Copycat: The unputdownable new thriller from the bestselling author of After Anna

3

So, she has found it, finally. It has taken a while. It has been there for six months, a piece of bait, dangling in the water. But she has not sensed it until now. Not been aware of its presence. She is not the most observant of people – surprising, for a doctor – which works against her. It makes it easier to do a thing like this.

Obviously she does not Google herself. That is a mistake. It’s always a good idea to know what is out there, to have the best available information, to know what your enemy knows. But then, if you don’t even know you have an enemy, why would you bother?

She will be wondering who did it, who put these photos up there, and she will be asking herself why, but she will not figure it out. Her mind does not work in such a way. She sees no reason why anybody would do this to her. She doesn’t even know how they would do it, although the who and the how are closely related. Understand one, and she will understand the other.

But she will understand neither.

Not, at least, until it is too late.

Because this is only the beginning. This Facebook account is merely the hook that lodges in the mouth of the fish. The fish thinks the hook is its only problem, thinks that if it can only get rid of it, then all will be well again in its world.

But it is wrong. Because the hook is attached to a line which is attached to a rod which is held by a hand. And the hand is controlled by a mind, a mind which has been waiting and watching and plotting the best time and place and method to catch the fish.

And so the fish struggles to free itself, but all it manages to do is to embed the hook deeper. And as it continues to wriggle and fight it uses up its supplies of energy until it is too exhausted to continue, and then its struggles wane.

And the hand senses it, and begins to wind in the reel …

So far she has only felt the prick of the hook in her cheek. The rest – the struggles, the fight, her eventual destruction – is yet to come.

Fun. This will be fun. Fishing always is.

Revenge always is.

4

Sarah parked next to Ben’s car – a dark blue (night mineral blue, according to the salesman who had sold it to them when Miles was an infant) family sedan. America’s favorite: a Toyota Camry. Sensible, reliable, fuel-efficient, strong residuals. And needing to be replaced, soon.

A few weeks back, Ben had mentioned getting a convertible to replace it.

OK, but get one with five seats, she said.

They don’t make them with five seats, he replied. The roof has to fold into the body of the car so it reduces the space available for a back seat. It’s normally two at most.

She looked at him, her expression a mixture of amusement and incredulity. But we have three kids, Ben. What’s the plan? Make Miles ride his bike?

We have your car if we need to go somewhere all together, he replied. I only really drive this to work. And it’d be nice in the summer to have the top down.

But what if you do need to take all three? What if I’m away for the weekend and something happens?

I’d get a cab, he said. And you can always think of reasons why we would need two big cars. But most of the time we don’t.

Fine, she said. If that’s your priority.

It’s not a question of priorities, he replied. I’d simply like to have a convertible. But never mind. Perhaps it’s a stupid idea. Early onset midlife crisis.

And they left it there. She felt bad about having dented his dream; in truth, she wasn’t sure why she didn’t want him to get a convertible. It would have been nice for her to drive it, too. It was simply … well, it did reek of a midlife crisis. In some vague way she found it a threat, a sign he was making decisions based on his own needs and not the needs of the family. Anyway, she’d tell him to go ahead and get his convertible. She’d be happy for him. At least, she’d try to be.

That was for later. For now, she was glad his current car was there. It meant he was home.

Ben was sitting on the couch, Kim on his lap. He was reading the book of the moment, Hairy Scary Monster, which Kim demanded incessantly. Ben was a very patient dad – it was one of the things Sarah loved about him – but even he would balk at the seventh or eighth reading of the same kids’ book during the same bedtime.

‘You’re reading Hairy Scary Monster,’ Sarah said. ‘Imagine.’

‘Only the second reading today,’ Ben said. ‘So it still retains that fresh feeling common to all great literature.’

‘Daddy, read,’ Kim said. She fit the profile of a third child exactly: with two older siblings she had learned to fight for her fair share of whatever commodity was up for grabs – attention, cake, time on the trampoline. She was desperate to be in the gang, whatever the cost, which was what had led to the sand sandwich episode on the beach.

‘Hey,’ Sarah said. ‘Something pretty weird happened today.’

‘At the clinic?’

‘No. I got a friend request from someone I went to high school with. She’s moving back to Barrow.’

‘What’s weird about that? Plenty of people move here. I moved here from London.’ He grinned at her. ‘But then I had a good reason to.’

‘That’s not the weird part.’

‘Daddy,’ Kim said. ‘Read!’

‘One moment, petal,’ Ben said. ‘Mummy and I are talking. So what was the weird part?’

Kim grabbed her dad’s hand and put it on the book. ‘Read!’ she said. ‘Read Hairy Scary Monster.’

Ben rolled his eyes. ‘Can we talk about this later?’ he said. ‘I don’t think Kim is too keen on having her story interrupted.’

It was nearly nine o’clock by the time they got round to talking about it. As she was putting Miles to bed he started telling her about farm camp – they had washed a pig with a hose and he was wondering whether they could get a pig as a family pet. Sarah explained that pigs weren’t really pets, and they didn’t have time to take care of one, but Miles demurred: he would take care of it, he insisted. And not only would he look after it night and day, he would do lots of jobs to earn money to buy it fun toys.

Let’s start with a pet which is a bit less ambitious, Sarah told him. Like a goldfish.

Or hairless rats, Miles said. Anthony has hairless rats.

Sarah shook her head. She’d seen those hairless rats; she wasn’t squeamish – she was a doctor – but they were not the most beautiful members of the animal kingdom.

Goldfish, she said. And if you can take care of those, maybe a hamster.

And then a pig? Miles said.

Maybe then a pig, Sarah said, confident they would never make it to that point.

Downstairs, she poured two glasses of wine. Ben was on the couch, his laptop open on his knee. She handed him a drink.

‘Work?’ Sarah said.

‘Cleaning up email,’ Ben said. ‘No big deal.’

With Ben it was never a big deal. He was a lawyer and she knew he had some stressful cases, but he never brought it home.

There’s no point worrying about work, he’d say, adding his favorite quote: ‘worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it’s due’. You spend your time thinking about things that might never happen. It’s pointless. If it happens, figure it out. If it doesn’t, don’t worry about it.

And he didn’t. Which was one of the things Sarah – who did worry, who had always worried, to a fault – loved about him.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Miles wants a pig.’

‘Presumably his desire for a pig is not the weird thing you mentioned earlier? Because it seems exactly the sort of thing Miles would want.’

‘No. I’ll show you the weird thing.’ She picked up her phone and opened the fake Facebook account. She passed it to him. ‘Take a look.’

He scrolled down the screen. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘What’s weird about this? I know I don’t use it, but isn’t this what Facebook is for? Sharing photos? Telling people that you have alfalfa sprouts in your smoothie?’

‘It is. And I’m amazed you know what an alfalfa sprout is.’ She paused. ‘But this isn’t my account.’

Ben frowned. ‘What do you mean? The photos are of you. And the kids.’

‘I know. But I didn’t know it was there until today. Rachel, the friend who sent a friend request, asked me which account was mine. I hadn’t set eyes on it until then.’ She took the phone and switched to her account. ‘This is me. The real me.’

Ben looked at the screen for a few seconds, then put the phone on the couch next to him. ‘So who set it up?’ he said.

‘That’s exactly what I want to know,’ Sarah replied. ‘I have no idea.’

Ben stared at her. ‘This is weird,’ he said. ‘But let’s think about it logically. Who could have set it up?’

‘I don’t know. No one.’

‘It would need to be someone who was at those places. And there aren’t many photos. About eight, in total? So it wouldn’t be too difficult to do.’

‘But no one was at all those places.’

‘Maybe it was someone who has access to your phone,’ Ben said.

‘But I didn’t take all those photos. Like the one of me and you at the Japanese restaurant. It looks as though it was taken from somewhere inside. It wasn’t me who took it.’

‘So either it was someone who happened to be at all those places, but who would have had a good reason to be there so you wouldn’t have noticed anything out of place, or it’s someone who knew you would be there and went – surreptitiously – to take the photos.’ He raised his hands in mock fear. ‘Which would mean you have some kind of stalker.’

‘Ben!’ Sarah said. ‘Don’t joke about it! It’s not funny!’

‘Sarah,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you have a stalker.’

‘Maybe not. But no jokes.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘No jokes. But let’s see if we can narrow it down. Let’s start with the most recent photo. We’ll remember that best. Who was at the beach yesterday?’

‘Lots of people. It was a hot Sunday in summer in Maine. Everyone heads to the water.’

‘Let’s list them.’

‘Mel was there, with Anthony and James. I think I saw Bill, her husband, as well. Then there was Jean and her two kids. Lizzie and Toby were there with their girls. And I saw Miles’s kindergarten teacher. She was at the other end of the beach to us.’ Sarah shrugged. ‘There were lots of people.’

Ben puffed out his cheeks. ‘All I can think is, it’s some kind of a joke,’ he said. ‘Someone’s winding you up.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Sarah said. ‘But there’s still the question of who would do such a thing. Whoever it was would have to have been in all those places.’

‘Not necessarily. It could be a few of your friends. They could have shared photos with each other.’

‘I suppose,’ Sarah said. ‘But it seems a very elaborate trick.’

‘Well,’ Ben said. ‘I wouldn’t worry—’

Sarah’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and held up her hand to silence him.

There was a notification. From Facebook.

She opened it, and blinked. She did not believe what she was seeing.

‘Holy shit,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It’s a friend request.’ She looked at her husband. ‘From me. From Sarah Havenant. From the fake account.’

5

Friend Request: Sarah Havenant. Confirm / Delete.

Sarah knew it was nothing, just digital information rendered into text by some software, but that didn’t stop her from feeling very disoriented. It was odd to see your own name and photo asking you to be a friend.

I’m Sarah Havenant, she thought. Not you. Not you, whoever you are.

‘Can I see?’ Ben held out his hand for the phone. He stared at the screen. ‘This is weird,’ he said. ‘Really weird. It’s got to be some kind of a joke. There’s no other explanation.’

There was a confidence in his tone which Sarah found reassuring. Ben was quick to analyze a situation – a legal case, a friendship, a problem with the kids’ behavior – and quick to understand what was important, which gave him a sense of clarity in the stages before the facts came in. It was how they had got married. They met in a club in London when Sarah was at a work conference there, and they’d kissed. Nothing more had happened that night, but they’d arranged to get together before she left. It turned out ‘before she left’ meant the next night, and the next, and the next. The last night she was there he told her they were going to get married.

She had laughed. It’s a bit early for a wedding, isn’t it?

Take it the right way, he said. It’s not a proposal. It’s a prediction. I can tell. I get the same feeling at work. We have some case come in and there are all kinds of competing opinions and contracts and noise and I look the guy in the eye and know he’s a crook. Which is the only important thing to know. And it’s the same with you. The only important thing is that I already know we’re getting married. The rest is merely details.

But I live in Maine. I’m at the beginning of a residency in a hospital in my hometown. And I’m only here until tomorrow.

Like I said, he replied, mere details. They can work themselves out.

And they did. The next day she decided to change her flight and stay on a while. They went to Stonehenge and Edinburgh and Durham and Hadrian’s Wall and then she really had to go home.

Once she was back in Maine, they had a long-distance relationship, a kind of relationship which she had always been convinced would never work, but in this case, it did: and it did because of Ben and his certainty. He called almost every day, visited once a month – he always came to her – and then, nine months after they met, he asked her to marry him.

Are you sure? she said, aware this was not the normal response.

Yes, he said. I’m always sure.

And it was this certainty that had led them to get married and for him to give up his legal career in London and move to Maine and have kids. It was a powerful force, his certainty, and she found it, in truth, a little frightening. It was fine when it was working in the same direction as her, but she had wondered, more than once, what would happen if it started to work in a different direction. One day he might decide their marriage was over, might analyze their situation and decide it was hopeless, and then his certainty would take him inexorably away from her.

But for now she was glad he had decided this Facebook account was nothing more than a joke. She only hoped it was true.

‘Have you talked to anyone else about this?’ he said. He had a thoughtful look on his face, as if something had occurred to him.

She shook her head.

‘No one at all? No one knows you found out about this?’

‘No one. Why are you asking? What are you getting at?’

‘The timing,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit – well, it’s a little bit odd, don’t you think?’

‘The timing of what?’

‘The friend request from the other Sarah Havenant. It’s odd it should come in now, on the same day you found out about the profile. I mean, it’s been up there a while. Why today? It’s quite a coincidence, if indeed it is a coincidence.’

Sarah’s stomach tightened. ‘You think it’s not a coincidence? Someone knows I found out, and that’s why they sent it?’

‘Maybe,’ Ben said. ‘But it helps, right? Figure out who could know you got the friend request and you know who sent it.’

‘No one knows,’ Sarah said. ‘How would anyone know?’

‘What about the person who told you there was another account in your name? What was her name?’

‘Rachel,’ she said. ‘Rachel Little.’

‘Maybe it was her. She’d know you’d found the account, since she told you about it.’

‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘It can’t be her. She’s not been in Barrow for years.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Ask her.’

‘Maybe I will. But first I need to speak to Jean.’

6

Jean lived on the next street. To walk on the road was about a half mile, but there was a path through the trees which connected their backyards. Sarah called on her way along it to let her friend know she was coming.

Thankfully, Jean was still up. Even though it was only half past nine, that was not a given: she was a single mom with two adopted kids, so early nights were the norm. Her former husband – father of the two kids she had adopted – had died three years ago in a hit-and-run car accident. They never found the driver; there was a stolen car, abandoned a few miles away with a dent in the hood, a web of cracks in the windshield, and an empty bottle of whiskey in the footwell. There was also a syringe on the passenger seat.

The car had been stolen from the Rite-Aid car park in Barrow; the cops had CCTV footage of it leaving the car park but they could not identify the driver, who was wearing a hooded top. They assumed it was a petty thief looking to make a few bucks for their next fix of heroin, which was the drug of choice in Maine for those who could not get their hands on prescription opiates.

She’d had a rough time of it, Jean, but she was one of those people who somehow managed to carry on. Even after Jack had died, she’d tried to focus on the positives. She’d said to Sarah that at least she had the kids – she couldn’t have any of her own – so they would be her family for the rest of her life.

They were lucky to have her as a mom, Sarah replied. As she was to have her as a friend.

Sarah opened the back door and walked into the kitchen.

‘Hi,’ Jean said. She was making sandwiches for her sons’ lunches. ‘What’s up?’

‘Well,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s been one of those days.’

Jean raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

‘Did you hear about Rachel Little?’

‘Coming back to Barrow?’ Jean nodded. ‘She sent me a friend request.’

‘Me too,’ Sarah said. ‘Anything weird about yours?’

‘No,’ Jean said. ‘What do you mean, weird?’

‘Well, she asked me which was my true profile.’

Jean pursed her lips and frowned. ‘I don’t get it.’

Sarah passed her phone to Jean. ‘She meant this.’

Jean put the knife down and swiped her finger over the screen. She studied it for a few seconds.

‘Holy shit,’ she said. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘That’s my question. And ten minutes ago I got a friend request. From this fake account. So someone knew I’d just found out about it.’

‘Oh my God,’ Jean said. ‘Who would know? And who was at all the places the photos were taken?’

‘Nobody I can think of,’ Sarah said. ‘Other than me.’

‘Right. And it wasn’t you.’

Sarah paused. ‘Ben thought it might be Rachel. She knew I’d seen the account, because she alerted me to it.’

‘I guess,’ Jean said. ‘But I don’t know how it could be her. How would she have got the photos? She’d need to have been around Barrow for the last six months, which rules her out. She’s been on the West Coast.’

They looked at Rachel’s profile to check; she had been working as a psychologist in San Diego, specializing in grief counseling and post-traumatic stress disorder. It made sense; there was a large military presence down there. That was all there was, though: her profile was only a few weeks old.

‘She’s new to Facebook,’ Sarah said. ‘So it could all be bullshit she put on her profile, when all along she’s been much closer to home.’

‘Maybe,’ Jean said. She looked doubtful. ‘But it seems a bit of a stretch. And you still have the question of why she would be doing this. You guys got along OK in high school, right?’

‘More or less. She was pretty quiet. I didn’t have much to do with her.’ Sarah paused. ‘Although there was one time we were kind of at odds, over that guy Jeremy.’

Jean nodded slowly. ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘Sort of. But it was no big deal, right?’

Jeremy had showed up in their sophomore year of high school. He’d come from somewhere in California and he was a new and exotic addition to their lives. He surfed – at least he said he did – talked with authentic West Coast slang about all the grunge clubs in Seattle he’d been to, and wore clothes that Sarah and most of her friends had only seen on MTV.

A week or so into the school year he had asked Sarah out for coffee. She went along; he was funny and charming, but underneath all the clothes and surface cool she realized he was terribly immature. She doubted the truth of most of his stories, and so, after a few more dates, she told him she was no longer interested.

Before she did so, there had been an odd encounter with Rachel. After school one day Rachel had grabbed her elbow and steered her into a classroom. She looked exhausted and on edge, and she asked Sarah what was going on with Jeremy.

Nothing much, Sarah replied. He’s nice but there’s no spark.

Rachel had tears in her eyes when she spoke. Then leave him for me, she said. Leave him for someone who cares.

Before Sarah could reply the door opened and one of the teachers – an English teacher called Mrs Coffin – came in, and Rachel scuttled away.

As far as Sarah knew, she and Jeremy never got together, and in any case, six months later Jeremy was gone, his dad’s job transferred back to the West Coast. Until now, Sarah had never thought of him again.

But all that was nothing to do with this. It was years ago, and it had been irrelevant even back then.

‘I think it’s all a coincidence,’ Sarah said.

‘So whoever’s behind this just happened to send it today?’ Jean replied. ‘Bit weird.’

‘I hope so,’ Sarah said. ‘Because the alternative is someone’s watching me.’

She poured a glass of wine; Jean didn’t drink a great deal but she had half a bottle someone had left after a cook-out at the weekend. She stared at the red liquid, looking at her distorted reflection. It was ridiculous. Either this was some kind of elaborate joke or Rachel Little was doing it or there was some fucking stalker out there, but whatever it was, it was crazy.

And it had been going on for six months. For six months someone had been on Facebook, pretending to be her. The more she thought about it, the more scared she became.