He is not coming.
He is not coming
He is not coming.
He is not coming.
My bluff has been called. My threat to name him has gone unheeded. Does he think I have the wrong name floating around in my head? Can he read my mind as well as my writing?
His repeated message is clear-cut; he is not coming to set me free. He is going to let me rot in here, just as he promised from the beginning. I have nothing to lose. Maybe if I name him, someone on the outside will track him down and he will lead them to me. I have no choice. My bluff has been called and I have to lay my cards on the table, even if they may not form a winning hand.
I try to run the words through my head, how to pinpoint his identity, how to reveal to him that I’ve known who he is for the past few hours. I don’t expect him to publish it on the blog, but at least he will know that I know; it will give me a tiny crumb of comfort if he knows I have outfoxed him.
But before I do, I must check my cards one last time. I go back into the LittleSecrets folder on the desktop to reread David’s unpublished comment from FiveParks.com. David wrote something about how he didn’t care if I published his words on my blog or not – that he only wanted me to know – and I feel the same way about the reveal of my captor; as long as he knows that I know, that will have to be enough. The smallest of victories. I want to check how David worded it, because he did it with more eloquence than I can.
But when I retrieve the LittleSecrets folder, I don’t even reopen the document containing David’s words. There is another document – a new one – buried within LittleSecrets, and its name catches my eye and tugs on my throat. It is called ‘HeIsNotComing’. This is what my captor really meant. This is what he wanted me to see. It is a saved webpage, so even though the laptop remains offline, the document explodes across the screen when I click it open. The page is from a website I know all too well, having made regular trips there to see my own words spun out to the masses. It’s an article on the Daily Herald website, but not one written by me, or anyone I know. The byline says nothing, but the words above and below it reveal everything.
EXCLUSIVE: The web of deceit behind Five Parks and online dating’s Willy Wonka
Monday, August 1, 2016
- Five Parks writer Suzanne Hills MADE UP Date #1 mystery man ‘Jordan’
- Her first date was actually a FRIEND she forced to help her
- She didn’t receive ONE application for her first date of Five Parks
- Hills was fired from her job at free newspaper The City Voice for FABRICATING stories
- Her fourth date, ‘Aaron’, was Daily Herald reporter Miles Phillips working undercover
- Hills was SACKED from Daily Herald dating column after we learned of her lies
By MILES PHILLIPS for Herald Online
The creator of dating blog Five Parks can today be exposed as a serial liar and manipulator.
Suzanne Hills, dubbed the Willy Wonka of online dating because she gave away five ‘golden tickets’ to five chosen men, hid several truths from her suitors and her readers.
Following an elaborate sting operation, the Daily Herald can today reveal how Hills roped in a friend to be the first date of her Five Parks project after she received ZERO applications.
We can also reveal that Hills was sacked from her previous job as a features journalist at The City Voice free newspaper because she was found guilty of fabricating stories.
Her website, Five Parks, the blogging sensation which has been the talk of social media this summer, was founded on lies and deception.
The blog, which saw Hills take five different men on five different dates at five different parks across London on consecutive Saturday afternoons, soared in popularity after she was granted a column in good faith by the Daily Herald.
Once we learned of her deceit, shortly after her account of her third date was published in our newspaper and on our website, Hills’ column was withdrawn from both. But in order to expose her lies to our readers who she had deceived, we had to mount an elaborate sting operation.
I volunteered to pose as ‘Aaron’ and go on the fourth date of Five Parks with Hills. I gained her trust by setting up fake Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles for both myself and my fictional former partner ‘Penelope’, who was, in fact, played by an actress. She met Hills for coffee and passed the ‘Ex Test’ challenge for Date #4, allowing me, as ‘Aaron’, to go on the date.
Through a wide range of sources, the Daily Herald has learned that Hills was sacked unceremoniously from her job as a features writer at The City Voice at the beginning of this year.
Editors there discovered that, in several instances in the previous six months, she had created fictional experts and spokespeople and attributed fake quotes to them in her articles.
She was sacked immediately from her job after her bosses learned about her indiscretions in January.
Hills had told friends and colleagues that she took voluntary redundancy, when, in fact, she was fired without any pay-off and without being given a reference from her employer.
Although the disgraced Hills continued to work on a freelance basis after her sacking, she then decided to hoodwink a new set of readers through her dating blog, FiveParks.com.
The entire blog was built on a lie. The Daily Herald can reveal that Hills did not receive a single application for her first date of Five Parks. But instead of coming clean and admitting to her readers that not one man was interested in her, she forced a male friend into going on the date in Queen’s Park, North London.
That friend was Jonathan Dalton, a 29-year-old friend of Hills’ brother, Stephen. She turned to him when she was stuck for a date. However, rather than write about her date with Mr Dalton, Hills made up ‘Jordan Bates’, a fantasy man who does not exist, filling in his fake answers to an online questionnaire herself.
In her blog post about Date #1, Hills wrote that she and ‘Jordan’ walked around Queen’s Park, before going for coffee, pizza and drinks nearby. In fact, while she did meet Mr Dalton in Queen’s Park, Hills only chatted with him briefly before he left her in the park. There was no romantic walk or drinks or dinner.
When approached by the Daily Herald, Mr Dalton refused to comment.
But even after recapping Date #1 on her blog, Hills continued to spin the lie, using it as a template to secure a column with this newspaper. Staff at the Daily Herald were unaware of Hills’ past sacking from her role at the free newspaper or her fabrication of Date #1.
However, once we learned of her deceit, Hills and her column were dropped from this newspaper. In addition, we decided to expose her lies to our readers, who deserve to know the truth about Five Parks. In order to do this, we had to get close to her.
I applied for Date #4 as ‘Aaron’, supplying Hills with the email address of a fake ex-girlfriend. The Date #4 challenge set by Hills asked applicants to submit their former partners’ email addresses – she would then interview selected exes about their old boyfriends to find one worthy of dating.
In an email, I told Hills that my former partner was ‘Penelope’ and Hills met her in a café for an interview. In reality, Penelope was played by an actress. To create the cover story that we used to be a couple, Daily Herald picture desk staff used digital technology to insert our faces into a series of photos, which I then posted on our fake social media profiles on Twitter and Facebook.
We also invented a backstory of how we met, what we liked doing as a couple and how we split up. Just as Hills made up the answers herself in her Date #1 questionnaire about the fictional ‘Jordan’, so did Penelope concoct her responses in the Ex Test.
A source told The Daily Herald: ‘Suzanne was devastated after she was sacked for fabricating her news features, but she brought it on herself.
‘And she didn’t learn her lesson when she started Five Parks. She always said she wanted the blog to make her famous – that was all she cared about, she wasn’t really interested in finding a date
– careful what you wish for.’
The Daily Herald has made repeated attempts in the past few days to contact Hills for comment, but she has refused to reply.
HOW I FOOLED WONKA: MY DATE WITH SUZANNE IN REGENT’S PARK
I told Suzanne I hadn’t played tennis for five years. I lied. It was one of many lies I told her on our date in Regent’s Park, Date #4 of her Five Parks project. I had to lie to Suzanne because it seems lies are the only things she understands. She has been lying to the readers of her blog and the readers of the Daily Herald for too long.
In her blog post about our date, she wrote that we flirted, but the truth is I played a role so she would let her guard down.
She told me how Five Parks was little more than her springboard to become famous, something she neglected to share with her readers. And she didn’t care how many lives she ruined or lies she told to get there.
She wrote that we must have looked like a married couple to other people in the park, when in fact I was merely pretending to like her. It obviously worked, because she invited me back to her flat the next night, as readers of her blog will know after she published an article on Five Parks. Nothing happened at her flat between us that night.
The only reason I accepted her invitation – the only reason why I went on the date with her in the first place – was to get a story. That’s all Suzanne is; a story. But unlike the stories in her blog posts and newspaper columns, this one finally contains the truth.
Miles Phillips
36
Date: 01/01/16
Battery: 51%
Time Remaining: 2hr 22min
I think I am going to be sick, even though there is nothing in my stomach.
Miles Phillips. Not Aaron. Miles. Not the person I want to be with, but an assassin. Even if I do make it out of here somehow, I am already dead. My captor is right; Aaron is not coming. He isn’t coming because he isn’t Aaron.
The main article on the Daily Herald website stuck the knife into my back, but it is the accompanying breakout box that judders the weapon around and rips at my punctured flesh. There is a long chain of images on the webpage, linked by Phillips’s words. Most of them capture Aaron – no, Miles – and I in Regent’s Park: there is one of us at the tennis court; another of us strolling along a path; three or four more taken from a vantage point somewhere near our picnic. The photographer was watching us, hidden somewhere, maybe even in plain sight. There wasn’t supposed to be a photographer on Date #4, I’d cut ties with the Herald by then.
I thought I had no more tears to cry in here, but the familiar taste of human saltwater slithers between my lips to assure me otherwise. Aaron. Lovely, mysterious Aaron. You have killed me. He is not coming.
I have read the Daily Herald article four or five times now. It’s like reading about a different person. This can’t be me. But it is – it is and it was – and Miles Phillips found me, the real me. He wrote that the woman pretending to be Penelope was the professional actor, yet she had none of the dramatic finesse he displayed in Regent’s Park. Back then, I didn’t think it was acting, I thought it was genuine mutual attraction, but the words on this webpage make that sun-soaked afternoon appear fuzzy and dream-like, almost as if it never existed. Miles Phillips, whoever he is, has won. I am finished. All I wanted from Five Parks was to find someone, and I thought I had, but he has been taken from me. Because he wasn’t real.
I know my captor will publish what I am typing right now, for this is my downfall, my descent into the gutter. He will want the world to hear it from the horse’s mouth, and it will be my only opportunity to tell my side of the story. He might expect me to kick and scream with these words, defend myself against the allegations in the Daily Herald article. Well, I can’t do that. Because almost all of it is true. Miles Phillips has done his digging well. This is my confession, to you, my readers. You deserved better. And I deserve what is coming to me if I ever escape this dark solitude.
I scroll back down FiveParks.com until I reach my captor’s one and only blog post, the one headed, Time For A Different Voice.
One phrase he used in particular jarred. Like the words from the song he boomed in here earlier, I knew what they meant … but I couldn’t explain.
Addressing my readers, he wrote: ‘You think she has made this whole thing up. I wonder what on Earth gave you that idea?’
It’s obvious now what gave them that idea; Miles Phillips’s article in the Daily Herald. They had already seen it.
It’s a saved webpage, so time will have passed since he screen-grabbed it, but even at that point the Herald article had 35,000 shares. I am big news again.
That is why my readers no longer believe anything I publish. They think I am making all of this up, just like the Herald says I lied about losing my job and Date #1. I don’t blame them for doubting me. Because I did lie to them.
*
The first week of Five Parks was a sham – if it hadn’t been, the blog wouldn’t have survived. I tweeted and Facebooked the hell out of that opening blog post, but no one took any notice. I wrote later that there were dozens of potential Date #1s when, in reality, I didn’t receive a single application. It was soul-destroying, but that didn’t mean I was going to give up as soon as I started, and I knew writing the truth would do me no good, because no one wants to read yet another blog about a singleton in London failing to find a date. I wanted my blog to be about hope, so I created my dream date, Jordan.
In my head, I named him after Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life, although Rob teased me that it was Jordan from New Kids on the Block. Rob was the only person who knew about Jordan. At that early stage, I hadn’t even told Sylvie about the blog, so it didn’t seem necessary to inform her I had failed to procure a single suitor. Although that wasn’t entirely true.
When it became clear that no one was going to apply in time, Rob stepped up and offered to go to Queen’s Park with me, not as my date, but as my friend. But the memory of that awkward night a few years back when he asked me out in the pub across the road from work, shortly after I’d started seeing Michael, still lingered. Rob and I had missed our boat, and I didn’t think of him as someone I fancied any more – it had been the briefest of office attractions. I refused his offer to be Date #1, and I think he accepted it, but he probably felt a little aggrieved when I told him I wanted to invent Jordan instead.
And yet, Rob was a true friend, because even though I’d hurt him, he wanted to help – help me create Jordan. Unlike me, Rob still worked at the City Voice, and someone on the pictures desk gave him a log-in for the photo library. Once inside it, Rob downloaded a number of images of models used in stock pictures down the years, and it was there we found our Jordan. The eventual chosen photo was one used to depict an office worker at a computer. The model was attractive, not too attractive, but enough to be nondescript and untraceable. This beaming office worker became the image of our Jordan. We even gave him a Twitter account and a Facebook page should anyone go looking, kept the pictures on both to a minimum. Buying a few thousand fake followers was easy, something I should have considered when I was choosing Aaron – or Miles – as Date #4. But Aaron was my only candidate for the date, because Penelope was the only ex I interviewed – it was Aaron or the end of Five Parks, it was Aaron or no one. Only now do I realise that Aaron was no one.
Aaron is the ultimate taste of my own medicine. Things have come full circle. Jordan was a fantasy, hewn from the dumb ideas in my head of how a perfect guy should look, talk and act. He was my dream date.
When I blogged that I’d found Jordan, I wanted it to look as if it had been easy. Finding a dream guy should be simple, given that I thought I knew exactly what he should be, but the cruel reality was an empty inbox. No one wanted me. So I decided to concoct exactly what I wanted.
Jordan’s job was irrelevant. I made him a web designer because I thought it was the blandest occupation out there – if anyone tried to check him out, they would be lost in a sea of East London h
ipsters. I made him three years younger than me to put distance in my imagination between him and Michael. I wanted a different kind of man in my life, even if he was a fiction for just one afternoon.
I was in control of everything back then; I had all the questions and all the answers. Once I had the questions for The Most Boring Online Dating Questionnaire Ever, the answers flowed from me. Creating my own Mr Right from scratch was easy. He hated the same things I hated – jazz, noisy teens on buses, Clapham – and liked what I liked – sunsets and reading and The Muppets. What an utter lack of imagination. I could have made him anything I wanted, and I chose to make him just like me. How pathetic.
The date I described in the blog was all bullshit, apart from Queen’s Park being packed with people under a harsh sun. The flirty dialogue, the friendly drunk on the bench, the trip to Pets Corner, the coffee shop, the margaritas – none of it happened anywhere else but in my head. I hadn’t planned what I was going to write, it simply spilled out of me, like toppled wine on to a carpet, a stain that would never come off. I started writing it at home, less than an hour after I first arrived at the park. I didn’t meet Jordan at the park, but I met someone, and I didn’t meet them for very long.
Poor Johnny. Johnny, I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into this.
As the Herald reports, Johnny is a friend of my brother’s. I’d met him on nights out with Stephen’s improbable and massive crowd of mates he had gathered during his short time in London. A lot of Stephen’s friends were boorish, blessed with the sense of entitlement that only kids in their twenties can cultivate, impossible to talk to for longer than sixty seconds, but Johnny was different. He was quieter, thought about what he wanted to say before saying it, kept his smartphone in his pocket during dinner instead of plonking it smack bang in the middle of the restaurant table before he’d even sat down – it’s the little things that matter.
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