Nick Hatcher lost his job as a result of Miles’s revelations. Miles wrote to me and told me how the Herald exposé was published. Sylvie recognised Miles when chaperoning me on Date #4 in Regent’s Park. She knew who he was from her visits to the Herald office, knew he wasn’t Aaron. She tipped Hatcher off that one of his reporters had just dated me. Hatcher wanted revenge on me for ditching the column and asked Miles to write the exposé. He refused. Hatcher wrote it anyway and stuck Miles’s byline on it. When Miles knew the article was coming, he quit working at the Herald. In the past few months, he told me he only wanted to have a date with me, and that he had even applied for the poetry challenge on Date #2, but his effort was weeded out by Rob’s algorithm – he made the mistake of inserting my name into his poem. He pretended to be Aaron and a friend of his pretended to be Penelope, but only to win the date, not to ruin my life. Sylvie fed Hatcher with other details, like my sacking and my lies about Date #1, to pad out the Herald piece. She even sent an email from my account asking them not to print the exposé. If she was going to frame me for kidnapping Miles, she needed the police to believe that I knew the article was coming, giving me a motive.
Sylvie also used my email address to invite Miles to Gladstone Park after Date #5, and she asked him to bring his car.
In the coffee shop at Gladstone, Miles had only wanted to warn me the exposé was coming. He was sorry for what he was about to do to me.
A few days after I left the notepad on his hospital bedside, he emailed me, thanking me. He wants to meet me to do so in person, but I am not ready. As much as he’s helped me clear my name in the last few months, he isn’t Aaron any more, and I am not the person I was on Date #4 any more either. Sylvie is in her prison, and I am in mine. I’m not ready to open myself again.
When he had published his pieces, Miles sent me back the notepad. I’m writing this in it now. This will be the last thing I ever write in this notepad, and then I will destroy it. I don’t need it any more. It has served its purpose.
Sylvie is where she belongs. Had I squeezed her neck for a few more seconds, she would be the victim. Michael saved me. And then I suppose I saved him. He’s kept his silence and his distance. Sylvie has broken us. It will take time to heal.
I didn’t know she felt that way about Michael. I didn’t realise I’d stolen him from her. The first night I met him, she introduced us. I thought she was playing Cupid. I thought we had her blessing. All those times she defended me in front of his lawyer friends – it was all an act. She bided her time until the right moment to strike. I was so hung up on Jessica I didn’t see it. ‘Beware the ex. Bitch.’ Jessica only wanted to pass on some sisterly advice.
Sylvie drugged me on my first night out with Michael’s friends. She got me sacked from my job. She tore Michael and I apart. She sabotaged my future marriage and my career. Even with her in prison, I don’t quite feel like the victor.
Three months on from my escape from the Gaumont, I still don’t really sleep. There have been too many different beds. I lie awake and wonder if I deserved what Sylvie did to me. All those lies. Five Parks was her idea. I took it from her. I wish I could go back and change what I did. And Johnny was her ex-boyfriend. I knew she liked him, but I thought it was a casual thing. I didn’t know it would hurt her so much. I used him. She liked him, but he was infatuated with her. To get him to come to Date #1 in Queen’s Park, I lied. I told him Sylvie would be there. When he arrived to find me alone, and I explained the truth behind Five Parks, he stormed off. And she was watching. Sylvie was on every date with me. She saw everything.
I didn’t go to court for her sentencing. I didn’t want to be one of those victims on the steps outside the courthouse, reading a statement. I didn’t want to be a victim any more.
Sometimes, in the little snatches of sleep I do have, I’m back in that room. But in my dreams it’s always brighter than the dark reality. I can see everything. The dream is always the same. I’m chained to the bed, but somehow I’m still controlling the laptop, even though it’s on the other side of the room, welded to the table. I flick my fingers in stale air above the mattress and the words magically appear on the faraway screen. But they’re too small to read. I can never understand what I’m writing. And yet I keep tapping away into nothingness.
The dream frustrates, but it trumps the memories. That oily darkness, so black it’s blinding, and the stench of my own urine – that was my reality.
I’m back in the glare now, but sometimes I find it too bright. However much I detested the blackness, it helped me think. I wanted to be wrong. Even when my hands were around Sylvie’s throat on the bench in Gladstone Park, I wanted it all to be some gigantic mistake I’d made. I lost my best friend. I miss her.
49
Date #6: Guess who’s back in the park
Posted by Suzanne
Saturday, December 10, 2016
I lied from the start. I told you I wasn’t the blogger you thought I was.
When I started Five Parks in the summer, I couldn’t have imagined the journey it would take me on. It still amazes me that I came out the other end alive.
Five Parks may be dead, but I am back with a new blog, TheSixthDate.com, and this is my first – and perhaps my last – post. I don’t know yet.
The spirit of Five Parks lives on, because it was always my intention to have a Date #6. Perhaps I didn’t lie; I just didn’t tell you. The plan was to choose the Five Parks date who floated my boat the most and take him on another day out. A formal coronation of the Five Parks King, if you like.
But here’s something I’ve learned over the past year; things don’t work out according to plan. So instead of choosing from that quintet of suitors, it is I who have been chosen.
One of the men in my life got in touch in the past few days with a question: would I give him a second chance? Date #6 is my way of saying yes. As someone who is going to need a few second chances of her own over the next few months, I could appreciate his request.
And that is why I am back on a bench in a park in London, waiting for my date.
I’ve changed. I’ve dropped the act. I don’t need to worry about being fashionably late any more – I just need to be here. I am early. So I thought I’d get a head start and type this blog post into my phone. And before you all get angry at me, Date #6 said he wants me to blog about our meeting.
But I don’t know if I’m quite ready. Maybe if he shows up, I’ll make a decision. He asked me for a second chance, but it is really him who is giving me another bite.
I did Five Parks for me. I did it to find my own slice of happiness. I did it to find a man who I could love and might love me back. That all sounds as corny now as it did then, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.
London has changed too. Back to the way it was. There is snow on the ground and a refreshing chill in the air. A pair of rowdy toddlers in puffy jackets and mittens shake frostbites from the dormant branches of a nearby tree. The sun has pulled a shade over its face, turning it a blushing pink. Snow-speckled dogs race past my feet and down into a white wood. When they go in, something else comes out. Ruffled and duffled, suited and booted, he has come prepared for the weather.
Worried I won’t recognise him in this winter haze, he pulls back his hood and waves a thick glove in my direction. But I knew it was him. I knew by his stride, even if it is tempered by his heavy blue Wellingtons and the steep incline of the unsalted path. He is coming for me.
That means it’s time for me to go. Time for me to try to find what I wanted all along. Someone to share the day with, maybe more.
I will leave it at that for now, but who knows, if things go well, perhaps I will keep writing.
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Acknowledgements:
Five Parks would not exist without the encouragement of my agent, Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates. I also want to thank the team at Endeavour Press for bringing the book to life. There are a number of fellow journalists whose support was invaluable during the writing of Five Parks, even if they didn’t realise it - thank you Simon, Emma and Yvette at Metro and Simon and Chris at Yahoo. I must mention David, Gareth, Luke, Markham and the other Ross simply because they like being mentioned. A special thanks to Léon and Jane for spending the past twenty years asking me when I was going to get round to finally writing a book. And before that, my parents for reading everything I scribbled in a jotter and Mr C and Mrs C (no relation) for inspiring me to write anything at all. Finally, I want to thank my wife, who made this book happen.
About the Author
Ross McGuinness is a journalist. He has written for Metro, Yahoo, The Guardian and the BBC. He lives in London. He can be found on Twitter at @McGuinnessRoss.
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