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

Chris didn’t answer, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he dry-swallowed a few times.

‘How about an easier question,’ Mark said, when it became clear Chris was struggling. ‘How did you know Emily Burns?’

The silence was shorter this time. ‘I didn’t really know her. I knew the girl she pretended to be.’

‘And who was that?

‘Jenny Ward.’

‘You didn’t know her before then?’

‘No… well, no, not really. She told me… afterwards, that she knew me from school, but I had no idea who she was. I thought I was talking to someone from Canada. She’d ring me and everything. She somehow found out I was planning on moving over there to do a sports degree. She made it seem like I’d have someone waiting for me.’

‘And this went on for over a year without you knowing who it was?’

Chris made as if to answer quickly, then stopped himself. Mark imagined he wasn’t used to being made to look a fool. His entire demeanour when he’d first opened the door had screamed entitlement. He would be the lad at school who was good at everything. Had his pick of a number of girls, loads of friends. Always listened to, never maligned.

Exactly the type of person Emily would have wanted to teach a lesson, it seemed.

‘I didn’t really think it was real,’ Chris said, holding on to the sheets of paper still, but no longer looking at them now. ‘She was just there, with a nice comment, or a message that would make me smile.’

‘There was more to it than that,’ Mark said, knowing some of the comments that had been shared. Intimate discussions… well, intimate was probably too delicate a term to use. ‘You sent her pictures of yourself. That must have been embarrassing when you realised the girl you were supposedly talking to was someone else entirely. Someone you knew, who knew your friends.’

‘Yeah, it was,’ Chris replied, his grip on the printouts tightening now. ‘I didn’t like the fact that I’d been played with. I was supposed to be going over to Canada in the summer, but I didn’t in the end.’

‘That was Emily’s fault?’

‘Yeah… well, no, not really. But it didn’t help. When I found out she wasn’t who she said she was… I went crazy for a bit.’

‘You were scared of being thought of as someone who could be played like that. You were worried that she would share some of the things you’d shared with her. Does that sound about right, Chris?’