BooksBarbecue
Back The Game
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. NOW
  4. One
  5. BEFORE
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. NOW
  26. Twenty-One
  27. BEFORE
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. NOW
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. BEFORE
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. Forty-Two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-Four
  53. Forty-Five
  54. Forty-Six
  55. Forty-Seven
  56. Forty-Eight
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. NOW
  61. Fifty-Two
  62. Fifty-Three
  63. Fifty-Four
  64. Fifty-Five
  65. AFTER
  66. Fifty-Six
  67. Acknowledgements
  68. About the Author

Mark understood. Slightly. He was worried this was his fault though. That if he’d questioned harder at the beginning, it wouldn’t have taken this long to discover. ‘This could be important. If anything, it says something about her state of mind in the past few months. Were there any other changes in her behaviour you haven’t told me about? Anything else she was involved with, people she was talking to?’

‘No, she was fine,’ Julie replied, but even now Mark could see she was questioning herself. ‘I… I don’t think any of this has anything to do with her going missing.’

‘Okay,’ Mark said, holding his hands up and standing. ‘It’s okay. I’ll look into this a bit further and see if I can find the people who she was doing this with.’

‘You think it might be a prank?’ Stephanie asked, moving towards her mother and placing a hand on her shoulder. Julie shrank back and slipped away silently. Back into the living room, no doubt. Stephanie turned to Mark again. ‘Is that what you’re thinking now? That she might have done this as another weird thing?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mark replied, truthfully. He wasn’t sure of anything at that moment. None of it made any sense. ‘There’s obviously been something happening with her. She wasn’t going to college, but no one realised. She doesn’t have any friends, but suddenly she’s playing pranks with people that none of you know. She spent the past year and a half catfishing people online and people knew it was her. Now, she’s missing.’

‘What about the people she was going after then? Maybe they’ve got something to do with it?’

Mark shook his head. ‘I’ve already spoken to them. There’s nothing to suggest they were involved in Emily’s disappearance. We’re keeping an eye on that, but at the moment, none of the people we know of is under suspicion. Can you think of anything else that we may need to know?’

There was a moment of hesitation that Mark didn’t miss. When she was silent for a little longer, he spoke again. ‘It’s important I know everything. I need to know it all, even if you don’t think I or anyone else needs to.’

‘She was talking to someone before I left for uni,’ Stephanie said with a sigh. ‘It was over before I’d even unpacked though, so it’s probably nothing.’

‘A boyfriend?’