Page 72 of The Friend Request

Text messages. Four, five, six of them. All from Alex.

Kim call me

Kim where are you

Answer your phone

Kim I need you to call me right now

Something has happened

CALL ME

My stomach turns to liquid. I pull over without indicating. I don’t check the mirror, I just wrench the wheel left. The Land Rover mounts the verge and stops at an angle, the engine still running and the headlights pointing into a hedge.

I call him. My thumb slips on the screen twice before I hit the right button, and it rings once, half a ring, and he picks up.

‘Kim—’

‘Alex, I’m coming home. Something happened at the cottage, someone came, someone threw a brick through the window, and there was a note, and I need to⁠—’

‘Kim, stop.’

His voice is wrong. I know it instantly. This isn’t angry Alex, or cold Alex, or hurt Alex. This is something I’ve never heard.

‘Alex, listen to me, the note said⁠—’

‘Olivia is missing.’

The words hit me, and the world stops.

The engine is running, the heater is blowing, and the hedgerow is bright green in the headlights. And none of it is moving because the world has seized, a locked wheel, and I am sitting in the middle of it with the phone pressed to my ear, my mouth open, and no sound coming out.

‘Kim? Kim, are you there?’

‘What do you mean, missing?’ My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds like it’s coming from the back seat, or from outside, or from someone else. ‘She’s with your mum.’

‘She was. She went out this afternoon – said she was meeting a friend, someone she knows from an online group. Mum let her go because she seemed fine, she was happy, she had her phone, she said she’d be back by six.’ He stops.

I can hear him breathing – fast, ragged, not controlled, not measured, not Alex.

‘She didn’t come back by six. She didn’t answer her phone. Mum rang me at seven, and I’ve been calling everyone, everyone, Kim, and nobody has seen her and nobody knows where she went, and her phone is going straight to voicemail⁠—’

‘No,’ I say. ‘No, no, no⁠—’

‘I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. I’ve rung your mobile, I’ve⁠—’

‘There’s no signal, Alex, you know there’s no signal⁠—’

‘I know. I know.’ His voice cracks, like a glass hitting a floor, and the sound of it goes through me because Alex does not crack. Alex stays level and processes and plans, and right now he is breaking apart on the other end of this phone. I can hear it happening in real time, and I can’t do anything about it.

I press my hand to my mouth, close my eyes, and try to think, try to make my brain work through the white noise of terror that’s flooding every part of me. The note. The note in my pocket. Your child’s life depends on it.

He took her. He’s taken my daughter. He threw a brick through my window and told me to come to the school, and then he took her, or he’d already taken her, or someone did it for him – I don’t know, I can’t think, my mind keeps crashing into the same wall and bouncing off and crashing again⁠—

‘Alex, listen to me. Don’t call the police.’

Silence. One second of absolute silence.