Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

The harried, nervous woman in the mirror raised a sardonic eyebrow at me, wondering what I would do next. She glanced down at the pill she held in her palm. Then she carefully tipped it back into the bottle, screwed the top back on and yanked decisively at the cord hanging from the ceiling, dismissing me with darkness.

I left the bathroom and stumbled through the gloom to my bed, barking my shin against the bedside table in the process.

But I slept like a baby.

LUISA MARTINEZ’S FACEBOOK FEED

Luisa Martinez

Crying all morning – really missing my bae Katie now whose been missing for nearly 5 weeks! I hope the angels in heaven are watching over you, my beautiful bae and wherever you are hope you’re OK.

Charlotte Finley

Sorry to hear you’re upset, I keep crying too! Hopefully there will be news soon.:(

Amber McGowan

You’re such a spaz Lu you hardly knew her and anyway everyone knows she’s obvs gone off with her gyppo boyfriend. You’re so thirsty for attention and its pathetic.

Sorcha Malone

Katie finished with Nathan before she went missing and he’s still around. Check yourself Amber cos her Mum can see this page.

Amber McGowan

It’s not me upsetting Katie’s mum but Katie the selfish bitch, and IDK what you’re so righteous about Sorcha cos you never liked her anyway.

Sorcha Malone

You lying cow! I NEVER said that! And Luisa is allowed to like her and miss her if she wants. What’s it to you anyway? Stop being such a bitch for once in your life.

Luisa Martinez

I can’t beleive how horrible your being to me. I was just being worried about my bae! I have been crying for weeks!!!

Sorcha Malone

Stop it Luisa you’re just embarrassing yourself. Amber is right you hardly knew her tbf.

Amber McGowan

It’s always about YOU isn’t it La-La Lulu, and you can stop being 2-faced Sorcha. We all know Katie Browne’s probably gone off to have an abortion or because that stepdad of hers has buried her under the patio, or whatever these social housing types do LOL!

Brian Morris

is that what they teach you to be like at that posh school you stuckup little madam how dare you talk like that about our katie where my wife can see it you heartless little sod!!! see you in school amber mcgowan i have took a pic of this scren bfore you dletee it and that posh school is goin to be hearing all abot you!!!!!!!

And Brian, being as good as his virtual word, had done precisely that, and so here we all were.

‘My account was hacked,’ Amber said, tossing her blonde head, though the two burning patches of red on her cheeks betrayed her as a liar.

Ben, our headmaster, had Luisa Martinez’s Facebook page open on the laptop on his desk. Though he’s quite content to bully Lily, Estella and me in meetings, the girls at the school, particularly the pretty ones, tend to reduce him to pusillanimous mumbling.

Today he had a problem, however. Brian, Katie’s stepfather, had been in the office for over an hour, and Estella, who taught in the class below, had been hard pressed to stop her students from muttering and giggling at the low boom and roar of Mr Morris’s voice as he, in the parlance of the day, ‘Tore Ben a new one’.

Accordingly, Ben solved this problem by calling me in. I must have appeared a suitable enforcer to him.

‘Clearly that’s you,’ I said coldly to Amber. I haven’t taught for years without picking up a few social media tricks. ‘I can tell it’s you. Once you’ve finished libelling Katie and her stepfather, you then go on to “like” Tabitha’s party photos and post the stats for your latest game of Bejewelled.’ That rage, that Stygian rage that bubbled up from within me on Arabella’s doorstep, was roaring at the gates of my ears. That man. That poor man, having to read that about Katie. And her mother. The thought of it smote me.

It was all I could do to stay calm. ‘It was absolutely you.’

Something of all this must have shown in my face, as within moments Amber paled and her defiant jaw unclenched.

She took a step backwards.

‘ISN’T IT?’

Ben stirred, as though I was frightening him too.

But she nodded, once, and her eyes flicked to the ground.

‘I just…’ She swallowed and blinked her eyes hard, trying to conjure tears. ‘I was just so angry at Luisa, because… because Luisa didn’t know Katie at all and yet there she was, trying to get attention, trying to get everyone to feel sorry for her, and I just had a go and then Sorcha, who is supposed to be my friend, was pulling me up in front of this idiot, trying to make me look bad, and I just… I don’t know, I just wanted to show them both up.’ She blushed hotly. ‘I mean, I’m not stupid. I know it looks bad.’

‘Her father could read that.’ I folded my arms. ‘Did you not even consider that?’

‘Her stepfather…’

‘Her father to all intents and purposes. Don’t try to excuse your behaviour on those grounds.’

She glanced up, her eyes red but dry, despite her best attempts, and I have to confess I did, in a warped way, understand her, even if it was an unforgivable way to behave. In the same way that Luisa was a slave to attention, Amber was a slave to her status. Sorcha had challenged her while she’d been in the process of putting Luisa down, and Amber had had to prove that she feared nothing and no one and could not be ruled by mere beta females, which meant not appearing to care what she said.

Neither she nor Luisa cared about Katie. Katie was a cypher, an alibi, something they could hang their interpersonal politics upon.

The girl herself remained missing, a footnote in their lives, just as she would become a footnote in a dreadful book like Snatched in Plain Sight .

Like Bethan Avery had.

I felt very tired suddenly.

‘We’ll need to discuss what we’re going to do with you, Miss McGowan.’ Ben stood up. ‘And contact your parents.’

For the first time Amber’s eyes grew round, and then pooled with genuine tears.

‘No! You can’t tell my parents… you don’t understand. They’re very… stressed right now…’

A flicker of sympathy shot through me. Amber got all of this from somewhere, after all.

‘Come on, you,’ I said, guiding her towards the door. ‘It’s no good crying now. What do we tell you in pastoral care? About the Internet?’

She screwed her lips tightly together. ‘Don’t post anything anywhere that you wouldn’t be happy to repeat on television.’

‘Hmm. So you do listen to me sometimes.’

After school that day I decided to follow Martin’s advice. I took the second letter with me, and half an hour later I was parked outside Narrowbourne Hospital.

The hospital made me cringe like no other place could. I had spent two weeks in an institution like this during my breakdown after university. I could still remember what it felt like to be totally dehumanized – mashed down to my lowest common denominator – with very little effort. I could taste the never-ending rising panic of those wretched days on the tip of my tongue.

Maybe, if someone here recognized the letters, something good might come out of it, and with this in mind I climbed out of the car.

I had come to this particular hospital again as an outpatient three years ago, after a series of misunderstandings that would have been comedic in other circumstances. I accidentally overdosed on my medication – it’s one thing to take too much aspirin, quite another to take too much Zoriclorone. No one at the school ever found out about that – about me being a Narrowbourne patient, that is.