I’ve been on YouTube watching hours and hours of footage from the early press conferences after Andie went missing. I can’t believe I never noticed it before, but there’s something a bit off about Jason. The way he squeezes his wife’s arm just a little too hard when she starts crying about Andie, the way he shifts his shoulder in front of her so he can push her back from the microphone when he decides she’s said enough. The voice breaks that sound a little forced when he says: ‘Andie, we love you so much’ and ‘Please come home, you won’t be in trouble.’ The way Becca, Andie’s sister, shrinks under his gaze. I know this isn’t very objective detective of me, but there’s something in his eyes – a coldness – that concerns me.

And then I noticed THE BIG THING. On the Monday 23rd April evening press conference, Jason Bell says this: ‘We just want our girl back. We are completely broken and don’t know what to do with ourselves. If you know where she is, please tell her to call home so we know she’s safe. Andie was such a huge presence in our home, it’s too quiet without her.’

Yeah. He said ‘was’. WAS. PAST TENSE. This was before any of the Sal stuff had happened. Everyone thought Andie was still alive at this point. But Jason Bell said WAS.

Was this just an innocent mistake, or was he using the past tense because he already knew his daughter was dead? Did Jason Bell slip up?

From what I can tell, Jason and Dawn were at a dinner party that night and Andie was supposed to pick them up. Could he have left the party at some point? And if not, even if he has a solid alibi, that doesn’t mean he can’t somehow be involved in Andie’s disappearance.

If I’m creating a persons of interest list, I think Jason Bell is going to have to be the first entry.

Persons of Interest Jason Bell

Five

Something felt a little off, like the air in the room was stale and slowly thickening and thickening until she was breathing it down in giant gelatinous clots. In all her years of knowing Naomi, it had never felt quite like this.

Pip gave Naomi a reassuring smile and made a passing joke about the amount of Barney dog-fluff attached to her leggings. Naomi smiled weakly, running her hands through her flicky ombré blonde hair.

They were sitting in Elliot Ward’s study, Pip on the swivelling desk chair and Naomi across from her in the oxblood-leather armchair. Naomi wasn’t looking at Pip; she was staring instead at the three paintings on the far wall. Three giant canvases of the family, immortalized forever in rainbow tinted strokes. Her parents walking in the autumn woods, Elliot drinking from a steaming mug, and a young Naomi and Cara on a swing. Their mum had painted them when she was dying, her final mark upon the world. Pip knew how important these paintings were to the Wards, how they looked to them in their happiest and saddest times. Although she remembered there used to be a couple more displayed in here too; maybe Elliot was keeping them in storage to give the girls when they grew up and moved out.

Pip knew Naomi had been going to therapy since her mum died seven years ago. And that she had managed to wade through her anxiety, neck just above the water, to graduate from university. But a few months ago she had a panic attack at her new job in London and quit to move back in with her dad and sister.

Naomi was fragile and Pip was trying her hardest not to tread on any cracks. In the corner of her eye she could see the ever-scrolling timer on her voice recorder app.

‘So, can you tell me what you were all doing at Max’s that night?’ she said gently.

Naomi shifted, eyes moving down to circle her knees.

‘Um, we were just, like, drinking, talking, playing some Xbox, nothing too exciting.’

‘And taking pictures? There’s a few on Facebook from that night.’

‘Yeah, taking silly pictures. Just messing around really,’ Naomi said.

‘There aren’t any pictures of Sal from that night, though.’

‘No, well, I guess he left before we started taking them.’

‘And was Sal acting strangely before he left?’ said Pip.

‘Um, I . . . no, I don’t think he was really.’

‘Did he talk about Andie at all?’

‘I, err . . . yeah, maybe a bit.’ Naomi shuffled in her seat and the leather made a loud, rumbling sound as she unstuck herself from it. Something Pip’s little brother would have found very funny and, under other circumstances, she might have too.

‘What did he say about her?’ Pip asked.

‘Um.’ Naomi paused for a moment, picking at a ripped cuticle by her thumb. ‘He, erm . . . I think maybe they were having a disagreement. Sal said he wasn’t going to talk to her for a bit.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t remember specifically. But Andie was . . . she was a bit of a nightmare. She was always trying to pick fights with Sal over the smallest things. Sal preferred to give her the silent treatment rather than argue.’

‘What kind of things were these fights about?’

‘Like the stupidest things. Like him not texting her back quick enough. Things like that. I . . . I never said it to him, but I always thought Andie was trouble. If I had said something, I don’t know, maybe everything would have turned out differently.’

Looking at Naomi’s downcast face, at the telling tremble of her upper lip, Pip knew she needed to bring them up from this particular rabbit hole, before Naomi closed up entirely.