Friend Request(59)
‘Mm hmm.’ She tries to maintain her blank facade but I can tell she wasn’t one of those girls herself, and also that she knows I wasn’t either. I can see DI Reynolds at sixteen, as tall and wide as she is now, her hair longer then, hanging greasily down her back, lumbering into the classroom, tripping over her chair, the pretty girls sniggering. Always at the front of the class, top marks for everything. Knowing, however, that popularity at school isn’t everything, waiting it out, best results the school has ever seen, and then off. Off to university where she could reinvent herself, find her tribe.
‘OK. Moving on to the reunion itself, do you remember when you last saw Sophie?’
‘Around ten o’clock, I think.’
‘Is that when you left?’
‘No, I left around eleven, but I don’t think I saw her later than ten.’
‘Did you spend much time with her?’
‘Not a great deal, no. We chatted, caught up, you know. There were a lot of people there.’
‘And how did she seem?’
I think of Sophie clutching my arm, panicking. She was frightened.
‘She seemed fine,’ I say, unable to quell my own panic. I’m digging myself in deeper and deeper here, so scared of saying the wrong thing that I’m not telling Reynolds anything at all. ‘Although, as I said, I hadn’t seen her for years, so I don’t know if she was her usual self or not.’
‘Did she spend time talking to anyone in particular?’
‘I saw her talking to Claire Barnes, Sam Parker, Matt Lewis…’ I list a few more names, trying to recall each time I heard her laugh, saw her kissing people extravagantly, tossing her hair. Reynolds is taking it all in.
‘And did she come to the reunion with anyone?’ she asks.
I hesitate – just a tiny bit, but she’s good, she notices straight away. For some absurd reason I feel guilty about dropping Pete in it, which is ridiculous as other people are bound to mention it.
‘Sophie was at the reunion with a man. Pete.’
‘A boyfriend?’ Reynolds’ ears prick up. I’ve got the stick and she can sense that I’m about to throw it for her. ‘Do you know his surname?’
‘No, sorry. I don’t think he was exactly a boyfriend either; apparently they’d only been out a couple of times before. She met him online.’
‘And she brought him to her school reunion?’ She looks sceptical.
‘I know. I asked her about that, but she said she didn’t want to come on her own, not with everyone else married and talking about their children and stuff.’ My voice falters and tears gather in my throat. Poor foolish, vain Sophie. I’ve been so busy berating myself for being wrapped up in what my teenage friends think of me, it never occurred to me until now that Sophie had cared even more than I did, with her pretend job in fashion… her borrowed flat… Pete. I think of Esther with her trophy husband glued to her side, passing round pictures of her children on her phone. None of us are immune, it seems.
‘Take your time.’ Reynolds’ voice is kind, but she is watching me carefully.
‘It looked like they were having an argument, towards the end of the evening. Not long before I last saw her.’
‘And was that the last time you saw him? Did he leave without her? Or was he there looking for her at the end?’
It’s like I’ve walked into a brick wall that I didn’t even see coming. I’ve heard the expression about sweaty palms, but until now I didn’t realise it was a real thing. I’m going to have to tell Reynolds that I spent the night with Pete. But how does that look? He was Sophie’s boyfriend. Who would believe me if I say nothing happened between us in that hotel room? It will set Reynolds off on a chain of questioning that could lead to the friend request from Maria. They’re bound to be looking at Sophie’s social media accounts, but at the moment, all they will see from Maria is a couple of innocuous messages: Still looking good, Sophie; See you at the reunion, Sophie Hannigan. There’s nothing to arouse suspicion there.
But if Reynolds suspects that I slept with Sophie’s boyfriend on the night of her murder, she’s going to want to look at me very closely. And if she looks at my social media, and finds the messages from Maria to me, she’s going to have questions. Questions I don’t want to answer. I can’t bear for anyone to know what I did to Maria. And more than that, I can’t risk the possibility of going to prison. Of course there’s no body, but there are other people who know what happened at the leavers’ party. Maybe not even just Matt and Sam – I wouldn’t be surprised if Sophie let it slip to other people over the years. As Sam always used to say to me, it’s just not worth the risk of letting anyone know what happened. And I have Henry now. If there’s even the slightest chance that I could go to prison, I need to take what I did to Maria to my grave. I can’t leave Henry without his mother. I’ve spent so long hiding in the shadows, covering up the truth that I can’t stop now.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, my whole body itching with panic. ‘I didn’t see him.’
‘Do you know where we might find him, this Pete?’
‘Sorry, no. I only know his first name. And that he lives in London.’
‘OK,’ says Reynolds, leaning back in her chair. ‘We’ll want to speak to you again in due course, but if there’s nothing else significant that you think we should know now?’