“I don’t know, I . . .” It had taken me a second to work out where the HOME button was, but when I pressed it, the screen lit up. And I swear to God, when I saw what was on it, I almost dropped the phone in the water.
“Abi?” said Fash, when he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”
For a moment I didn’t answer. But when he said my name again, I turned the phone toward him.
There was a photograph, you see. On the lock screen. You’ve probably got one on yours. Like, of your family or something. Your kids. Me, I’ve got a picture I took at the start of the summer, of the six of us sitting on the beach, that time we went down to the dunes. I used a selfie stick, but even so, we’re all crushed together. I’m on one side next to Cora, and the boys are in a bundle on the other. Sadie’s in the middle, laughing her head off. I love that photo because it reminds me of Sadie when she was happy.
And that’s what gave me such a shock. Because the thing was, on the phone—on this Nokia I’d found in the middle of the forest, lying in the mud by the stream—the lock screen was the very same photo.
What I saw when I turned it on was a picture of us.
CORA
NOBODY SAID ANYTHING for a good half a minute. After the two of them had climbed back up the bank, I mean, and Abi had showed us the phone. She just held it in her palm in the middle of the circle, sort of balanced, like she didn’t really want to touch it. The way she would have held something dead.
“It was seriously just right there?” I asked. “Just lying there down by the stream?”
“Yes, it was just right there,” Abi answered, as though for the hundredth time, even though it was the first question anyone had asked her. “You heard me call out when I spotted it. You saw me go over and pick it up.”
“I know, I . . . I’m not suggesting anything. I’m trying to work out how it might have got there, that’s all. Whose it . . . whose it could be.”
Abi gave a shiver. “Here,” she said. “Somebody else take it. Please.”
I lifted it from her hand, and she turned away.
I looked at the photo again, remembering the moment it had been taken. It was right after we’d got down to the beach. The sun was still up, and Mason had just opened the first bottle of wine.
“Can I see?” said Luke. I hadn’t noticed him move behind my shoulder.
I nodded and silently passed it to him. When he held the screen up in front of him, his face went the color of bone.
“It’s Sadie’s,” said Mason. “It’s got to be.”
“What?” I said.
“It has to be hers,” Mason insisted. “It’s nobody else’s, right? And she was the only other person who had a copy of that photo.”
Which wasn’t necessarily true. I mean, Abi had sent the picture to all of us right after she’d taken it, but that didn’t mean none of us had forwarded it on. And obviously Abi had posted it on Instagram. She puts her cornflakes on Instagram, for Christ’s sake.
Plus, the other thing was, Sadie had an iPhone like Abi’s, and you’d already found it down by the river. Right? With her wallet and her house keys? So, really, we couldn’t be sure whose it was.
“Hold on,” said Fash, voicing what I’d been thinking. “We shouldn’t go jumping to conclusions.”
Luke had started tapping at the phone screen. The rest of us watched him to see what he was doing. All of a sudden his legs went from under him, and he dropped arse-first onto the ground.
“Luke?” said Fash. “What’s the matter?”
Luke was just staring at the phone, one hand covering his mouth.
I tried to see what he was looking at, but Mason took the phone from Luke’s hand. His jaw tightened, and he turned the screen toward us. At first I couldn’t work out what the problem was. There was just a bunch of apps showing on the home screen, and the same photo we’d already seen in the background.
And then I realized. He’d unlocked it. Luke had. Meaning he must have entered the code.
“Zero-eight-zero-eight,” said Luke, which was all he needed to say. It was Dylan’s birthday, the code Sadie used for everything. Her phone, her bank card, anything that needed a PIN.
Mason was looking at the screen. After a moment or two tapping and swiping, his eyebrows joined at the middle.
“There’s nothing on it,” he said. “No photos, no contacts, no messages. Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” said Abi, angling herself to try to see.
“Literally,” said Mason, “there’s nothing. Just the apps that would have come loaded on the phone.”
“So what does that mean?” Abi asked, looking to me now.
Mason turned the phone over in his hand, and then he was the one to go white. “What’s that?” he said, pointing.
We all looked closer. I swallowed.
“That’s just . . . It’s mud,” said Fash. “Isn’t it?” There was a stain on the corner of the cover, and he reached out with his finger, as though he meant to wipe it away.
I grabbed his arm. “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t touch it.”
Fash looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He let his arm fall away.
“Oh God,” said Abi. “That’s not . . . Please don’t tell me that’s . . .”
“We don’t know what it is,” I said, because I swear to God she was practically hyperventilating.
“It is, though, isn’t it?” said Abi. “It’s blood. It’s Sadie’s blood.” She looked like she was about to cry.
“We don’t know what it is!” I said again. “Just like we can’t be certain the phone is even hers!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” said Mason. “Who else apart from one of
