‘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 : )

Nineteen

Her throat closed in on her, trapping her voice inside, cornering the words until they gave up and scattered away. All she could do was stare at the messages, unravel them and put them back together until they made some kind of sense.

Hello Pip.

You’re getting closer : )

Connor was the first to find words. ‘What the fuck does that mean? Pip?’

Her name sounded strange, like it didn’t belong to her, had been stretched out of shape until it no longer fit. Pip stared at those three letters, unrecognizable in the hands of this stranger. This stranger who was less than a mile away.

‘Um,’ was all she had to offer.

‘She knew it was you,’ Ravi said, his voice coaxing Pip back to herself. ‘She knows who you are.’

‘What does “You’re getting closer” mean?’ Connor asked.

‘To finding Jamie,’ Pip said. Or finding out what happened

to Jamie, she thought to herself, which sounded almost the same but was very, very different. And Layla knew. Whoever Layla was, she knew everything, Pip was sure of that now.

‘That smiley face, though.’ Ravi shivered; she felt it through his fingers.

The shock had receded now, and Pip jumped into action. ‘I need to reply. Now,’ she said, typing out: Who are you? Where’s Jamie? There was no point pretending any more, Layla was one step ahead.

She pressed send but an error box appeared instead.

Unable to send message. User not found.

‘No,’ Pip whispered. ‘Nononono.’ She thumbed back to Layla’s page but it was no longer there. The profile picture and bio still displayed, but the grid was gone, replaced by the words No Posts Yet and a banner of User not found at the top of the app. ‘No,’ Pip growled in frustration, the sound raw and angry in her throat. ‘She’s disabled her account.’

‘What?’ Connor said.

‘She’s gone.’

Ravi hurried back over to Pip’s laptop, refreshing Layla Mead’s Facebook page. The page you requested was not found. ‘Fuck. She’s deactivated her Facebook too.’

‘And Tinder,’ Pip said, checking the app. ‘She’s gone. We lost her.’

A quietness settled over the room, a quietness that wasn’t the absence of sound, it was its own living thing, stifling in the spaces between them.

‘She knows, doesn’t she?’ Ravi said, his voice gentle, skimming just above the quiet instead of breaking through. ‘Layla knows what happened to Jamie.’

Connor was holding his head, shaking it again. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said, speaking to the ground.

Pip watched him, transfixed by the movement of his head. ‘I don’t either.’

It was a fake smile, the one she put on for her dad later as she walked Ravi towards the front door.

‘Done with your trial update, pickle?’ he asked, clapping Ravi gently on the back; her dad’s way of saying goodbye reserved just for him.

‘Yeah. Just uploaded it,’ Pip said.

Connor had gone home over an hour ago, after they’d run out of ways of asking each other the same questions. There was nothing more they could have done tonight. Layla Mead was gone, but the lead wasn’t dead. Not entirely. Tomorrow at school Pip and Connor would ask Mr Clark what he knew about her, that was the plan. And tonight, once Ravi was gone, Pip would record about what had just happened, finish editing the interviews, and then it would go out later tonight: the first episode of season two.

‘Thanks for dinner, Victor,’ Ravi said, turning to give Pip one of their hidden goodbyes, a slight scrunching of his eyes. She blinked back at him and he reached for the catch on the front door, pulling it open.

‘Oh,’ someone said, standing on the step right outside, fist floating in the air ready to knock.

‘Oh,’ Ravi replied in turn, and Pip leaned to see who it was. Charlie Green, from four doors down, his rusty-coloured hair pushed back from his face.