by Naomi Joy
Let her die. Who gives a fuck.
Blocked. Only real followers of Emelia to reply. Have some respect.
No, we should, she might not have done it yet. There might still be time.
She did it in the middle of the night. She was hoping no one would be online, that everyone would be asleep and wouldn’t care that her life was about to end.
I’ve called the police. They said lots of other people have called too. They said they get more and more of these calls nowadays. People love writing public suicide notes. Does anyone know anything about Emelia that might help the police?
This is a mess. How are we ever going to find her? She specifically wrote her blog without real names! Shall we go to the papers?
I have a friend at the Evening Times. I’ll call.
I’ve contacted the Royal Marsden to ask if there’s anyone who could be Emelia receiving treatment there. Don’t worry, gang, we’ll find her!
She’s been through so much already. I hope we’re not too late.
1
The truth is never black and white.
You cannot say that what he did was right and what she did was wrong. There will always be reasons, caveats, motivations, justifications. Always. For example, a murderer is never a murderer by chance: they are made that way, young brains violated and sculpted into those of a killer; so wronged by others that they seek retribution; those struggling to survive so acutely that their survival eclipses all morality.
Let’s put this in perspective, shall we, before you turn against me. I did not kill anyone. Nobody died except an online character, a persona that never really existed.
All I did was tell a lie.
I never had cancer.
See, that wasn’t so hard to admit.
And don’t think I didn’t have my reasons. If you stay with me – despicable though I’m certain you find me now – you’ll realise why.
The truth is never black and white. And neither was my lie.
2
Newcastle
I lace my trainers, deft fingers looping bows, pulling them tight, this ritual well-rehearsed and oft-performed. Something you don’t know about me is that I love to run, I always have, I hope that I always will. I find that it clears my mind, focuses my thoughts, clarifies situations that previously seemed impossible to decode.
I move out into the wind, my gait strong as I strike the cobbled streets on the outskirts of Newcastle, a quiet morning punctuated with the occasional shriek from an over-tired child. My pace is stable, steady. My limbs are thin, svelte, though they could be thinner. I calm my mind, block out those thoughts, just the breeze cooling my skin. I up the pace, my blood rushing with adrenaline and endorphins, dopamine wriggling into the dark corners of my mind, the places I don’t like to visit very often, the side of me that makes me capable of writing and lying about cancers I never had. I pound my feet, faster, into the tarmac, running from it, from the karma that will inevitably hit when I am struck down by the disease in a few years myself: the Universe exacting her own satisfying brand of justice.
If you think I don’t feel guilty about what I have done you are wrong.
I settle into a rhythm, the early strains and pains dissipating, my brain flooding now with that familiar feeling of tunnel focus, recanting where I am, replaying it all, making sense of how I got here.
I’d always assumed it would be the cancer that would kill Emelia. I had it all planned out: Emelia, Anthony’s long suffering wife with the world’s worst luck, decaying in a hospice, would fall for the doctor treating her.
She would find out days from the end that the baby wasn’t Anthony’s after all, that Mishti had lied to him and that now, after everything he’d already put Emelia through, he wanted to reconcile.
They would reunite on Emelia’s last day on earth and she would finally have her say. She’d tell him she knew about everything he’d done – the poison, the truth about his exes, the cheating, the baby, everything – and he’d be led away in handcuffs by the police, but not before she could tell him she was planning to marry the doctor: the real love of her life.
‘She,’ she’d tell Anthony’s shocked face, ‘is remarkable.’
The doctor and Emelia would tie the knot that day, then, four hours later she would pass away. The doctor would write the final entry of Emelia’s blog, professing her love for Emelia, undying though she is dead.
I turn away from the grey of the city and find a new rhythm in the fields that sit just beyond its urban landscape, grass whisking against my ankles. I think back to the moment when everything changed. Now that you know the cancer isn’t real you’re probably assuming that nothing was. That isn’t the case, not really. Trust me – if you still can.
Let me tell you about me.
My name is Holly Madison. I was Anthony’s girlfriend for a year, six months of which I spent in hospital trying to recover from what he did to me. At this point, I should probably remind you that Anthony isn’t his real name, like I said at the beginning of Emelia’s blog, I changed most people’s names for the sake of anonymity – I didn’t want to get caught. Anthony’s real name is Adam. Mishti’s real name is Mishita. Emelia, though, Emelia is real.
Growing up, I suffered with eating disorders. Anorexia, mainly, a desire to control what went in my body when everything else was falling apart. My parents were always on the move, my sister and I forced to live with random relatives for long stretches of time, or in professional care. I went to more schools than I can remember, could never forge any lasting friendships – there was no point, we’d always move. The anorexia started when I hit puberty and my family didn’t notice, or didn’t want to notice, until I was in my late teens. I fainted in a biology lesson in front of a group of faces I didn’t know, the teacher called an ambulance and, once I was in the care system, they didn’t let me go.
I met Adam at a self-help group when I was twenty-nine. On the ward, where I’d spent most of my twenties, a lot of the girls would die, so counselling sessions were regular and non-negotiable. Adam was there mourning the loss of his ex-girlfriend. He’d told the group she’d taken her own life, that the girl before her had done the same. Initially, I’d felt terrible for him, but I should have known better. Looking back, those types of places were probably familiar hunting grounds. The grief I thought he was going through brought us close, my disease brought us closer, and I moved in with him after a few short months of dating. My condition improved, for a little while, while we were happy, and we’d talk about getting married, but it wasn’t to be. I worked out pretty quickly that Adam was poisoning my food. I stopped eating and Adam acted fast to have me sectioned, then sent back to the hospital he’d plucked me from. He didn’t know I was onto him: he only wanted me to recover so he could make me sick again. Once I’d worked that out, I forced myself to become so ill that the doctors had no choice but to tell Adam it was unlikely I’d ever get better. The gamble paid off, and he began to grow distant. As soon he knew he wouldn’t be able to care for me again, he cast me aside, ignored all correspondence from the hospital, and began a love affair with a new victim. It was perfect: it gave me a window of opportunity to act. I stopped refusing the help of the hospital staff, I reached my goal weight and I was discharged. Adam was none the wiser. He was in Egypt, midway through convincing Emelia she was the love of his life. It was lucky, really, that he never went back to ask what had become of me because if he had, I’m sure one of the nurses would have breached data protection to tell him that my new address was a small studio apartment a stone’s throw away from where we used to live together. A dingy, ramshackle place, with one redeeming feature: a big front window with a picture-perfect view into his living room.
Those early days were exhilarating, the thrill of meeting the new me, of finding out all about her – Emelia Thompson, the journalist with a life limiting heart defect. I started off watching her from Regent’s Park in the spot Adam and I used to sit in then, when that wasn’t enough any more, I used
the key I still had – Adam never changed the locks, didn’t assume I was alive to take one – and snuck into my old flat when they were out. I’d read her diaries, listen to her messages, lie in her bed, use her shower, her towels, eat her food.
I’d read that they’d met on a dig site – she was a historian like him – and he’d proposed with a gigantic necklace taken illegally from the dig. And, though we were different, there were so many similarities. I’d read all about their first date at Casa Maria – where Adam and I had our first date, too – I’d read about the awful rehearsal dinner Emelia had endured. Her recollections reminded me of my own experiences of meeting Adam’s college friends, the derision from Heather, jokes at my expense. I started to feel for her, more and more, started to connect, our lives beginning to blur.
I knew what would happen in the end, because though I was chronicling Emelia’s life in the blog, I was writing about my own too, in a way. He was going to kill her and, as I got to know Emelia, the more I feared what was still to come. I left notes for her at first, I just wanted to warn her, you know?
By the time they got married I was desperate. I turned up that day – I’m not sure what I was thinking – full of urgency. Adam looked like he’d seen a ghost – I suppose he had – and the anger in his face, the way he’d gripped my neck so tightly had sent me back into hiding. I couldn’t risk him coming after me, he’d kill me if he ever saw me again.
I kept my distance, I was careful, then, after a while, I started following her. I couldn’t help myself. I changed my appearance as much as possible. Emelia and I looked very similar so I dyed my hair blonde, chopped it so it was spiky, and I stopped wearing make-up. At first I just followed her to yoga, she never realised I was in that class with her and Mishita. Then to the brunch place they loved, where I’d mimic Emelia’s exact order from across the restaurant.
From the outside, they seemed broadly happy, and yet, she was losing weight – I could see it. She was failing and faltering just as I had, her clothes hanging loose, our lives running in this unnerving parallel as she spent more time at home and less time doing what she loved. I upped the ante. I took a big risk and spent a day in their apartment, while Adam was at work and Emelia was with her parents, hooking up their place with cameras and microphones so I could hear what was going on, so I could use what I found as evidence. I pored over the diaries I found under her bed. He’s poisoning everything, my entire world, she’d write, and I knew I had to do more. I remembered what happened to me when I’d tried to leave Adam, when I’d fought against his plans to send me back to hospital – there’d been a short struggle and I’d hit my head on the console table on my way out of the flat and, though it was a blur, I know he’d pulled me back into the bedroom like a corpse and left me to sleep on the floor overnight.
I sent the autopsies of Adam’s ex-girlfriends to Emelia – they were public records – and planted a seed I knew she couldn’t ignore. At this point, she stopped writing her diaries – I think she was too ill – so I had to fill in the gaps from what I could make out on the camera. Heather would turn up at their house and I’d remember what happened when it was me in that apartment, in that world, rather than Emelia.
Later, everything crumbled, Emelia was taken to the Elizabeth Anderson hospital and I found out that she had cancer. My old room, in which I’d lain dying a few months ago, was just a few corridors away. In the blog, Emelia sees Holly die, or at least she thinks she does, which was important because I did die on that ward. Every moment since I left has been dedicated to becoming Emelia, to trying to help her, to save her.
So you can see, can’t you, why it is not correct to say that I lied, that I am not her, because I am.
When she was discharged, I joined the same support meetings she went to – I infiltrated the group as a woman called Annette in a bushy wig and court shoes. I attended the auction as a cancer victim with a bald head and thin lips. I followed her to chemo so she wouldn’t be alone, and so I could write about it.
One night, from the studio I’ve called home ever since I left hospital, I watched Adam bring Mishita into the flat whilst Emelia was recovering at her parents’ house following a gruelling bout of radiotherapy. I watched him cheat, I watched them have sex, I watched them laugh over a split condom that ended up in her pregnancy. I knew Mishita was Emelia’s friend, I’d followed their entire relationship, I read about the secrets they’d shared in her diary. I couldn’t believe the betrayal. I took a photo with the cameras I’d installed and left it for Emelia in the flat. She deserved to know.
I watched her world collapse on-screen, watched her pack her things and leave. I thought she’d come back but she never did. There was no grand exit, no huge explosion, just a fizzling out – as if she’d never been there at all. Just as I’d been erased, so had she. I felt angry, so I made up my own version of events of what happened that day, followed Adam and Mishita shopping, then went to the flat and tipped it upside down, scrawled ‘murderer’ in greasy script across his kitchen island. Emelia deserved for someone to be angry on her behalf, he couldn’t just get away with cheating on her like that.
When she was gone and Mishita began to replace her in the cameras, I felt bereft. This woman who I’d spent so much time studying, had vanished. Part of me wished I hadn’t told her about Mishita. I started to fill in the gaps more and more. I lived as Emelia, then. What would she be thinking? What would she do next? I imagined she’d want justice, revenge, to have Anthony pay for the things he had done to her and to those before. I wrote an entry in which she killed him, poisoned him, and he died, but Emelia wasn’t really like that so I deleted it. Instead, I decided, I would sneak into his flat and get him back for what he did to me. I laced his food with Antriptophene. It was poetic.
But with Emelia gone I knew the blog had to end. It wasn’t right that the story was continuing without her being part of it and, to me at least, it had felt as though she’d died. I wrote her suicide. She’d escaped from Adam, there was no reason for me to interfere any more, and I did not care what happened to Mishita. Plus, there was one other reason why I wrote her end this way. I hoped it would spark a response. Adam can’t keep getting away with this.
I want him to be unmasked for who he really is. I want him to pay. I want the authorities to re-open the investigations into his ex-girlfriend’s death, I want him to be charged for his attempted murder of me, and for what he did to Emelia. I want him to go to jail for a really long time.
I know that Emelia won’t mind when she finds out. Despite the fact that she replaced me, we are sisters, bound together by the same despicable, evil, monstrous man.
And because her story is public, the internet will find him. He will be caught.
I stare out across the countryside and wonder how long it will take. I hope Emelia will be happy, in the end, that I have given her this gift. Her mother certainly will be. Her story’s about to hit national news, and not just in the weeklies she regularly rants about her tragic life to.
I make my way back to the hotel I’m staying in for the time being and make a decision. Tonight, I want to celebrate. Tonight, I just want to be myself.
3
Holly
I wake up in a strange place and for one brief and blissful moment I do not care where I am, who I am, or how I came to be here. Then I hear an unfamiliar voice, a man’s, and the moment passes.
I open my eyes.
It is clear I have spent the night on these crusty sheets. I lie underneath a patterned ceiling and am surrounded by puce coloured walls, a faint odour of cigarette smoke clinging to my hair. The man’s voice sounds out again. At first I think he is Adam, that the sound of him through my laptop has woken me up, but as my eyes fall on him I remember that I have left that life behind. That I no longer live in the sad studio with a screen into a life that isn’t mine.
A dressing gown hangs off his bony shoulders and he is hunched over a cigarette, trying to light it. A pair of dark jeans and a faded blue T-shirt ha
ng over the back of a chair in the corner of the room. An alarm clock with a devil-red display glares behind an empty water glass on a beat up bedside table. Five a.m.
The room begins to feel more familiar. I remember coming back here last night.
The man in the corner takes a staggered intake of breath as he sucks in a lungful of cigarette smoke. Those things will give you cancer, I think. I squint my eyes in the dark and take his body in, illuminated only by the burning glow of its stub.
He’s flabby round the middle but thin on top; his hair is dark, flecked with grey. His fingers are wrapped round that toxic stick, eyes closed in relief.
I swallow the groan I want to let out.
I close my eyes again and rack my brains. What had I told him about myself last night? Who had I been?
Sometimes I forget, you see.
He swings round in the near dark and I see that he is naked beneath his dressing gown. His chest hair is sparse, his stomach descends into a single roll of blubber around his hips and his penis is dark brown and weathered, hidden beneath a tangle of barbed-wire hairs.
I should be ashamed of myself.
I am ashamed of myself, of what I’ve done, of lying to thousands of people online about a story that wasn’t mine. I suppose that is why I am here. To try and forget.
I lie as still as I can and summon the memories of last night. I remember we’d been at a bar, the kind that young people avoid, somewhere in central Newcastle. I’d been celebrating – happy, loud, squawky, not myself at all. I’d been wasted, maybe worse than wasted. We’d staggered back here, my body leant against his, determination across his face. I recall flashes of the patterns on the ceiling, but I don’t remember having sex with him. As I try to relive it, to imagine that body on top of me, my memory blanks.