Soul Beach

– which to her must mean I am becoming normal again – that she lets him come up to my room and even sends us upstairs with two different sorts of posh Belgian chocolate biscuits.
    I sit on the bed and he sits on my pink chair, even though he’s too tall to be comfortable. I don’t know what to say next. He’s smartened up a bit, for my parents’ sake: he has on a different, cleaner pair of the same model of trainer he was wearing last time, and he’s tried to flatten that wild hair a bit. He doesn’t look any more comfortable than I do. I guess he doesn’t get to spend much time in girls’ bedrooms. He’s probably not even interested in anything that can’t run World of Warcraft .
    ‘Nice kit,’ he says, nodding towards my laptop. ‘Good graphics card, that model. Wouldn’t have taken you for a gamer.’
    Little do you know, sunshine. I love my virtual worlds so much that I’ve even fallen in love with a guy who can’t possibly exist. ‘I got it because it’s got a sparkly keyboard,’ I tell him.
    It’s a lie. Actually, I got it after researching the spec carefully, because I can have my geeky moments too, but I’m not about to tell him that.
    He raises his eyebrows as if to say, girls like you shouldn’t be allowed to have laptops like this. But then he says, ‘You look a lot like your sister when you frown.’
    The atmosphere in the room changes. It’s true – Mum is always mentioning it, or she used to. But surely for Lewis to notice it too, he must have spent more time with Meggie than he’s admitted to. ‘You said you hardly knew her.’
    ‘I didn’t know her that well. But this is more like a village than real London where no one knows each other, isn’t it? We were in the same year, even if we were at different schools. She dated a couple of friends of friends. And she was pretty. I mean, I know you think I’m a total geek, Alice, but even geeks notice pretty girls. They just don’t do anything about it.’
    I look at the floor, embarrassed that he knows I’m judging him. He doesn’t deserve to be dismissed when he’s trying to help. ‘I don’t think you’re a total geek,’ I say.
    He smiles. ‘I guess that’s better than nothing. Now, shall we get down to business? Cara said you’d had stalkerish emails. People saying they knew where your sister was. Even actually pretending to be your sister. Is that right?’ He takes an iPhone out of his pocket, and sets it up to record our conversation. So much for him not being geeky.
    ‘They stopped. Just loonies.’
    He nods, though his face stays sceptical. ‘Lot of them about. And I guess it’s not much of a surprise that some of them got obsessed with your sister. I’ve got a theory about why she appealed so much to nerds and losers. She was pretty, yes, but not supermodel beautiful. Girl-next-door pretty. And the fact that she went out with that Tim guy, well, every nerd and loser in the country looked at the two of them and thought, if he can get her, I must be in with a chance of a cute girlfriend too.’
    Did you think that, Lewis? I want to ask, but I decide it would be too rude. ‘The emails stopped, like I say.’ Though I look at my watch, remembering that the TV tribute airs in two hours’ time. OK, that might set the fans off again, but they can’t be behind Soul Beach, can they?
    Can they?
    Sometimes there’s so much going on in my brain that I can’t think straight. I want to scream with frustration. Will any of this ever make sense?
    ‘All right, Alice, if the emails have stopped, what do you want from me?’
    I’m rubbish at lying. So much so that Meggie even tried to train me a couple of times. She called it ‘an essential part of your education, especially when it comes to boys,’ and explained that it’s all about convincing details and looking the person you’re lying to in the eye. About having your story straight, and keeping as much of the truth as possible. I always thought she only lied about the trivial stuff – where she was when she stayed out that bit too late, why she hadn’t finished an assignment for college.
    But what if her whole life was full of lies? Could she have got herself into some kind of trouble that led to her murder? Crazy, maybe, but is it any more crazy than the idea of Tim killing her?
    ‘Alice?’
    ‘Sorry, sorry. I find it hard to focus since . . .’ I shrug apologetically and he nods but says nothing. ‘Well, I guess Cara’s right, that I haven’t