Forget Me Never

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    I still hadn’t figured it out an hour later when I grabbed lunch – a banana sandwich and a handful of raisins. It was only after I’d finished altering the jeans that I remembered.
    The day before Danielle had died we’d been in town, which was teeming with Saturday crowds. It wasn’t the easiest shopping expedition – Dani and I wanted to do the clothes shops, but Reece had made loud noises about being bored, and when I’d poked my head into a New Age place that looked interesting, Dani had said it was a load of rubbish that only nutters believed in. To keep the peace we’d stuck to department stores and gadget and music shops. We were just coming out of HMV when Danielle froze. There was a man further down the street, waving at her.
    ‘Dani?’ I’d asked. ‘You OK?’
    Danielle grabbed my arm. ‘I’m sick of town. Let’s get back to the flat.’
    Reece and I exchanged a look but did as she said. A bus was passing and we jumped on. Danielle pressed her nose to the window, looking back towards the street we’d come from. She seemed to relax once the bus turned the corner. When I asked her about the man, she laughed.
    ‘Oh, that’s just someone from work. Super-annoying – drones on for hours about the most boring things. We’ve had a lucky escape!’
    Reece and I had accepted this explanation and forgotten about it. But now I knew otherwise – because the man waving at Dani had been the boyfriend in the photo. Or at least . . . I was fairly certain it was. But had his hair been blond? I remembered it being darker . . .
    Suddenly I wasn’t sure. My memory of him was like one of those painting-by-numbers pictures you get given as a kid – outline sketched out, but minus any details until you add the colour.
    Maybe it didn’t really matter. Danielle was dead. Whether or not the man in the Bournemouth street was the boyfriend didn’t change that. But heck, I still wanted to know.
    If only I could get a second opinion . . .

REECE
    The last thing I’d been expecting to find in my inbox when I logged in that Wednesday morning was an email from Sophie Hayward, my ex-best friend. But there it was – untitled and out of the blue.
    Hi Reece,
    If you haven’t instantly deleted this, I need to talk to you. It’s about Danielle. It won’t take long. Can we meet up? Text me. My number’s still the same.
    Ta.
    Soph
    I read it again, frowning. The bowl of porridge I’d been eating sat in front of me going cold. What an odd coincidence. I’d been thinking about Soph quite a bit this summer, even though we hadn’t talked for months – probably because I’d been spending a fair bit of time on Sticky Wicket, an online cricket forum for teenagers. Like most forums, many of the members were idiots, but they were always fun to pick arguments with.
    Back when we were mates, I’d even argued with Sophie on the forum. Soph was the only girl I’d ever met who actually understood the rules of cricket. That was one of the reasons we’d first made friends. I later found out that her initial motivation for getting into cricket was that her mum had once hinted her dad liked it.
    It was three months ago that Sophie ditched me, back at the start of May. I was still unclear as to why, and I doubted I’d find out. Nothing was ever simple with Sophie. I used to joke that she thought so much that I was surprised her brain didn’t explode.
    As far as our friendship went, the end had come shortly after my stupid school play. I’d been forced into it by the drama teacher. He said it’d be a ‘good use for my big mouth’.
    The play was Measure for Measure , which was, predictably, Shakespeare. Mum got irritatingly involved. She wrote my lines down on Post-it notes and stuck them all over the house – on my wardrobe, the fridge, even by the loo roll, something my little sister Neve found hilarious. ‘It’s so you can’t help but learn them,’ Mum explained. ‘This is incredibly important to your future, darling – Berkeley’s produced some really well-known actors. It’s a great honour to be in one of their plays.’
    Quite who these actors were I didn’t know, and neither, I suspected, did she.
    ‘But I don’t want to be an actor,’ I pointed out. ‘Anyway, I know my lines. I told Sophie I’d be online now.’
    ‘Practice makes perfect, Reece,’ Mum said primly. ‘I’m sure Sophie wouldn’t mind your not talking to her tonight. It’s not like she’s your girlfriend.’
    I decided to