Trust No Bitch: Part 1

Gemma Akintola

Although Gemma had entered the interview room filled with the apprehension one would expect from somebody about to be questioned by police, it had quickly been replaced with animosity towards the detective. In particular, the legions of irrelevant questions she continued to pester Gemma with. On entering, she'd sat stiffly in her chair, giving a great deal of thought to each reply but she had rapidly grown tired of answering questions that she considered to be pointless. Instead, she had taken to leaning back in her chair, staring at her Adidas Originals, the ones which had taken her months to save for. She responded with a closed answer, when and where she could, and avoided eye contact with the detective. So far, the interrogation had triggered little a reaction in Gemma; only slight irritation as time she could never regain dissipated in front of her. What is time, if not an ever running thief?

The phrase popped into her head. Who had said that? Was it an Alice original or one of Cleo's internet quote classics? She had never fooled Gemma when she came out with those supposedly sagacious remarks, Gemma knowing that she had likely found it online hours before. In spite of the convincing, yet artificial "plucked it out of thin air" demeanour Cleo would adopt, Gemma could spot those pseudo-profound remarks from a mile away. She had suppressed a snort at the thought; Cleo was always about the dramatics. Gemma had barely been paying attention when March began to delve into the deeper questions.

"So she was missing for let's see...4 months, and neither you nor any of your friends thought to let the police know? Did you not care?" Asked March. It was the first question to really make Gemma sit up in her seat. The question provoked a not long-dormant creature inside her: fury. It began to stir again, initially reawakened by her confrontation with her brother only hours before. The way March had said it sounded rather accusatory for Gemma's liking. The party had been on the last day of term and not hearing from Cleo over the summer break was a given. It was only after a month of silence that she had reached out to Mrs. King who had already filed a report. Alice, Clara and Lilly were all out of the country. How were they to know? To go off the grid was typical Cleo behaviour and to say they had known and not cared for 4 months was not true. What was the point in contacting the police when Mrs. King already had? When the police were supposed to already be searching? And great fucking job they'd done with that, Gemma thought bitterly. Gemma and the others had all been sure Eleanor King would be in contact as soon as she heard something and the last 3 months had been spent in a perpetual state of worry, each girl distancing herself from the other as they pondered Cleo's whereabouts in solitude.

"Of course we cared!" She growled, her voice brimming with anger. March cocked an eyebrow and pursed her voluminous lips. Panicked by this reaction, Gemma regained her composure. "What I mean to say is that, we were worried about her, yeah, but the police were looking for her anyway she did that kind of thing all the time. We never knew when she was coming or going." She said more calmly.

"What do you mean by that?" queried March.

"Well, her family is loaded so often she would just spend her money on going abroad with someone she just met and nobody would hear from her for weeks. She wouldn't tell us she was going, she would just jet off and we would have no idea where the hell she had been 'til she came back with a bunch of tacky souvenirs and a suntan. A couple of months before she went missing, days before one of our most important pieces of coursework was due in, she went to Bali with some boy she met at Glastonbury the year before. We didn't even know they were still speaking. We were all worried about her so we spoke to the professor and he told us that Cleo had emailed him the coursework a couple of hours ago, along with an apology explaining that she wouldn't see him for a while because she'd gone on holiday and didn't know when she'd get back." Gemma explained. Cleo had always shown little consideration for deadlines, especially when it came to their degree. When asked why she was even taking criminology she had leaned on the table and paused before whispering: "Because I want to learn how to be the best damn criminal I can possibly be." Then she would wink. Cleo always winked.