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‘I’ve cleaned the floor upstairs,’ she says. ‘And opened the window to let some air in. If you want to give me some fresh bedding, I’ll pop it on.’
‘Great. I’ll get some out for you next time I go up.’
‘Again, I am so sorry. He seems fine now. I think he just needed to pass it through his system. I’ve never fed him anything like that before. He clearly wasn’t built for it.’
‘Bless him,’ says Alix. ‘Poor little thing. Are you up for some more recording this morning?’
Josie nods. ‘Absolutely. Yes. Let me just get myself a coffee.’
‘Great. I’ll just pop to the bathroom. See you soon.’
Alix shuts her laptop and heads upstairs to grab some fresh bedclothes for Josie from the cupboard on the landing. She leaves them at the foot of the stairs, intending to let Josie do it herself, but something makes her carry them up the stairs to the top floor. The door to the spare room is ajar. A breeze ruffles the curtains through the open window. The clothes that Josie was wearing when she arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning are hanging, laundered and fresh, from the freestanding rail. The pyjamas that Alix lent Josie are folded neatly on the stripped bed. In the en suite a damp towel hangs from the rail, and on the glass shelf above the sink is a tube of Alix’s foundation that she has no recollection of having ever put there, and also a tube of her mascara. She picks them up and looks at them curiously, as if they might offer her an explanation.
Then she sets about remaking the bed in the fresh clothes. She stuffs the pillows into their cases, shakes the duvet into its cover and tucks the sheet under the mattress, and it is as she is doing so that she feels something hard and cold. She locates it and pulls it out.
It’s a key. It’s attached to a fob with the number 6 written on the internal paper label. The fob is streaked with dried-on blood. Alix drops it, as if it is white-hot, then slides it, quickly, urgently, back under the mattress and closes the bedroom door behind her.
Josie is waiting for her in the kitchen. She smiles. ‘Ready?’ she says.
Alix nods.
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
The screen shows a woman walking through a park with a chocolate Labrador. The sun is setting in the sky behind her and is a deep, blood red.
The next shot shows her sitting in a small armchair, next to a blazing wood fire in a grate, the dog at her feet sleeping.
The woman has a glass of red wine in front of her and her legs curled up beneath her. The text underneath says:
Ffion Roberts, Brooke Ripley’s aunt
The woman called Ffion opens up her laptop, which is briefly shown on screen.
It shows a Facebook post.
The camera returns to Ffion and shows her reading the post:
‘“Please help! Anyone in Kilburn/Paddington/Queen’s Park/Cricklewood areas. My beautiful niece, Brooke, went to her school prom on Wednesday. She told friends that she was going to meet ‘a friend’ afterwards and her schoolfriends said goodbye to her at the bus stop outside the prom venue, on Shoot Up Hill in Cricklewood, at just after nine p.m. We have CCTV footage of her getting on the number twenty-eight bus at nine eleven and getting off again near the top of Maida Vale at nine twenty-two. After that, we don’t know where she went, but she is not answering her phone and her mum and all her family are worried sick. If you have any idea who she might have been going to meet on Wednesday at nine thirty, please, please let us know. And please share this as far as it will go. The police have been informed but there’s only so much they can do.”’
She closes the laptop and looks up at the interviewer. Her eyes are filled with tears. Her face crumples and it is clear she is about to cry.
‘I’m sorry.’
She turns away from the camera .
‘I’m really sorry. Could I just have a minute?’
Wednesday, 17 July
The Facebook post shows Brooke Ripley in a white, fitted ankle-length dress and silver trainers. She looks pensive in the photo, fragile and unsure. It’s only because Alix knows that a mere six weeks beforehand this girl was being groomed and abused by Walter Fair that she can see so deeply into her soul, read so much into the uncertain tilt of her head, the slimness of her smile. She is amazed, in fact, that Brooke Ripley went to her school prom at all, given the horrific backdrop to it all.
The Facebook post, which has been shared around twenty times, is a plea from Brooke’s aunt, Ffion, writing on behalf of Brooke’s mum.
Alix reads the comments. They’re all of the ‘thoughts and prayers’ variety. Nobody has a clue. A girl called Mia who was in the edges of the prom photograph with Brooke replies: ‘That’s me in the photo. Like literally saw her just a few minutes before she disappeared. She said she was going home. Wish I knew where she was,’ accompanied by a sad-face emoji and a heart.
Alix clicks on Mia’s profile and finds that it has maximum security settings, all the way down to blocking access to her friends list. She clicks on Message and stares for a moment at the empty space in Messenger. What would she say? And how?
