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Jennie nods. ‘You’re doing great. This is all really helpful for our investigation.’
Lottie sniffs loudly again and then blows her nose. ‘I do so want to be helpful. I was convinced that Hannah ran away, and now I know the truth I’ve been trying to make sense of it. I feel so terribly guilty … You see, we’d been arguing a lot in those last few weeks.’
‘What did you argue about?’ asks Zuri, gently.
‘About Hannah being a model. She’d always wanted to be a model in London. She’d talked about it for years. I’d assumed she’d grow out of it, you know, like a kid who says they want to be an astronaut or whatever, but she never did.’ Lottie shakes her head. ‘A few weeks before our exams, she said something about her results not mattering because models didn’t need A levels, and I said surely she’d grown out of her model fantasy by now. Anyway, it went down like a lead balloon, as you can imagine, and after that I never felt like she really wanted to hang out with me. I tried to apologise, and she said it was fine, but I knew it wasn’t. Something had changed between us.’
‘You said that you were arguing?’ says Jennie. She remembers the tension between Hannah and Lottie in the months before Hannah disappeared. Lottie had tried to ease the tension by buying Hannah presents – bits of No 7 make-up, CDs of the bands Hannah loved most, like Soundgarden and The Doors, a fluffy jacket thing that had cost over fifty quid. Hannah had accepted the presents but the atmosphere between the two of them never seemed to improve.
‘Yeah, it was over stupid little things mainly, like why she went to see a film with Simon and not me, or why she wouldn’t come shopping with me to buy my end-of-school party dress.’ Lottie tilts her head to one side. ‘Or why she didn’t buy me a sandwich when she got everyone else sandwiches.’
In her peripheral vision, Jennie sees Zuri glance at her inquisitively. Ignoring her DS’s gaze, she stays focused on Lottie. ‘Did you ask her why she was acting like that?’
Lottie hangs her head. She starts to shred the tissue in her hands. ‘No. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to give her an excuse to tell me I wasn’t her best friend any more.’
‘Is that what you thought?’ asks Zuri, making a note on her pad.
‘I think that’s what Hannah thought,’ says Lottie, her eyes remaining on Jennie. ‘I think everyone thought that.’
Jennie needs to move the conversation away from this topic. It feels unsafe, as if Lottie is about to say something that will reveal her as a friend of Hannah’s and blow her leadership of the case out of the water. ‘And now, how do you feel now?’
Lottie’s eyes become watery. ‘I think we were just kids. Teenagers. And teenagers feel things so acutely, you know? But it didn’t matter, not in the big scheme of things. We’d have got through it, I know we would. We were best friends for life.’ She shakes her head again. The tissue is shredded into a small heap on the marble countertop now. ‘But we never got the chance because someone killed her. I just can’t get my head around it. I’m never going to see my best friend again, am I?’
‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ says Zuri. Her tone is sympathetic, but Jennie can tell she’s keen to move the conversation on.
‘Thank you,’ says Lottie. ‘I feel so helpless, you know? Like I should do something. I’m organising a candlelit vigil for Hannah at Cross Keys Park this evening. Something to honour her, to let us all come together as a community to mourn. I think we need to do that, to let out the pain and hurt and anger that we’re all feeling right now. Don’t you think?’ Lottie looks at Jennie.
Jennie avoids eye contact with Lottie. ‘That’s a good idea.’
‘It’s the least I can do.’ Lottie reaches out and takes Jennie’s hand. ‘You will come, won’t you?’
Jennie’s thrown. Not sure how to react. ‘I …’ She glances at Zuri who’s watching her closely now. ‘Yes, I’ll be there. Of course.’
‘Thank you,’ says Lottie, gripping Jennie’s hand tighter. ‘I really appreciate that.’
Jennie nods, and slowly removes her hand. This is a nightmare. She needs to get Lottie focused back on what happened when Hannah disappeared, and away from her. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about the time that Hannah went missing?’
Lottie thinks for a moment. ‘We all had a lot going on. Our exams were coming up, and there was a lot of pressure to do well. So I don’t think any of us were spending quite as much time together as we usually did, were we? Before we went off on study leave, we’d get together every day in the darkroom to hang out and decompress, but in the week or so before Hannah went missing, she’d become a bit distant. Not just with me, but with some of the others too. I know she’d argued with a few of us. I mean, her and Rob were always having little tiffs, but Elliott had been having a tricky time with her for a while, and that was super unusual.’
‘Do you know why?’ asks Zuri.
Lottie bites her lower lip. Lowers her voice. ‘So there was this rumour going round the school about Elliott getting beaten up by this guy he’d fancied. Elliott told me he thought Hannah had started the rumour.’
Jennie frowns. She never heard that rumour and she hadn’t seen any awkwardness between Hannah and Elliott either. Of the group, the two of them were her closest friends. How had she missed something like that? She wonders if Lottie’s telling the truth.
Zuri finishes jotting something in her notebook. ‘And had she?’
Lottie shakes her head, dolefully, and picks at the mound of shredded tissue. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell us about when Hannah disappeared,’ says Jennie. ‘What did you do that night?’
‘It’s like I told the police back then, I’d been out at the youth club disco in Farnby Square that night. I was feeling sad that me and Hannah weren’t in a good place, so when some of the girls from my ballet class said they were going and invited me, I decided to tag along. I think we arrived around six-thirty and left just after ten. I took a cab home.’
Lottie’s lying, she has to be. I would have seen her at the disco if she’d been there.
She’s incredibly convincing, though. Jennie leans in closer. ‘You’re sure you were there that night?’
Lottie holds her gaze. ‘Absolutely.’
