Copycat. Alex Lake
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‘They did? How did they know?’
‘I don’t know. They must – they must have been following me.’
‘Shit,’ Ben said. ‘If this is someone’s idea of a joke, then it’s not funny.’
‘It’s not a joke, Ben. None of my friends would do this.’
‘Then who?’ he said. ‘Who would have been following you?’
‘I have no idea.’
She called Toni when the kids were in bed.
‘Hey,’ Toni said. ‘How are you?’
‘Good,’ Sarah said. ‘Well, kind of. But I’ll get to that in a bit. How are you holding up?’
Toni had separated from her husband, Joe, six months earlier and was in the process of getting divorced. They’d met when she was thirty-two and she had married him despite her – and her friends’ – misgivings. He was tall, good-looking, well-dressed and had a whiff of the snake-oil salesman about him. It was his shoes which had put Sarah off: every time she saw him he was wearing a new pair, and they were always meticulously shined or brushed or cleaned. Ben had good shoes, solid English brogues from Church’s or Loake, but they had a reassuringly scuffed appearance. From time to time he polished them, but only when necessary. He didn’t want to polish them; he had better things to be doing. But Joe must have spent hours on his shoes and clothes and hair. It was, as far as Sarah was concerned, a bit suspicious. It couldn’t all be for Toni’s benefit.
And it turned out it wasn’t. Joe was having a series of affairs with women who worked in his office. One, Toni might have forgiven. Six or seven was too much.
‘The divorce comes through in a fortnight,’ Toni said. ‘Can’t wait.’
‘It’ll be good to get it over with. You been busy?’
‘Oh yeah. My life is a laugh a minute. All I need is to get all the hot twenty-six-year-old firemen to leave me alone so I have time to write my novel and then I’ll be OK. But enough about my amazing life. How are you?’
‘Well,’ Sarah said. ‘There has been some weird stuff going on.’
‘Don’t tell me Ben is having an affair. I couldn’t take it. Not Ben. He’s too boring.’
‘He’s not boring!’ Sarah paused. ‘OK, well maybe. But no. It’s not an affair. It’s – there’s a Facebook account. In my name. It’s easier if I send it to you. Let me know when you have it.’
She messaged a link to Toni.
‘Here it is,’ Toni said. ‘I’ll bring it up.’ There was a pause. ‘OK, got it on my screen now. There you are, posting stuff. What’s the big deal?’
‘The big deal is, it wasn’t me who posted it. Any of it.’
‘What do you mean? These are your photos. There’s one of us in Portland with Anne.’
‘I didn’t post them,’ Sarah said. ‘That isn’t my account. It’s someone else’s, someone who has been posting photos of me, under my name. And there’s one from inside the house.’
There was a sharp intake of breath.
‘You didn’t do this?’ Toni said. ‘This is crazy.’
‘It isn’t’ – Sarah hesitated, but she had to ask – ‘it’s not you, is it?’
‘What? Why would it be me?’
‘You do have a track record of pranking people, Toni.’
‘Yeah, but firstly that was when we were in college. And secondly, even I would never come up with a prank like this, let alone be able to do it. I mean, where would I get the photos?’
‘You could have asked other people.’
Toni laughed. ‘Look, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Let’s put this one to bed, once and for all. I had nothing to do with this, OK? And in any case, my pranks were funny—’
‘I wouldn’t say funny, exactly,’ Sarah interrupted.
‘Well, at least harmless. And this is neither. This is creepy. Very fucking creepy.’
This was not what Sarah had been hoping to hear. She had been hoping – although, looking back, it was probably a vain hope – Toni would say, Yeah, it was me or don’t worry, it’s a thing millennials do to tease people, but instead, she was agreeing.
‘I know,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m worried.’
‘Have you called the cops?’
‘You think I need to?’
‘I don’t know. It can’t hurt. And you could tell Facebook. Contact somebody there and ask them to take the profile down.’
‘Would they do that?’
‘Probably not. They’d cite freedom of speech or whatever to justify their unwillingness to lose a user, but you might as well ask the question.’
‘OK,’ Sarah said. ‘Thanks for the suggestions.’
‘No worries. And keep me posted, OK?’
Sarah ended the call. Ben appeared in the doorway to their bedroom.
‘How was Toni?’ he said.
‘Good. The divorce is nearly done.’
‘What did she think about Fake Sarah?’
‘She suggested I contact Facebook and ask them to remove it, and also call the cops.’
Ben wagged his head from side to side. ‘I’m not sure what the cops will do,’ he said. ‘There’s not really a crime for them to investigate. But you could try.’
‘I will,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll do it in the morning. I need to go to bed. I barely slept last night.’
She didn’t sleep much better that night. She got out of bed early and decided to start with Facebook. The police could wait; there was no point calling them at this time anyway as they would hardly rush over because of some Facebook account, and besides, she didn’t particularly want them showing up at her house at 7 a.m. She preferred to be dressed and showered before a face-to-face meeting with a police officer.
She logged on to her account and looked for some contact details. Under ‘More’ there was an option for ‘Help and Support’; she clicked and a link appeared for reporting abusive content. She was about to follow it, but she stopped herself.
Was it really abusive content? She wasn’t sure it was. It was weird and unsettling, but it wasn’t abusive, or obscene. It was merely photos. She needed to think about how she was going to approach this.
She decided to take a look at the fake account so she could tell Facebook exactly what was going on. She could gather her thoughts, and at the same time see if anything new had been posted.
She clicked the link.
It wasn’t there.
She searched Facebook for Sarah Havenant.
There was her account, and there was another Sarah Havenant, but she was a teenager from Ohio.
The profile had been deleted, so now there was nothing to show the cops or to write to Facebook about.
She felt a momentary surge of relief, but it was quickly replaced with a nagging unease. Maybe, just maybe, this was the end of whatever had been going on.
And maybe it wasn’t.
She will look, today, at the account. Maybe she will