to me to stare at a photograph in the far bottom right of the article. There was a little pile of Tiffany’s pink notebooks, one of which lay open, showing her neat, round writing. Tucked away at the top of the notebook’s page sprouted a funny doodle of a flower growing from a pile of books.
The same doodle I’d seen so recently in another bright pink notebook.
The room seemed to tilt, and I sat down hurriedly. Wrapped my arms around myself to keep out the sudden cold. I was imagining things. If I had Glenn’s notebook to compare, I would see that his doodle looked entirely different.
Only…
It wasn’t his doodle, was it? It wasn’t his handwriting, either. He’d told me it was his daughter’s… but he didn’t have a daughter. Katie was the child of his former neighbour.
Shivers ran through me.
Suddenly a memory of a drunken conversation burst into my mind. Me clinging to Glenn to stay upright as we stared at the stars on the marsh. Him saying how he had seen September’s blood moon while travelling in Sydney, and thought it incredible.
Bloody great red moon. In Australia. In September. Supercool.
Those had been his exact words; I was sure of it. He couldn’t have been more adamant than that.
But now I was recalling the conversation, stone-cold sober, I realised the lie in it. Glenn couldn’t have seen the blood moon in Australia. Remember the research we did into it, Beth? The blood moon couldn’t even be partially seen in that part of the globe.
Glenn had lied; he had clearly been in this country at the time of the blood moon – when Tiffany was killed. And where had she lived? Feverishly, I scanned the newspaper article. There! Clifton, in Nottingham. Wasn’t that near where Glenn had lived? I grabbed my tablet and looked online. According to the map, Dunkirk and Clifton were next to each other.
I forced myself to breathe steadily. To slow my thoughts.
Perhaps Glenn had innocently stumbled across this notebook. Found it lying in the street, or something. If that were the case, then he needed to hand it in. It was probably way too late for forensics to get anything from it, but they could work miracles nowadays, couldn’t they, so it was worth a shot.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, this was the first time the notebooks had been mentioned by the press. There was no reason why Glenn would know about it. No doubt the police had been holding back the fact they suspected the killer had kept it as a trophy, and had only just given permission for the information to be released.
But what about Glenn’s lies? I’d thought they were for my sake, a misguided attempt to help me, or because he fancied me. Suddenly I looked at them in a whole different light.
A crazy idea grew in my mind.
Grabbing my car keys, I rushed upstairs to Jacob. Knocked on your bedroom door. Jacob called me in. He was sitting on your bed, hugging your teddy bear.
‘You all right?’ I checked.
He sniffed, nodding. His red, puffy eyes told the truth, though.