KATE
So she didn’t run away. Not like we thought, anyway.
The message in front of me was sent from Sophie’s other email account: [email protected] – the one we’d checked. She must have deleted it after she sent it; I know both her sent messages and her deleted file were examined.
I flex my hands; they’ve gone cold.
It took me a few seconds to realise what I was reading. It’s an email conversation, a string of messages that she’s forwarded to herself, to this secret email account.
Now I start reading them again, keeping my breathing controlled. There is no point panicking, not now. The messages are brief; I get the impression it’s the continuation of an ongoing conversation:
10 May 2016 at 18:05, King Pluto <‘[email protected]’> wrote:
All set?
10 May 2016 at 18:09, Sophie Harlow <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes! I’m ready x
That’s Sophie’s gogomail, the account we knew about. The replies come quickly:
King Pluto: Do you need to go over the plan for Friday again?
Sophie: Only if you want to. Everything’s fine with me. I’m excited x
King Pluto: You know you’ve got to stay calm now. Don’t act too happy, or out of the ordinary.
Sophie: I know! I just started another row, coursework this time. I feel bad:(
King Pluto: It’s got to be done. Just a few days to go now. Delete this conversation.
Sophie: You’re such a worrier. Don’t I always?
King Pluto: I mean it. You know I’ll check. Delete it.
Sophie: All right, I will. x
King Pluto: I can’t wait until we can be together.
Sophie: Me too. See you soon x
King Pluto: See you very soon.
So someone knew she was going to run away. Not just that, but someone was planning to go with her. And now one question is running through my head, on a loop: who? Because everyone she knew is still here.
I check the date of the forwarded messages – the whole exchange took place on 10 May 2016, between 6.05p.m. and 6.17p.m. – and pull up an online calendar. Like I thought: it was a Tuesday. Homework hours, when she’d be up in her bedroom, safely tucked away; me pottering around downstairs, upset after our latest clash; Mark still at work.
But she wasn’t safe. She was making arrangements, three days before she went, with someone who wanted her to keep it a secret: ‘You know I’ll check.’ How?
I think: if they knew her password too, they could just log in themselves. The confidence that she’d do what she was told chills me. No persuading, no endearments – just commands.
And I know when this was, I realise now. Just after that last argument, in the last week. I remember how it ended: Sophie slamming her way out of the kitchen. ‘Just let me go. I can’t stand it! Don’t you get it? I want some space!’ To go up to her room, and talk to … whoever this was.
I’ve replayed that argument so many times. If I’d handled things differently that evening … it seemed to come from nowhere. Of course it did, I understand now. They were laying the ground to tell the familiar story: family strife, an unhappy teenager – a reason for going. But that wasn’t it, was it?
And ‘See you soon’. But when? The next day, at school? Or afterwards – only after she’d gone?
But I just know.
The email shows that it was sent on 13 May, 02.35a.m. – three days after their exchange. The day she ran away. Sophie forwarded this brief conversation to herself the night before she left, in the early hours, when we were all asleep – filing it away where no one could see.
This was a back-up plan, a just-in-case. She’s her mother’s daughter, after all: cautious. Oh, not enough to let me know where she was going. Not enough to tell me who she was going with. But just enough to leave a trace, in case … in case she ever wanted to?
Because wherever my daughter was headed, and whoever she trusted to know about it, a part of her – however small – didn’t trust them. Not entirely.
I stay at the computer, trawling the internet for traces of this email address, the ‘king_pluto’ one. I don’t expect it to lead to a business card, but I hope that someone was stupid enough to slip up, just once, using that email or username to sign up for something or, forgetting they’re still logged in, comment on some forum. To leave a footprint, somewhere.
There’s nothing.
I lean back. Now it’s happened I’m strangely calm.
I knew it. I knew it didn’t make sense. Not how it was supposed to have happened. Not my Sophie.
I can’t wait until we can be together.
Then I do it before I can think about it any more: I log in to my own email, the one I use for everything. I go to my drafts and pull up my standard enquiry email: ‘Have you seen this girl?’ with her picture attached.
Within seconds I get a reply: I open it.
Your message couldn’t be delivered … the recipient’s mailbox is unavailable.
The email’s been shut down. Someone’s already covered their tracks.
I prop my elbows on the table and rub my eyes. So who could she have been talking to? Be logical.
Danny? Or even a friend, in whom she’s confided; someone who wants out too. OK. But then what? They just chickened out – and kept quiet all this time?
No. It’s not just a friend. I can’t wait until we can be together. But it’s not Danny, either, I’m sure, after reading that diary, knowing how bad things were between them at the end …
I jerk myself straight: I can’t trust that diary, not any more. Because it didn’t make any mention of this – this person, sending secret emails to my daughter. For whatever reason, Sophie didn’t want to write about him in her diary, even as she confided details of her pregnancy, her problems with her boyfriend, her unhappiness.
So the diary entries are … off. They’re not telling the whole truth.
My heart starts to thud.
Was any of it true? All those new entries that I hadn’t seen before, making it look like her leaving was all about a teenage pregnancy, getting the situation ‘fixed’, and a hot-headed boyfriend reacting badly. Sophie running away had finally started to make sense.
But a little voice whispers: and it gave you a scapegoat. Danny.
It’s all so much, I want to push the idea away.
How would I not know if Sophie was tangled up with someone else? She was sixteen, it’s not possible.
But then there’s the timing. After two years, for the diary to come now, and only now, when I’d found out about the pregnancy test, when I’d started asking questions … And what did Nicholls say? He said something about my raising concerns, that I’d done the right thing. ‘Because it meant that Sophie was on our radar again, when the diary got handed in.’ How lucky, I thought then. They might have missed it.
Now I think: it’s too neat, the timing, for it to be anything but odd.
Jesus. If I’ve got Danny all wrong … what did he say, when I went to see him? I wish I’d taken notes; I’ve gone about this all the wrong way, so slapdash. He said that nothing ever happened between him and Sophie, he was adamant. And there was something else, surely. I’m missing something … no, it’s gone.
But if there’s a scapegoat, then there’s someone else who’s being protected: the emailer. The person who knows where Sophie is?
The person who really got her pregnant?
I get up, needing to move. Because why do all this, Sophie? Why lead me to the email messages? Why even bother with the diary if you’re letting me know it’s not telling the full truth? Why cover up for someone, and undercut it all at the same time? And why phone the helpline to say you’re OK, then fill me with fear?
It doesn’t make sense.
Until, with a sick lurch of my stomach, it does.
There’s one logical answer, really, when you come down it.
Because it was all she could do. It was all he let her do.