I stop. What was I going to say next? I remember Grace’s face that day, when she told me about GoodSam, how her skin flushed, how a light seemed to glow behind her eyes. It was the first and last time I ever saw her like that. Maybe it was just a short-lived crush, but maybe not. I keep typing.

I think you were special to Grace, and I hope she was special to you too. If you know anything, please, please get in touch. I promise I won’t say anything to anyone. I just want to find Grace.

C.

I press Send before I can change my mind and, holding my phone to my chest, lie back on my bed, on top of the duvet. I think about how pissed off Jon would be if he knew I’d messaged GoodSam without telling him, but I try not to care. After all, he’s in the wrong. I’m the one who should be annoyed. But there’s still a part of me that wishes I could ask his opinion, talk all this through. I stamp it out, remind myself that he let me down. Mum’s always saying I’m like Dad, that I don’t need others the way other people do. What if I am? It might not be such a bad thing after all. It means I can do this, I can help Grace alone. Mum’s slurred words come back to me, how she was jealous of Meg, how she wishes I were more like Grace. I harden my heart. I need to focus on Grace now, not Jon or Mum.

I refresh the forum and stare at the screen. Twenty minutes tick by. I picture the new Grace—Zoe—the person I saw today, the too-big coat, the snarl on her lips where there was once always a smile. She stared at me with cold eyes, a stranger, as though I was the one doing something wrong, before she started to run. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even say her name. My legs seemed to sink into the soggy ground, my body cut off from the rest of me. She knew those woods, she knew where she was running. What would have happened if I’d been braver and kicked off my flip-flops and chased her across the sodden grass and into the trees? The scene plays out in my mind, me running after her, calling her name. Perhaps she would have stopped then, perhaps she would have told me who she really is. Perhaps she would have told me what happened that night, who killed Meg. I take out the photocopy of Grace’s diary and skip through to the last entry, the one marked 19 December. The abrupt ending doesn’t feel like Grace, not the Grace I thought I knew. Perhaps she stopped because she wanted to write about GoodSam but felt she couldn’t for some reason, not here anyway. My thoughts run messy, crashing into each other, when suddenly my phone buzzes on my chest.