Her Last Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

I can do is lie here and feel shit and sorry for myself. Because it’s my fault. I was the one who left her in that car. Tasha’s right. She’s always right. If I’d just taken her back inside with me, or even manned the fuck up and told her she could take the picture in tomorrow, we’d all be sitting around the dinner table right now talking about our days. As it is, I haven’t eaten since breakfast, the dining room’s in darkness and Miss Williams still hasn’t got her picture.
    I’ve never got on particularly well with technology and I’m really starting to detest it today. The text messages and phone calls are endless, with friends and family phoning one after another. The most depressing fact is that most of them probably found out through Facebook.
    I’ve become quite adept at cancelling the calls that come through from numbers I recognise. I’ve changed my voicemail message to say that I’m passing calls from friends and family to voicemail as I need to keep the line free in case the police call. This is partially true, but I also don’t want to speak to anyone right now.
    A few have taken to emailing me instead, which is starting to get pretty annoying. My iPhone’s email icon has a red blob telling me I’ve got nineteen unread emails. As I’m looking at it, the phone pings like a hotel reception bell and the number changes to twenty. The alert message at the top of the screen shows that the new email’s subject line is Ellie , but the name is one I don’t recognise: Jen Hood.
    Must be another friend of Tasha’s, I think, but then why would she be emailing me? I haven’t opened any of the other emails, but then I know who they’re from and I can almost guess word for word what they’re going to say.
    There’s no way in hell I could have guessed what this email from Jen Hood says, though. I open it and read it three times, just to be sure my mind isn’t playing tricks on me.

    ELLIE IS SAFE. YOU CAN HAVE HER BACK AFTER YOU KILL YOUR WIFE.

10

    I must have read that email a hundred times over the past few minutes. I’ve stared at every word, every letter, willing them to say something different. I’ve looked for the deliberate joke, the typo, the sign that it might have been sent to the wrong person.
    Perhaps it’s been sent to the right person, but it’s just a bad joke. I’m sure I heard somewhere that this happens in cases like this. Troublemakers — trolls, they call them — like to prey on people when they’re at their lowest ebb.
    I look for signs of some sort of mistake. There’s nothing. It really is an email from someone who wants me to kill my wife to get my daughter back.
    I march into my office and flip the lid up on my MacBook. Fortunately, it starts up about ten seconds after I press the power button and twenty seconds after that I’m staring at the Facebook login screen.
    I’ve only ever used Facebook about five times in my life, so I struggle to remember my username and password, but I’m lucky on the third attempt and I’m greeted by a newsfeed showing me pictures of my own daughter, shared by family and friends from around the country. I try not to look at the photos and instead click the Search bar at the top of the page and type in Jen Hood .
    There are so many results, I don’t know where to start. There are Jens, Jennys and Jennifers. There are women with Hood as their married name and some with it listed as their maiden name. There are even some Jens who live in towns called Hood, worked for companies or went to schools called Hood. Most are from America, but there are a couple in Scotland, Ireland and even France.
    Where do I start? I can’t just send them all messages saying ‘Did you kidnap my daughter?’. I grab my phone and look at the email again. It’s come from a Gmail address: [email protected] . No clues as to where the person lives whatsoever.
    Once again, that same feeling hits me: the feeling of not knowing. Someone has sent me this email