Girl Unknown by Karen Perry Read Free Book Online

quite another for some pervert to steal her photograph and put it up on his grubby little website for all his friends to lech over.’
    ‘Do you know what annoys me?’ Chris said, leaning forward with a new intensity. ‘It’s these people who take photographs of themselves with their smartphones and post them on Facebook or whatever, send them to their friends, then whine when someone else views them.’
    ‘Hang on a minute.’ Anna sat up a little straighter.
    ‘It’s the same with these celebrities and their nude pics. For Christ’s sake, who could be stupid enough to post those shots of themselves, and then be shocked when they enter the public realm?’
    ‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ Peter said reasonably.
    ‘No, just listen to me,’ Chris continued, warming now to his subject. ‘Caroline, does Holly have a smartphone?’
    ‘Yes, but we monitor her use of it,’ I hastened to add. ‘She understands we can access her phone at any time, read her texts, her IMs, her Facebook posts, everything.’
    ‘Okay. And does she ever use her phone to take pictures?’
    ‘Of course, but they’re very innocent. She’s eleven, for God’s sake! And she doesn’t post them online – she’s not allowed to put pictures up on any social networking sites.’
    ‘Not now, maybe. But how long are you going to be able to police it?’
    ‘For as long as we pay her phone bill,’ David interjected, grinning and taking a slug of whiskey.
    ‘What if she’s staying at a friend’s house?’ Chris went on. ‘That happens still, right?’
    ‘Yes,’ I agreed, cautiously, not liking where he was going with this.
    ‘A sleepover with a group of girls. Giddiness sets in. The tone of the conversation changes. They start talkingabout boys they fancy. Someone gets out a smartphone. Pictures are taken. Someone – a girl whose parents aren’t as vigilant – posts them on Facebook. And next thing you know, you’ve got a picture of your daughter in her nightie doing the rounds of the internet.’
    ‘Christ,’ David said, shaking his head.
    ‘So what are you saying? That it’s inevitable?’ I asked.
    He shrugged. ‘Maybe it is.’
    ‘My niece wasn’t pictured in her nightie,’ Anna added. ‘I’d just like to make that clear.’
    ‘I heard there was flesh shown in those pictures,’ Chris countered.
    ‘That doesn’t mean they were having a pillow-fight in their underwear!’
    ‘Now there’s a thought,’ Chris said, grinning and winking at Peter.
    Peter stiffened. I looked at Chris and wondered how much he’d had to drink. It had been a few months since I’d seen him and there was a new fleshiness to him, shadows around his eyes that suggested ill health or unhappiness. He was a bit of a shambles, what with the weight he’d put on, the doughy pallor of his complexion. He had always possessed a kind of louche charm, relaxed good looks and a face enlivened by humour, but in the half-light thrown by the lamps and the candles, he looked washed-up, bedraggled, lost.
    ‘I think you’re making too much of this,’ David told him, adopting a friendly, reasoned approach. ‘The photos were probably of girls in their hockey gear, or something equally innocent. The fact is the trolls and sickos trawling those websites will corrupt even the most innocentimage into something titillating, but it’s a perversion in their own minds, nothing these girls are projecting.’
    Chris laughed then, a honk of disbelief. ‘Oh come on, Dave!’ he said, slamming one hand on the table, still playful although a hardness had entered his voice, his eye. ‘Can you hear yourself?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You make it sound like they’re all angels! You, of all people, should know about the scheming ways of teenage girls!’
    David paused, just briefly, his glass halfway to his mouth. Then he laughed. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
    But something had entered that pause. A shiver of uncertainty. A cool doubt I had felt of