E-GIRL UNPLUGGED

  Published by Balkon Media

  Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-8384529-3-3

  Hardcover edition ISBN: 978-1-8384529-7-1

  Also available as an E-book and Audiobook

  Copyright © 2024 by Adi Flynn

  The right of Adi Flynn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters and events in this book are entirely fictional. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, (except for satirical purposes) is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Edited by Hanna Elizabeth

  Paperback, E-book & Audiobook cover: GetCovers

  Hardcover design: Particular

  www.adiflynn.com

  www.balkon.media

  also by adi flynn:

  CHARLIE CHAN CRIME THRILLERS

  E-Girl Unplugged

  #BookTok Made Me Do It

  contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  #BookTok Made Me Do It

  Prologue

  About the Author

  For Noel Smith —

  exceptional carpenter, extraordinary uncle

  Never one for the ol’ books, but he crafted a mean bookcase

  prologue

  The night was dark, especially so through the tinted glass of the hired Range Rover Evoque, as it blazed past The Three Graces, some of Liverpool’s most grand and recognisable Grade I listed buildings.

  It was darker still within the cab of the car, where the driver sat behind the wheel in a fevered panic, tears streaking makeup down her face. The Evoque took the third exit off the roundabout and disappeared into a gaping tunnel entrance, leaving Liverpool behind and the clusterfuck that had been tonight.

  Emefa—e-girl, pop diva, and addict—shivered from manicured fingernail to pedicured toe. No matter how fast she drove, it felt like she could not leave the event behind. It followed her, almost like the very burden she was trying to shed was holed up in the back of her car, adding a drag of weight to her escape. Her leg shook involuntarily against the pedal, forcing a thrumming rhythm out of the engine. She still didn’t realise that the air con was on full blast.

  Her phone rang—a distinctive ringtone. It startled her. Not her agent, or her mum, or any of her dealers. She scooped it off the passenger seat, tapped it onto the magnetic dash holster, and glanced at the screen. It was Marcus, her producer. She killed the call, then dragged the flat of her hand across her forehead, peeling away a layer of foundation that had come loose with her sweat.

  The car exited the tunnel like a bullet and was suddenly illuminated from behind. High beams singed her rearview mirror. Someone was driving right up her arse. She pushed the accelerator and tried to put some distance between the vehicles. But her own headlights caught the glare from a red and white striped barricade. A hard stop made of admittedly flimsy plastic on a slow-moving hinge. The tunnel toll.

  She slammed on the brakes. The car skidded itself to a stop, millimetres from the barrier. She reached across the passenger seat and dug through her handbag for her credit card. She pulled out a few, and finally selected the glitzy shimmering pink Monzo card usually reserved for hotel bars and late-night fast-food runs. It was her petty cash account. A bit of ‘off-the-books’ play money. It wouldn’t get her far, but it wouldn’t be disabled if her producer suspected that she’d gone missing for a quick fix. Again.

  Stretching her arm, and some of her upper body through the window, she couldn’t reach the card reader mounted on the wall of the tollbooth.

  “Come on,” she grunted.

  Undoing her seatbelt, she leaned even farther out the window to tap. Still not close enough. Her arms weren’t made for labour, they were made for taking selfies. She opened the door just a crack and edged herself off the seat to buy an extra few inches.

  The car behind her was stopped, but she couldn’t make out the face of the driver. She glared at the vehicle suspiciously. As if waiting for them to get out and charge her.

  The card reader finally beeped. She threw herself back in the car, the car door slamming and knocking her card out of her hand, and onto the ground.

  “Shit!”

  The barrier rose. She had to choose between escape and entrapment. She sped forward and left her card on the tarmac. The barrier swung closed again, keeping her high-beam pursuer at bay as they paid their way through.

  She forced herself to exhale slowly. It was fine; she was in control. She felt relieved, but not enough to slow down. A few minutes later she was out of the urban sprawl, lighting up the Wirral countryside with her headlights, on a mission to get away from everything and everyone.

  Marcus called again. The screen buzzed and lit up the darkened car once more. She swiped to kill the call, missed, and swiped again, with a quick eye to the rear. The lights of the other car were long gone. Hands still shaking, she took the phone from the mount, and scrolled to find her favourite chill-out playlist. Her fingers and thumb weren’t behaving, and her phone slipped through her fingers to clatter into the footwell, casting its light on the ceiling, the shadows shifting.

  Looking back, her eyes locked onto a mound in her backseat, a lump that rose as her rain jacket quietly slipped to the floor. It had the vague shape of a man.

  She screamed.

  The car mounted the kerb and hit dirt. She spun quickly to catch the wheel. She was driving over boggy mud, tearing up the soft earth, as her car ploughed through the unsettled field. The high-clearance wheel arches clogged with gunk and fertile muck as she bounced and shuddered her way to a sudden stop at the base of a tree. The front of the car was planted firmly in the trunk of a huge sycamore. The headlight that was still working hit a patch of fog beyond, which closed in all around her.

  Everything hurt.

  That was good. She knew she was still alive.

  Some of her running mascara was mixed with blood and she felt it run down her cheek. She groaned as she tried to lift her head off the steering wheel, but she could only raise it enough to see that the windscreen was shattered, a mess of glass shards above the dashboard.

  She heard the door open, and then sensed a figure standing next to her.

  The man took a bracing breath and hauled her out through the bent doorframe.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, his voice as wispy and see-through as the fog. “I’ll be taking care of you now…”

  chapter

  one

  Eleven Months Later

  Liverpool. February. It was nippingly cold, but festivities kept the streets bright and warm all through the city centre. A crowd had come out, an army of scousers, to join in the celebrations. The city was in good spirits.

  It was New Year for the Chinese population, most of whom were descendants of the tens of thousands of merchant sailors who’d, during the Second World War, once formed Europe’s largest Chinatown—but for everyone else, it was another excuse for a party. St Luke’s, more commonly known as the ‘Bombed Out Church,’ and the length of Leece Street were transformed into a pop-up festival ground celebrating all things East Asian.

  Shoppers were out in droves. A traditional parade weaved its way along the normally busy dual carriageway. Firecrackers went off, tiny ones like popping chestnuts, while two tassel-lined and bedazzled lion mascots roamed the streets. One part dance and one part reverie of the spirits, it was a march of a creature who brought good luck and fortune for the New Year.

  One of the dancers was well into it. She wore the lion’s head over her torso, working the blinking eyelashes with an accessible squeeze-grip and the mouth with her other hand. It
was like manipulating a giant Muppet whilst dancing. She could see through the mouth. She wasn’t exactly hiding, as she had to see where to go. Not that she’d get lost. Charlie had lived in Liverpool her whole life.

  Charlotte Jane Chan was an English girl through and through, who just happened to have been born to parents who’d emigrated from Hong Kong. When people asked where she came from, like, where she’s really from, she would put on an increasingly obnoxiously Scottish accent and riff about Edinburgh until they left her alone.

  The Lunar New Year was one of the few times she felt the urge to really embrace her heritage. She was delighted to be finally given the chance to do what she’d always thought, growing up, must be the most fun thing the celebrations had to offer.

  When she saw kids watching, she took a detour to give them a wink of her enormous eyelashes or jostle her felt-lined jaw at them to try and put a smile on their faces. Her co-dancer was mostly just following along for the ride, pushing the lion’s back and rear-end up and down, sometimes adding an inauthentic twerk if it got a giggle from the teens in the crowd.

  Charlie was unimpressed, but there wasn’t much that could be done about changing partners at this stage.

  The parade ahead of her was made up of students from a Cantonese language school, a Wushu academy, as well as representatives from various business associations and some canny restaurateurs, offering dim sum samples and menus. They handed out lucky golden cats, paper fans, lanterns, and origami—Asian stuff, not strictly Chinese. The band behind played fittingly traditional music on an array of instruments. It was lovely.

  “There she is!” Charlie heard. It was a distinctly nasally voice she could pick out from the whole crowd of scousers. It was the sound of Rebecca Jarvis’ nose piercing, acting up in cold weather again as she whipped out a phone. Charlie turned to her friend and gave her a sassy wink and mouth flap. The perfect Insta moment.

  Rebecca was a pale-skinned e-girl with a large side order of punk. Usually, she looked like she’d just stepped out of 80s-era Camden, except for the fact she was born twenty years after that look took off and subsequently disappeared in the UK.

  She inherited her mother’s love of the Ramones in the womb, and it influenced her to favour a rough-and-tumble appearance. She normally wore ripped jeans, some kind of cropped jacket, a T-shirt that looked stolen straight off the back of someone in a hit-and-run, and heavy boots. The ensemble was often topped off with either an electric blue or shocking pink wig.

  Today, she’d toned it down for Charlie’s benefit, and opted for full-on cultural appropriation with a silver qipao dress complete with mandarin collar. She wore her natural dark black locks tied up with an array of golden floral hair pins. She was a good enough friend to ditch her skateboarding plans to show up for Charlie’s sake.

  And so was her other friend, who Charlie spotted across the street.

  “Ashley,” Rebecca shouted. “You’re going to miss it!”

  Charlie saw Ashley Powell—a proud black man in a sea of white faces—doing his best to navigate through the crowd, talking animatedly into the ear of a young woman. Ashley was in good form. He’d also made an effort for the occasion.

  He’d shaved to accentuate his chiselled features. His hair was freshly frosted, and he was wearing a sleek but warm velvet jacket with tailored trousers that drew attention to his shoes— two-tone Oxfords, polished to a mirror shine—which were the real appeal of his outfit. As usual. They cost more than the rest of the outfit put together.

  The girl he was chatting up, however, didn’t seem all that interested. Ashley rolled his head down, defeated, and walked through the crowd. On his own.

  Rebecca held back laughter.

  Charlie decided to play around. She got up close as he crossed the street and tried to startle him.

  “Hey, Char⁠—”

  She tried to nip at his head.

  “Hey—not the hair! Take the jacket, but not the hair. The jacket’s out of season anyway.”

  He continued his strut across the street until he wound up beside Rebecca.

  “This jacket,” he complained, “is what’s throwing me off.”

  “Why?” she asked. “It’s dark, you’re dark—it matches, yeah?”

  “Fashion isn’t about matching,” he politely protested. “It’s about a statement. If I blend in, my statement is”—he mumbled gibberish while barely moving his mouth—“and that’s boring. Or creepy. I’m standing out, top-down my look is meant to be a beacon, you see?”

  “This is my beacon,” Rebecca said, flicking her nose ring and then running a finger down the five piercings in her left ear. “She’ll always be the one that got away.”

  “At least,” Ash said, “we can both take some solace that we aren’t the worst-dressed people here.” He turned to Charlie, who stood beside them with her lion head perked up like an attentive dog, listening.

  “You’re peacocking,” Charlie mocked through the gaping mouth of the lion. “Bright colours, standing out, lots of movement—that’s what animals do.”

  “Yeah, and it usually works,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re having fun, Charlie,” Rebecca cut in. “But try not to overdo it. We’ve got work in the morning.”

  “I know,” Charlie said, tilting her whole body to quirk the head as she spoke. “But come on—this might not be coming back next year. The committee really had to beg, borrow, and steal to get the funds for this last minute.”

  “You’d think the City Council would be all over this, lavishing you with funding. If nothing else just to show how woke they are,” Ash said. “Look how many people are out and about. Spending their money, growing the economy.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing.” Charlie shook her head and the lion’s.

  “I didn’t know twerking dated back to the Ming dynasty,” Ash observed as he watched the rear of Charlie’s lion shake, rattle, and roll.

  “It doesn’t,” she said pointedly, glancing back at her co-dancer with the sternest look she could manage through the grinning mouth of a red and yellow lion.

  “Show us what it can do, then.” Ash reached out to touch one of the lion’s eyelids.

  Charlie shook her head and rattled the tassels of the fake fur. Ash recoiled and brushed himself off pre-emptively, worried it would leave garish lint on his precious burgundy.

  “That’s overdoing it,” he said.

  “I am not,” Charlie began, and then took to flapping the mouth open with each word, “overdoing it at all!”

  “Go on, git,” Rebecca said, snapping her finger like she was trying to scare her away. “Finish up so we can hit the pub.”

  Charlie gave the gathered crowds one last lion dance to rapturous applause and then crossed the road before removing the heavy lion head and stepping out of the tasselled costume, sauntering back to the muster station with the other dancers and musicians. The parade had been a success.

  The street congestion tapered off as they left the trendy bars and restaurants of Bold Street behind and continued down past the chain stores—the regular pulse of life ever-changing—through the streets of Liverpool.

  But some people just couldn’t wait for the festivities to end before they went and ruined the fun of others. People who saw peace, not as a time for rest and preparation to accomplish distant goals, but as a weakness that had to be exploited for self-gain. Opportunists, when they followed the law. Criminals in any other case. In the case of what Charlie saw, it was the latter.

  “Stop!”

  The thinned-out crowd turned at the roar of an active, older gentleman in a security guard uniform. A younger bloke ran out ahead of him with a pile of clothes still on their hangers tucked under his arms. They came bounding around from Paradise Street, past the Wushu display team packing their props and costumes away in a shipping container. Charlie was just fifty yards away from hanging up the lion for another year.

  “See ya, Granddad!” the scrote shouted. “If you had some new kicks, ya’ might have stood a chance⁠—”

  Taunting was the last straw. That was what separated good criminals from bad criminals. Good criminals made detective work hard for Charlie and her crew. Braggarts and loudmouths were simple catches. She was off the clock, but made an exception.