A Very Public Friend

The interview appeared on Sunday morning between a report about roadworks and a photograph of somebody's unusually large sunflower.

Finn stood outside the library with the centre's old noticeboard behind him. The title called him a friend of Rowan Bell and a voice for the town's young people. I wondered whether he had chosen that phrase or simply failed to refuse it.

I watched it at the kitchen table while Mum read the paper. Sam was still asleep.

For the first minute, Finn talked about the centre. He said it had given him somewhere to make things without being told he was in the way. That was true. He said Rowan had helped younger students with drawings and poster designs. Also true.

Then the interviewer asked about rumours online.

Finn looked down before answering. The pause was familiar. I had seen him use it when he wanted a thought to look difficult.

“People are frightened,” he said. “And some people have made mistakes. There's been footage cut, and statements changed. I don't think attacking a girl who's already admitted she wasn't honest about her brother is going to help Rowan's family.”

Mum lowered the paper.

“Did he just say—”

“Yes.”

I kept watching.

The interviewer said they would not discuss unverified allegations. Finn nodded immediately, as though that had been his point all along.

“Exactly. We need to let the police do their job. I gave back everything I was responsible for, and I've answered their questions. That's all any of us can do.”

The interview returned to the future of the centre. Finn smiled briefly at someone behind the camera. In the last frame, he looked like a tired, decent person carrying more than he should have to.

I put the phone down.

Mum folded the paper slowly.

“Who told him about your statement?”

“I did. Not all of it. Enough.”

“And now he's told everyone while saying they shouldn't attack you.”

“Yes.”

The first message arrived before we had finished talking. A girl from English asked whether it was true. Then a boy I barely knew sent a question mark and a screenshot.

Mum held out her hand.

“Not to take it,” she said when I hesitated. “Just to turn off the notifications properly.”

I gave her the phone.

Sam came downstairs in the same T-shirt he had slept in. He took one look at us and stopped by the kettle.

“What now?”

I played the relevant section. His face changed before it ended.

“I'll ring him.”

“No,” Mum said.

“He can't do that.”

“He has done it. You shouting down a phone won't undo it.”

Sam reached for his own phone anyway.

“Sam.”

He put it on the counter so hard that the spoon beside it jumped.

For a second nobody spoke.

Then he said, “Sorry,” to Mum, not to the spoon, and sat down.

I expected to feel mostly angry. Instead I felt exposed in an old, childish way, like discovering somebody had read a private note aloud. Finn had not invented my lie. He had taken a truth I was still trying to deal with and put it somewhere he could stand behind it.

I opened a reply to him.

You don't get to pretend you're protecting me.

I stared at the sentence. It was accurate. It was also the beginning of an argument he could screenshot, crop or answer in public.

I did not send it.

Mum contacted the interviewer through the address under the article. She said I was seventeen, that the interview had identified me through context while discussing an active investigation, and that she wanted the passage reviewed. She did not threaten anyone or claim a law she had not checked. She asked for a direct response.

I wrote separately to Adebayo with the link and the exact sentence about returning everything. I added what I had seen in the equipment list the day before. The detective might already have both. I did not need to be first; I needed not to leave them disconnected in my own head.

At eleven, I went to work.

Lou met me at the staff entrance.

“We're not discussing it with customers,” she said.

“Have people asked?”

“One did. I told him we sell groceries.”

I nearly smiled.

“He bought a paper and left,” she added. “Which is an excellent outcome.”

She put me with Zoe on the delivery cages. We worked through boxes of tins and pasta while the shop filled with Sunday voices. Zoe did not ask about the interview. After a while she told me about a driving lesson in which she had stalled at the same roundabout three times and begun to feel the road itself was judging her.

“That roundabout does have a personality,” I said.

“A bad one.”

We stacked tomatoes in silence for a few minutes.

Then she said, “I watched enough to know he was being a dick.”

I looked at her.

“You don't have to say anything,” she added. “I just didn't want you thinking everyone heard it the way he wanted.”

My eyes filled so suddenly that I turned towards a shelf of kidney beans.

“Thanks.”

She handed me another tin.

By lunchtime, the interview had been changed. The local site had removed the passage about me and added a brief note that it had been edited to avoid repeating personal allegations during the inquiry. Copies remained elsewhere. Nothing disappeared completely once people had decided it was interesting.

Finn messaged at one.

I wasn't trying to hurt you. I said people should leave you alone.

I read it in the staff room while somebody's soup rotated in the microwave.

Then I wrote: You told them something private while saying they shouldn't discuss it. Don't do that again.

I sent it before I could add an apology.

His reply came almost at once.

You told the police about mine.

I sat very still.

A minute later, the message disappeared and was replaced by another.

Sorry. That came out wrong.

I had already seen it. I took a screenshot of the conversation, including my own message, and saved it with the others. Not because it proved what had happened to Rowan. Because I no longer wanted to rely on remembering Finn's meaning after he had changed the words.

At the end of my shift, Mum was waiting outside with a bottle of water and no questions for the first five minutes of the walk home.

Then she said, “Mrs Pemberton called.”

I stopped.

“They found the storage address.”

“Where?”

Mum looked at me before answering.

“Twenty-one Birch Road.”