People LIke Her(76)

Her face stiffens. She quickly turns and closes the door behind her, and then turns back.

“I expect you know why I’m here, don’t you?”

She nods, once, quickly.

“I don’t imagine you thought you’d ever be meeting me in real life, like this, did you?”

She shakes her head.

“Look at me,” I say.

She lifts her gaze to meet mine, very briefly, and then very quickly lowers it again.

In the other room, I can hear the man who opened the door making the tea, humming to himself. A spoon clinks against a mug. A cupboard door is opened.

“Your dad?” I ask.

She shakes her head again.

“My grandad.”

Pamela Fielding is about seventeen years old.

The very first thing she tells me is that she didn’t steal the photos. I ask who did, then? Someone she knows? Someone from her school? She’s still at school, isn’t she?

“College,” she mumbles.

She looks like the kind of girl you see on the bus. She keeps tucking a strand of dark, sort-of-shiny hair behind her ear. In each earlobe is a single stud. Her cheeks, dotted here and there with acne scars, are thickly foundationed.

“Where is it?” I ask. “The laptop.”

She doesn’t have it, she says. She doesn’t know anything about any laptop. She bought the photographs online.

“Online? What do you mean? Like, the dark web?”

She looks at me.

“I mean a website,” she says. “Just a forum.”

“What kind of forum?”

She fiddles with the cuff of the sweater she’s wearing.

“A forum for people who do what I do, who share advice with one another, give one another tips. Sometimes we talk about all the different influencers. Sometimes we talk about how to get more followers.”

“Like by pretending the person whose pictures you are using is sick?”

“I guess so.”

It’s at that point that Grandad comes in with the tea. If he notices any tension in the room, he doesn’t mention it. He talks us both through the various treats and cookies in the tin and lets us know how many there are of each. A corner of Pamela’s mouth twitches impatiently. When he leaves, Pamela’s grandfather sets the living room door slightly ajar. Both of us glance at it. Neither of us gets up to close it.

I’m aware of being in a very strange position at this point. I’m trying very hard to avoid raising my voice, losing my temper. This is not easy.

“So, this forum,” I say, “What’s it called?”

She tells me. I ask her to spell it.

“And is it open or closed?”

“Some of it’s open and some of it’s closed.”

“And it is someone on this forum you have been buying photographs from?”

She nods.

“Who are they?” I ask. “What do they call themselves?”

“The Mad Hatter,” she says.

“The Mad Hatter? As in Alice?”

She looks blank.

“Their avatar is a picture of a hat,” she tells me.

“And what else do you know about them? Anything? How did you get them the money?”

“PayPal,” she mutters.

“Show me.”

Reluctantly she brings her phone out from her pocket, unlocks it, and holds it up.

“Which one is it? Which transaction?”

She shows me.

“You’re sure?”

She nods.

“That was the account you paid the money into? The account this Mad Hatter wanted credited?”

She nods again.

The PayPal account into which she paid the money is in the name Winter Edwards.

Winter?

It takes a minute or two for me to get my head around this, for it even to start to sink in.

I ask Pamela whether this person, the one on the forum, said anything about how they got the photographs and why they were selling them. Was it just about the money? Was it from jealousy, from spite? Do they think we have wronged them in some way?

Pamela shrugs.

“I didn’t really ask.”

“And what about you? Why do you do it?” I ask her. “That’s what I can’t understand. What’s the kick?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to take the account down, and I want you to delete those pictures. All those pictures. And I want to watch you doing it. And maybe then I won’t call the police and I won’t tell your grandfather. But only if you promise me never to do this again. To speak to someone about why you feel the need to do this, what compels you. I mean, I don’t know what your family situation is, or whatever. If you want me to find you someone to speak to, a number to call, I can do that.”

She says something that sounds like okay, very softly.

“I mean, you do get that it’s weird, don’t you, what you’ve been doing?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so. Taking someone’s pictures and making up stories about them and posting them for all the world to see? Someone who has not given you their consent? Who doesn’t even know you’re doing it? It’s fucking disgusting. It’s sick.”

There follows a long pause.

She’s staring hard at the carpet, her hair hanging down in front of her face, and when she speaks it is so quiet I can’t even hear her.