She downloaded the Tinder app on her phone and set about making a new profile, her thumb hovering over the name box.
‘What name should we go for?’ Ravi said.
Pip looked up at him, the question already in her eyes.
‘You want to put me on a dating site?’ he asked. ‘You’re a weird kind of girlfriend.’
‘It’s just easier because I already have photos of you. We’ll delete the profile right after.’
‘Fine,’ Ravi smirked. ‘But you can’t use this to win any future arguments.’
‘Right,’ Pip said, typing in the bio now. ‘Enjoys mannish things like football and fishing.’
‘Aha,’ Ravi said, ‘catfishing.’
‘You two,’ Connor remarked, flicking his eyes between them like he was watching a tennis match.
Pip clicked through settings to alter the preferences. ‘Let’s keep it local, within a three-mile radius. We want it to show us women,’ she said, tapping the slider button beside that option. ‘And the age range . . . well, we know Jamie thought she was older than eighteen, so let’s put the range between nineteen and twenty-six?’
‘Yep, sounds good,’ Connor said.
‘OK.’ Pip saved the settings. ‘Let’s fish.’
Ravi and Connor huddled forward, watching over her shoulders as she swiped left through the potential matches. Soph from the bookshop was on there. And then a few swipes later so was Naomi Ward, grinning up at them. ‘We won’t mention that to her,’ Pip said, continuing, moving Naomi’s photo aside.
And there it was. She wasn’t expecting it so soon; it crept up on her and she almost swiped past it, her thumb stalling just before it hit the screen.
Layla.
‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Layla, with an A-Y. Twenty-five. Less than a mile away.’
‘Less than a mile away? Creepy,’ Connor said, shuffling closer for a better look.
Pip scrolled through the four photos on Layla’s profile. They were pictures of Stella Chapman, stolen from her Instagram, but they’d been cropped, flipped and filtered. And the main difference: Layla’s hair was ash blonde. It was done well; Layla must have played with the hue and layers on Photoshop.
‘Reader. Learner. Traveller,’ Ravi read from her bio. ‘Dog-Lover. And above all other things: Keen Breakfaster.’
‘Sounds approachable,’ Pip said.
‘Yeah, she’s right,’ said Ravi. ‘Breakfast is the best.’
‘It is a catfish, you were right,’ Connor spluttered over a sharp intake of breath. ‘Stella – but blonde. Why?’
‘Blondes have more fun, apparently,’ Pip said, flicking through Layla’s photos again.
‘Well, you’re brunette and you actively hate fun, so yeah. True fact,’ said Ravi, affectionately scratching the back of Pip’s head.
‘Aha.’ She pointed to the very bottom of the bio, where it said: Insta @LaylaylaylaM. ‘Her Instagram handle.’
‘Go to it,’ Connor said.
‘I am.’ She swapped over to the Instagram app and typed the handle into the search bar. Stella’s edited face peered up at them from the top result and Pip clicked on the profile.
Layla Mead. 32 posts. 503 followers. 101 following.
Most of the photos were ones taken from Stella’s page, her hair now a natural ashy blonde but the same piercing smile and perfect hazel eyes. There were other photos without Stella; an over-filtered shot of the pub in Little Kilton, looking quaint and inviting. And further down, a photo of the rolling fields near Ravi’s house, an orange setting sun clinging to the sky above.
Pip scrolled down to check the very first post, a photo of Stella / Layla cuddling a beagle puppy. She’d captioned it: Overhaul: new aesthetic oh and . . . puppy!
‘The first post was uploaded on February 17th.’
‘So that’s when Layla was born,’ Ravi said. ‘Just over two months ago.’
Pip looked at Connor and this time, he was able to read what she was going to say before she did.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That fits. My brother must have started talking to her mid-March, that’s when his mood changed and he seemed happier again, always on his phone.’
‘A lot of followers in that time. Ah –’ she checked down the list of followers – ‘Jamie’s on here. But most of them look like bots or inactive accounts. She probably bought her followers.’
‘Layla does not mess around,’ Ravi said, typing at Pip’s computer, now in his lap.
‘Hold on,’ Pip said, fixating on another name in Layla’s followers. ‘Adam Clark.’ She stared at Connor, both widening their eyes in recognition.
Ravi picked up on the exchange. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘That’s our new history teacher,’ Connor said as Pip clicked the name to double-check it was him. His profile was set to private, but the display picture was clearly him, a wide smile with small Christmas baubles attached to his ginger-flecked beard.
‘I guess Jamie isn’t the only person Layla’s been talking to,’ Pip said. ‘Stella doesn’t take history and Mr Clark’s new, so maybe he wouldn’t know he’s talking to a catfish, if he is talking to her.’
‘Aha,’ Ravi said, spinning the laptop on the heel of his hand. ‘Layla Mead has a Facebook too. The very same pictures, the first also posted February 17th.’ He turned the screen back to read on. ‘She did a status update that day saying: New account because I forgot the password for my old one.’
‘A likely story, Layla,’ said Pip, returning to Layla’s page and Stella-not-Stella’s glittering smile. ‘We should try to message her, right?’ She wasn’t really asking, and both of them knew that. ‘She’s the person most likely to know what happened to Jamie. Where he is.’
‘You think she’s definitely a she?’ Connor asked.
‘I mean, yeah. Jamie’s been speaking on the phone to her.’
‘Oh, right. What are you going to message her, then?’
‘Well . . .’ Pip chewed her lip, thinking. ‘It can’t come from me, or Ravi, or the podcast. Or even you, Connor. If she has anything to do with Jamie, she might know how we’re connected to him, looking into his disappearance. I think we have to be careful, approach her as a stranger just looking to talk. See if we can gradually work out who she really is, or what she knows about Jamie. Gradually. Catfish don’t like to be rumbled.’
‘We can’t just make a new account, though, she’d be suspicious seeing zero followers,’ said Ravi.
‘Damn you’re right,’ Pip muttered. ‘Um . . .’
‘I have an idea?’ Connor said, phrasing it like a question, the end of the sentence climbing up and away, abandoning him below. ‘It’s, well, I have another Instagram account. An anonymous one. I’m, um, I’m into photography. Black and white photography,’ he said with an embarrassed shrug. ‘Not people, it’s like birds and buildings and stuff. Never told anyone ’cause I knew Ant would just take the piss.’
‘Really?’ Pip said. ‘That could work. How many followers?’