Heatstroke: an intoxicating story of obsession over one hot summer Read online

  She pulled her knees up and rested against them. The plastic floor she sat on mimicked wood, its intricate lines designed to show an age it didn’t bear. Rachel sat, silent. There were no arms to hold her, no chest to crush herself against. It was still within Tim’s working day. He hadn’t even managed to reply to her messages. Rachel dragged the hand towel from its round loop and pressed it over her eyes. Behind that closed door, on the laminate floor of that tiny toilet, breathing in the scent of their vanilla reed diffuser, Rachel wept. Mia was in her bed, and no one was planning to wrench her from it. Rachel had to comfort herself. Her arms hugged the top of her knees, gripping them for support, and she let herself cry, desperate for the built-up grime inside her to flow out. Every muscle she’d held so taut needed to release. Lily had chosen to go. No one had forced a handkerchief of ether over her mouth and nose; no one had bundled that sweet, guileless girl into the empty boot of a car. She’d planned to go; she’d wanted to go. Rachel stroked her own arms.

  She aimed her tears right into the fibres of the towel, not letting them hit her cheeks. By the time her breath calmed, she felt hollowed out, unable to gather the energy to lift her head, to stand up. It felt as if nothing but milk flowed in her veins.

  Rachel knew Mia’s password. She’d watched her type it in so many times, it was impossible not to memorise the pattern. Top, then bottom three times. 2000. The year of her birth. Rachel had watched that flick of her daughter’s fingers every day for months. She’d locked the knowledge away, but now she had to use it. It was protection more than betrayal. It was necessary; she needed to know what was in there.

  Lily had chosen to go, but they still didn’t know the destination. They didn’t know who her companion was. That lace teddy had been for someone’s eyes. Mia’s glee was misplaced. One fear could dissipate, but a dark other was just rearing. Lily wasn’t on her way home. Rachel’s eyes were now dry.

  She took the phone whilst Mia slept. It was long past midnight. She snuck in to drop a kiss on Mia’s forehead, then eased the jack from the charging socket. It was surprisingly acquiescent. Rachel clutched the phone in both hands as she stalked out of the room. Her steps were tentative, but once the door was closed, her fingers flew. She could waste no time. Vital information might only be a few taps away. Once she’d submitted the four-digit code, it was all there for her to see; the treasure trove of her daughter’s world. The phone had the same layout as Rachel’s own – the bright icons in nearly the same places – but it felt alien. She panicked for a moment, unsure where to look. No teenager used emails, so she went straight to social media. Her fingers were too frenetic to navigate the deft systems. She stumbled, pressing the wrong buttons, double-clicking so profile pictures filled the screen and had to be retracted. Her movements were so frenzied that the phone slipped, wriggling free from her fingers. Rachel caught it before it hit the laminate. She closed her eyes. It was too risky. She made herself tiptoe downstairs and sit.

  She had to tread softly; it was vital that she left no traces. It required intricate care to avoid slipping and liking a picture from weeks before. Her limbs weighed dense with the guilt of it, with the leaden thud of hypocrisy. The idea of Mia doing the same to her own phone was unbearable. Rachel’s fingers were numb, but she had no choice. It was her duty.

  She knew the sites, which buttons to click, but the content was all novelty. Their profiles were set to private, or under pseudonyms she’d never have sniffed out. A whole universe opened up. In those posts and messages, she learned more about her daughter than a month of conversation could muster. Mia came to life in the pixels. Rachel saw the idioms she repeated. The little French phrases they bleated. C’est la vie, ma cherie. Arrête ton char! The way she rarely crabbed words like her friends did, but wrote out every syllable. She saw the emojis Mia favoured in her comments. The exploding fireworks, the two black-clad dancers. She saw the stylised universe Mia created. Where her friends were enthusiastically slipshod, posting haphazard pictures of any enjoyable moment, Mia was slick. She’d evidently taken cues from major influencers, and replicated their content with poised competence. Her grid of pictures was co-ordinated: pale pink, black, pops of mustard-gold. It was considered. She had over two thousand followers.

  Rachel flicked back through weeks of conversation, and time fell away. She learned Lily’s style too. Sweet Lily with her penchant for unicorn emojis. Lily who told the other girls how gorgeous they were at every opportunity. Lily who created pictures of Hollywood stars with their names scrawled in gold over their faces, their décolletage. She posted few images of herself, and never with the filters and edits the other girls so clearly favoured.

  Rachel scoured every picture of Lily’s, pinching her fingers apart to zoom into every corner, but there was no one else there. No boy from the year above, no lingering Lothario. Mia’s pictures often showed Aaron, usually facing away from the lens. Aaron gazing into the middle distance, Aaron hunched over his phone. Aaron washed in pink or black and white. He was as much a prop as the cactuses and painted nails and coffee cups she favoured. But Lily was always alone.

  As she explored their words, their pictures, Rachel’s finger stopped. There were no new updates. She scrolled back through every app, checked three or four different profiles – Ella, Keira, Abby – but there had been nothing new since Sunday afternoon. Not from any of them. She flicked back and saw their check-ins at the shopping centre, the hazy pictures of their Frappuccinos. Ella was the most confident. Delish drink with my delish girls. Her tongue stuck out towards the lens. A few swipes further showed their selfies from Saturday night, arms raised in dance moves, eyes crossed in front of the Netflix logo. Abby was goofier. Wtf am I doing with my life? Faire l’andouille! Fingers in the peace sign obscuring their faces. Get ugly, you freak. Their mouths full of pizza in her kitchen. Keira tried for dramatic wit. I’m obsessed with this margherita. Dr. Oetker should basically impregnate me now.

  Their faces, only hours before, looked unbearably young. Despite their thrusting hips and flirty comments, they looked like children. None of them had posted anything since Sunday afternoon, since Rachel had received the phone call that had twisted the day. The silence felt solid. The chirping little birds in their hands never shut up. Over a day without noise was implausible. Did they have nothing to say, or was what they had to say so unutterable? Rachel hadn’t thought to check the call log; she’d ignored the phone’s original function. Did they ever use it for audible words? There were no red numbers; Mia had missed no calls, and had received only her mother’s. Rachel’s finger tapped the warm screen one more time. Lily’s number had been dialled at 14:07. 14:11. 14:24. 14:52. Twenty-four times since two o’clock on Sunday, and she hadn’t once picked up. 15:09. 15:32. All of Monday, at every moment of opportunity; before school, in breaks and lunch. 8:32. 11:34. 11:37. 11:49. 13:04. 13:26. And all night. 19:46. 19:58. 21:03. 21:54. The blue and white of the screen suddenly burned Rachel’s eyes; the brightness seemed to blare. So many calls with no answer. Such desperation to hear her friend’s voice.

  He had smeared glitter on her cheeks. It came from a plastic pot he took from his pocket. Tiny sparkles of gold. He had spoken, in between strokes, right into her ear, so close that if he rose louder than a whisper it would leave her ringing for hours, but he never uttered a word in more than a breath. He said her name, hushed, like it was a precious thing, lingering over both syllables, making them prettier than they’d ever sounded.

  He’d dipped the pads of his thumbs into the little pot of sparkle, then pressed them gently into the soft spaces beneath her eyes. She’d thrown her head backwards, letting the light of the moon or the streetlights catch the smudges and make them gleam. He’d lifted her high, and watched as she laughed. He’d held her jaw in his hand, and tilted it back and forth so she glimmered.

  2

  ‘Oh, God. She’ll hate it. She’ll hate it.’ Mia stroked the picture of Lily’s face that sat on the bottom right co
rner of the front page of the Daily Mail. As soon as Mia had roused from another restless night, she’d begged to go to the One Stop. Rachel had handed over her whole wallet. Mia came home minutes later with a fat wodge of papers. Her arms were loaded with a haphazard mix of broadsheets and blazing red tops – anything that might feature Lily’s face.

  ‘She’ll hate it. She’ll think she looks fat.’ They’d seen the picture online, but it only seemed to register to Mia as real when she could touch it. The print had rubbed onto the pads of her fingers and left grey stains in the crook of her arm. She’d bought all the papers, but Lily’s face was only on the front of two. With the others, Mia had to flick through, licking her fingers for traction, finding Lily on page six, page nine. She spread the papers across the kitchen table. Eight Lilys stared up at them. A choir of Lilys, eyes blue and mouth grinning. In the grainy dots that formed her, she looked gauche. Her cheeks and chin were round, her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail. It was her most recent school photograph, but she looked several years younger. Rachel couldn’t remember when she’d last seen the girls smile for a photograph – images of them were all cheekbones, tongues pushed out with no flicker of mirth, eyebrows raised until their brows wrinkled. Lily’s newspaper grin was so broad her nostrils flared. There was such a chasm between fourteen and fifteen.

  Rachel hadn’t noticed Mia’s face pucker, but the hair-trigger had flicked, and a tear fell from Mia’s cheek onto the image of Lily’s, puddling the ink. The glee of the previous night had faded. Lily just stared back, eager and diligent. Rachel put her arm around Mia, their skin pressing together.

  Rachel had expected the story to gain nothing more than local interest. Maybe it was the season – that swathe of summer when the stories dried up – maybe it was Lily’s clean blonde hair and pink smile. She was in her school uniform in every picture. She looked no more like Lily than a witness identikit. The image must have been picked with precision, if not by Debbie, then by the Police Liaison Officer. That beaming face was deliberately innocent. The blonde girl pictured couldn’t have deceived everyone with such sly ease; she couldn’t have crept up to the back corner of the loft, couldn’t have rummaged in her mother’s knicker drawer. She had the clear eyes of a child who couldn’t possibly have plotted for weeks.

  ‘Do you think she’s seen it?’ Mia wiped her eyes, but Rachel didn’t let go of her. ‘Do you think she’s seen a newspaper, where she is?’

  Rachel pictured Lily at a motorway service station or a cramped hotel room. There was no way of knowing where she was, or how far she’d gone. She could be holed up in some remote place with no phone reception. And there was someone next to her. A man. A man or a boy. A faceless figure who had her in his grasp. ‘I’m sure she has, Mi. She’ll feel so awful that we’re all worrying. I’m sure she’s on her way home.’

  Mia’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She swiped it and held the screen out to Rachel. It was Keira. Put the TV on now. BBC News.

  It wasn’t cold, but his lips had been chapped. Clots of dry skin had made them thick and bitten. The corners of his mouth had looked sore. She’d known what to do. The stick of lip salve lived in her pocket all year round. She’d had to hold his head; her fingers on the back of his neck, her thumb pressing his jaw still, as she slicked on the balm. His eyes didn’t leave her as she focused. He didn’t know the pout that women learn, the particular grimace that turns the flesh rigid, so with every stroke the skin of his lips tugged and puckered. When she’d finished, the peeling shards had softened, and the redness soothed. She’d pulled back, still holding his face, proud of her handiwork. The sheen on his lips lengthened as he smiled.

  ‘Lily, love, we’re not angry with you, darling. We’re really not. We just want you to come home.’

  Rachel had to quash the momentary thrill of recognition. She swallowed back the gasp of adrenalin that comes when something familiar fills the space reserved for the important. It was Lily’s father, Gary, in close-up. He looked odd; his face seemed swollen, the flesh pushing his skin to stretching point, but you could still discern the genes that had gifted Lily her prettiness. The softness, the wide eyes, the mobile mouth. Rachel wanted to reach out and touch the screen.

  Debbie was sitting next to him. She was holding a tissue under her lashes to stem the flow of tears. She moved it from eye to eye every few seconds. ‘We love you, Lils.’ Her words came out as sobs.

  Their faces were lit with flashes so frequently the screen seemed to flicker.

  Mia stood in front of the television, one hand cupped to cover all her face except the eyes. She chanted to herself. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’ Her phone was already in her other hand, dialling Lily’s number. Rachel could hear the dull tone from across the room. It didn’t ring, but Mia kept pressing the button.

  Every whisper of Lily’s technology would be tracked. Rachel knew that behind the analogue story – the printed pictures, the face-to-face interviews – must be a frantic digital search. They weren’t pacing the streets, but must surely be scouring every CCTV image, every beep of her phone, every spark of her face on a screen. It was impossible to stay hidden with so many devices primed to capture. They must have clues: a sense of which direction she’d headed in, of who might be holding her hand. They must be getting closer. They must.

  A tissue box was just visible on screen, a protocol nod to compassion. Gary’s fingers worked on his tissue as he spoke, twisting and worrying it into thin rolls. He must have known how he’d be seen. Rachel felt her stomach tense. The bag and the teddy. A few lipsticks. That was all they had to go on. She’d left no note, made no contact. It could be faked. Gary’s face was tight. He’d know how his words would be given that cadence of unreality, how every gesture would be scrutinised. He’d know the role he’d be cast in. There was a sigh between every phrase.

  ‘We don’t care where you are, love, or why. We just want you to get in touch. A call or a text or a Facebook message. Anything.’

  Mia repeated the word in agreement. ‘Anything.’

  Gary’s head on the screen was bigger than Mia’s in the room. His whole body shook with each breath. Formal nameplates sat in front of them. Gareth Dixon. Deborah Dixon. Those names, in their shortened forms, lived on Rachel’s phone, in her email address book. That face, now contorted in distress, was the same one that always checked from the car window that Mia had gone through the front door safely. Now, it was beamed in perfect HD onto her thirty-six-inch television. The zoom was so close you could see the pores of his cheeks.

  ‘Mia, come here, sweetheart.’ Mia remained inches from the screen, her phone pressed against her ear. ‘Give me your phone, Mi. You need to sit down.’

  Gary pulled another tissue from the box, and pressed it against his lips, his forehead. He supported the weight of his head with his fingertips. Beside him, Debbie seemed to suddenly wake up. She went from slumped to wildly alert in seconds. Gary’s microphone picked up his whisper. ‘It’s alright, darling, you’re doing amazing.’ Debbie’s chair scraped against the floor as she stood, and the camera zoomed onto her. She was holding something up to the lens. It was a small stuffed toy, a once-plush animal from the Disney Store. It looked damp in her grip.

  ‘Lily, love, you’ve got to come back, please. You’ve got to.’ Her voice cracked, and then dropped. She stared right down the lens, to no one but Lily. It felt intrusive to even look at her. ‘Kanga misses you, Roo.’

  Gary stood up to support his wife, his arm around her, guiding her back to her seat.

  Mia made a noise, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Rachel felt her cheeks flash, her scalp tingle with sweat. The heat they’d all withstood for so many days was suddenly aggressive, clawing at her. Mia stood almost touching the screen, as if her proximity could lend urgency to the appeal. She added her voice. ‘Please.’

  Rachel grabbed for the TV handset, abruptly aware that it was too much for Mia to see, but Mia’s grip
was firm.

  ‘I want to watch it. I want to see Lily’s mum.’

  Rachel wrangled the black plastic from Mia’s sweaty fingers and clicked it towards the television. The sudden silence was thick. Mia’s sobs were now the loudest sound. Rachel sat down next to where she’d slumped, on the warm leather of the sofa, and leaned her head on her daughter’s racking shoulders, so they moved as one.

  ‘I want to see Lily.’

  He would always buy the alcohol before they met. The bottles would clink together in their flimsy blue plastic bag, and the stickers on their necks – £5.49 printed on a yellow tag – would peel away. They’d always been picked up at some minimart or corner shop. It was always cider or alcopops or syrupy fruit liqueurs. Drinks that hid their kick behind spoons of sugar. They’d down them straight from the bottle, never in a glass and never inside.

  He’d drive twenty minutes away from where she lived, from the catchment area of the school. There were eyes everywhere. He’d play music as they drove. He never asked what she wanted to listen to, but crafted compilations of the songs he loved. He knew every line, she knew snatches of melodies, and when the words came to her, their voices would meld. They’d sing with the windows closed tight, drunk before they’d even popped the lids from those bottles. She is a changeless angel, she’s a city, it’s a pity that I’m like me. His voice was deep and sweet, and his stubble caught the light as he sang, those bristles that never felt harsh.

  The hairs that grew just above his wrists glinted as he gripped the wheel, as his hand reached over to rest, casually, on her thigh. The weight of it was glorious. It was early spring, but she didn’t feel cold in the slightest. She pulled her legs up, so her Converse trainers rested on the upholstery of his car, driving until the streetlights came on in roads they didn’t know. Floodlights on a tiny playground. The denim clung to her as she sat cross-legged on the gravel, and her hair whipped across her face. They stood on the swings, hands white on the chain links, both flying manically high, as high as the metal would let them go. His grin in the light. ‘Higher. Push higher.’