Forward Slash. Mark Edwards
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it would help her find Becky, she had to do it.
As it was, she figured out who Lewis Vine was the moment she walked into the pizza restaurant. She had been here before, with Nathan, when they had just started seeing each other. In the evenings, the upstairs area was dark and quiet, making it a favourite haunt for couples who wanted to kiss more than they wanted to eat. Gary’s friend was sitting downstairs by the entrance, a copy of Wired magazine on the table in front of him, an iPhone in his hand. He had dark brown hair that touched the collar of his expensive-looking white shirt and when she opened the door he looked up and gave her a quizzical look.
‘Lewis?’ she said.
He stood up and shook her hand formally. His grip was dry and warm, his wedding ring pressing against her finger. She guessed he was in his late thirties, but with boyish looks and a manner about him that she recognized well from working in digital media. London was heaving with men like him – Internet experts, consultants and freelancers who made a living advising others on how to do their jobs. He probably had a couple of kids at home and a wife who worked in publishing or TV. From his clothes and flashy watch, she guessed he was doing very well.
After buying a mineral water at the bar, she sat down and they exchanged small talk about the journey, the weather, the magazine he was reading, which had a photo of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, on the cover. This led naturally to the topic she had come here to discuss.
‘So, Gary told me about your sister.’ He pulled a face.
‘Yes, and he said you might be able to give me some advice about how to use social networks to find her?’
Lewis nodded eagerly. ‘Yes. The power of crowds – that’s what it’s all about. You have to get the word out there, spread it as wide as possible, so everyone is keeping an eye out for her.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She had a horrible feeling that at the end of this he was going to invoice her for his advice.
‘Have you got a recent picture of, um …’
‘Becky.’
‘Yes, sorry. Becky.’
‘I’ve got one that was taken a month or so ago. Plus, I could always get one off Facebook.’
‘Good idea. It’s actually quite straightforward – the trick is that you have to create something that people want to share. It’s marketing, basically.’ His eyes shone with excitement and Amy tried not to take offence that he was talking about her finding her beloved missing sister as a marketing campaign.
He went on: ‘What job do you do, Amy?’
‘I run my own business. A website called Upcycle.com.’
‘Oh, what’s that? Sounds interesting.’
‘It’s a website for people who are interested in crafts. Women, mostly, who want a platform for selling items they’ve made, plus there’s a big community where my users exchange tips, advice, that kind of thing.’ I’m using his kind of language, she realized.
‘That’s cool,’ he said, in a slightly patronizing way. She was sure he was about to ask her how much traffic she got. But instead, he said, ‘So you probably know a lot of this stuff anyway.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t use social networking as much as everyone says I should.’
‘A familiar story. Well, like I’m saying, you need to make your appeal have some kind of “wow” factor, a hook. I see a lot of tweets about missing people but I rarely take any notice of them unless they grab my attention. Missing kids, obviously, that always makes one pause. You have to appeal to people’s basic human emotions. Women – you have to make them feel sympathy. Men … um, is Becky pretty?’
‘Very.’
‘That will make things easier. Make sure you use the best picture you can – she needs to look pretty but not tarty. The girl-next-door type, the sort you’d see advertising yoghurt rather than perfume. And your story needs a hook. Not just, “Have you seen this woman?” but something like … What’s her job?’
‘She’s a secondary-school French teacher.’
He nodded deeply. ‘Perfect. Couldn’t be much better. “My schoolteacher sister has mysteriously disappeared. Please help me find her.” You need something like that. Hey, maybe you could get some of her schoolkids involved. No, you’re right, that’s too much.’
He carried on, explaining how to go about setting up a campaign, the best time to tweet, how often she should do it. He told her that her aim needed to be to get as many people to share it or retweet it as she could, so it spread as far as possible. ‘That’s the power of social networks,’ he said. ‘If you’ve only got, I don’t know, five hundred followers, that’s not going to get you anywhere – unless a good number of them share it, and then their friends and followers share it, and it goes viral. That’s the trick. If you can get a celebrity or two to retweet it, then you’ll really be in business.’
As Lewis gave her more details, Amy scribbled notes in a pad. Every five minutes, his phone would go off and he’d apologize but answer it, leaving her sipping her water as he talked business. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful – she very much appreciated his help and it was good advice – but she wished he wouldn’t talk about Becky as if she were a product they were trying to sell.
Finally, he looked at his Rolex and said, ‘Right, I’ve got a meeting to get to. Was that helpful?’
She told him that indeed it was.
‘Give my best to Gary,’ he said, as she left, handing her his business card. ‘And if you need any more help, don’t hesitate to give me a ring. Especially if you need any help with Recycle. Hope you find your sister.’
He strode away. Recycle. She tutted. But on the way back to where her bike was parked, she paused and logged into Twitter on her phone. No harm starting now, she thought.
Boris sat on the floor of the bus, his body pressed close to Amy’s calves. Holding him on a tight leash, she put her other hand on his warm back, feeling the way that he rocked in rhythm with the motion of the bus.
Amy pulled out her iPhone and checked TweetDeck, the app on her phone that she used to check Twitter. It had only been two hours since she’d posted the first appeal for information about Becky’s whereabouts on Twitter, following Lewis’s advice, and she’d done the same on Facebook as soon as she’d got home.
‘MY SISTER BECKY COLTMAN IS MISSING – HAVE YOU SEEN HER SINCE FRI? SO WORRIED. PLS.RT’
Along with the message, she’d added a link to a gorgeous photo of Becky laughing at a party, but Amy saw that thirty-seven people had already retweeted it to their followers too, and it had had dozens of shares on Facebook so far.
She herself only had just over a thousand Twitter followers, most of them members of the crafting community. When she got home, she thought, she would send the appeal directly to some famous tweeters – Jonathan Ross, Caitlin Moran – people with many thousands of followers, just as Lewis had told her to.
Amy and Boris got out at Waterloo – it was a pain having to go to Waterloo, then go home, then back again, but she needed Boris with her now – and boarded a South West train heading out of town. Twenty-five minutes later the train pulled into St Margarets station and Amy led Boris up the steps to the street. She turned right and headed purposefully towards the park – she had already memorized the directions.
‘Very chi-chi, Boris, isn’t it?’ she said, taking in the flower shops and artisan delis.
She reached the mini-roundabout she’d seen on the map, and nerves clumped in a tight ball in her stomach – that meant that Ross’s office should be … just … here. She looked along the row of shops and at the brass plates on the doors between them. There it was: Malone Associates.
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