was doing it. If I’d said no, she’d have been the only one in her class, and she was enough of a loner as it was - not that it was her fault, poor lamb. And now the police believe that it was Facebook that caused the problem.’
Ellie didn’t interrupt. Kath had to tell this in her own time.
‘She made a new friend on Facebook. Chloe she’s called. It was a few months ago now. Chloe contacted her completely out of the blue - and Abbie was so chuffed. She’d tried asking the girls in her class to be Facebook friends, you see, and a lot of them had just ignored her. Why is it that some teenage girls can be so horrible to each other? She’d only got about half a dozen friends, and then this girl Chloe contacted her. She said her family were hoping to move to Little Melham over the summer, and if they did, she’d be starting school here. Her dad was being relocated, and she was looking forward to getting to know other girls from the school. Abbie checked her out, and she had quite a few friends in Durham where she lived. She and Abbie chatted all the time, and Abbie was so happy that she was going to be the first one in her class to know this girl. She said she’d told Chloe things about herself that she’d never been able to tell any other girls at school, and I was so pleased for her. She talked about Chloe all the time, and we almost felt as if we knew her ourselves.’
Ellie squeezed Kath’s hand reassuringly, wondering what this could possibly have to do with Abbie getting knocked over.
Kath swallowed a sob. ‘The police can’t find Abbie’s phone, but they’ve pieced together what happened via Facebook.’ Kath pulled a sheet of paper from her handbag, and passed it to Ellie. ‘This is the last of the messages between Abbie and Chloe on Friday night. Chloe and her mum were arranging to pick Abbie up from the back of the burger place.’
Ellie quickly scanned the messages, which seemed reassuringly normal.
‘That’s good isn’t it? At least now you know where she went and why. What do Chloe and her mother have to say?’
‘Nothing. They have nothing at all to say. That’s the whole point. There is no Chloe. She doesn’t exist.
* * *
Ellie hadn’t been able to get anything coherent out of Kath after that last dreadful sentence, so she had decided to break all the rules and for once make her a cup of tea.
By the time she returned to the bedside, Kath had calmed down and her mood had changed. Her lips were clamped together in a tight line, and her body was taut with tension. Ellie placed the hot tea on the bedside cabinet to cool down a little.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kath said. ‘I shouldn’t be burdening you with all this. It was such a shock, though.’
‘You’re not burdening me at all. But you said Chloe had friends in her home town. Wouldn’t they have known that she didn’t exist?’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Except the friends don’t exist either,’ Kath answered. The anger simmered right below the surface. ‘It was a charade - don’t you see? The whole thing. Pretending to move to the area, making up friends - all so that Chloe seemed real to Abbie - so that she could get to know everything about her.’ Kath looked at Ellie with eyes round with horror. The next words sound as if they were being wrenched from deep within her. ‘She was abducted, Ellie. My baby girl was abducted.’
Abducted? How could something like this happen around here?
Ellie felt as if cold water was running down her spine. But if it was too much for Ellie to deal with, how must it be for Kath? No wonder she was angry. Ellie would want to murder anybody that hurt her children with her bare hands.
But she was still puzzled. Chloe didn’t exist, but whoever had abducted Abbie must know the area, because they knew where the burger bar was. Did this mean they were local? Oh God, what if it was somebody that she knew? Ellie shuddered.
Kath was talking as if to herself, not worrying whether anybody was listening or not.
‘It’s unbelievable. That somebody could plan this - somebody would harm a child. Just unbelievable.’
Kath reached out a shaky hand for her tea, and nudged the cup, splashing some of the