Page 20 of Killing Mind

Stacey followed her gaze to the woman standing at the end of the aisle looking concerned. Clearly the news that a police officer wanted to speak to one of her staff members had reached the manager.

Cassie gave her a signal that everything was okay. The woman disappeared around a dinner service display.

‘Until when?’ Stacey prompted.

‘Until she met someone.’

‘Go on.’

‘Callum Towney. They met at college. He thought he was all that and a bag of chips. Not the type she normally went for but there was something about him that she could not leave alone.’

Stacey took out her phone and made a note of the name. Surprisingly, it wasn’t one she recognised from Samantha’s old social media accounts.

‘He treated her like shit at times, but she kept going back for more.’

‘Treated her badly, how?’

‘Picking her up when he had nothing better to do. Dropping her when he felt like it. She was completely besotted and then he finished with her completely for someone else, which pretty much destroyed her.’

Stacey was intrigued. It looked as though her relationship with this boy had changed her life and personality completely.

‘How did she change?’

‘Stopped going out, stopped laughing, withdrew from her old friends; anything I think that reminded her of Callum. I feel awful for this now but I was pleased when Callum finished with her. I thought once she got over it she’d be back to her old self, but she never did.’

‘Did she not mix with any of her old friends, interact on social media?’

Cassie shook her head and bit her lip.

‘What is it?’ Stacey asked. There was something this girl wanted to say.

‘I should have tried harder. I always felt that I wasn’t patient enough with her. But she made it pretty hard.’

‘In what way?’

Cassie hesitated as though choosing her words carefully. ‘She started to say mean things. Stuff that was out of character for her. She criticised us all more than she had before. I got a weekend job to save for the new iPhone and she called me a zombie, a follower, started saying I had no mind of my own. There was like this constant disapproval of anything I did.’

Stacey couldn’t help but wonder why a break-up with a boyfriend had caused her to be more judgemental.

She bit her lip again. ‘I probably should have contacted her more but…’

‘And then she ran away?’ Stacey clarified.

Cassie frowned. ‘Did she?’

‘You didn’t know?’

Cassie shook her head. ‘Her withdrawal wasn’t sudden like that. She made new friends, especially one girl with red hair, I think, but it was all gradual, over time, where contact just got less until there was none at all.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Her parents never mentioned her running away.’

‘You saw them?’ Stacey asked, trying to hide her puzzlement. She would have thought Cassie would have been their first port of call when Samantha disappeared. She’d been easy enough to find.

‘Yeah, I saw them in here about a year ago. I asked how she was and they told me she was fine.’

‘Okay, Cassie, thanks for your help,’ Stacey said, moving away.

She left the shop wondering what the hell the Brown family was trying to hide.

Nineteen