by Naomi Joy
A woman with dark hair snakes her arm round his shoulders and ushers him back inside so he doesn’t take the bait. I spot Mishita and baby Eva in the hallway beyond and, lightning quick, a thought occurs to me. Eva is Adam’s daughter. There’s something in the curl of her hair and the look in her eyes that tells me. He’s been sleeping with Mishita for at least his and Emelia’s entire relationship, if not before, if not during mine. Did Damien find out? Is that why he left? Always travelling, never at home.
The women behind me fire up their conversation again.
‘Do you believe him?’
‘He looks furious, doesn’t he?’
‘I think that he killed her. He doesn’t give a shit about her, like, she has cancer and he’s come out firing. He was cheating on her, he had a motive to get rid of her. He didn’t even deny it. She wasn’t lying about that.’
My smile returns as I realise his words haven’t stuck, that this press conference has done him more harm than good.
‘Have you read the blog?’
‘Not all of it… I’m dying to now, though– open it up, won’t you?’
They squeal in delight as they delve into the pages of Emelia’s life. My phone shakes in my pocket and I look down as a new notification appears on my screen:
ANTHONY LYON UNMASKED: ADAM LONG, HUSBAND OF MISSING BLOGGER EMELIA THOMPSON BREAKS HIS SILENCE TO GIVE A DETAILED STATEMENT. WHO DO YOU BELIEVE?
7
Emelia
I don’t bother with the shopping. I race back to my parents’ house, legs burning, lungs on fire, ignoring my dad’s questions as I slam the front door shut, heart beating out of my chest. What’s wrong? Did you get the milk? Had they run out? What’s the rush?
I grab my computer and I type in my name.
Emelia Thompson.
Google responds immediately, and my face is fired back at me along with dozens of news articles, a press conference that Adam’s just given about me to do with some blog about my life that I haven’t written, that I’ve never seen before. I read that I have accused him of poisoning me, of giving me cancer. I think about the diaries I wrote, the vague comments I made about him ‘poisoning the world against me’. But I didn’t mean it literally: he just wanted to isolate me, wanted me for himself. He was controlling and cowardly, he used my weakness in ill health to find his strength. But he never tried to poison me. Who’s doing this? Could my diaries have been made public, somehow? Misconstrued? Who would do that?
My breath shudders and my head spins as I flick through the headlines, my fingers tracing double-quick over the keypad as I try to catch up with what is being said about me, about what I am supposed to have done. I dig into the blog in my name – oh my God – this person knows everything.
It’s Adam. He’s behind it. He must be. Though I can’t work out why.
I read the final entry. A suicide note. My death. I skim the comments beneath.
Hand yourself in. No one believes you’re dead.
I believe her – she was always so honest. Let her rest in peace.
We need to find her, though. We need her body.
If she’s not dead she can’t run forever.
What about him? Anthony? He’s the one who should be being questioned here!
Emelia Thompson has been found! A photograph, look at her, trying to hide her face! Trying to run!
8
Holly
I board the next train to the coast and already I start to feel better as it pulls out of the station and my journey away from Liverpool begins. I feel best when I’m on the run. That’s what I do: run. It’s what I’ve always done.
I pick up a discarded newspaper from a nearby seat and open it to read the latest developments in my case. It is something I should have seen coming: Cancer Research have released a statement to say they haven’t received any donations from Emelia’s blog. The plot thickens, the journalist writes, then goes on to accuse Emelia of fraud, suggesting to the public that she may never have been ill in the first place, that she’d fooled everyone with her diagnosis, including Adam.
I close the paper, unable to read any more. This is all such a mess and my neck aches with the weight of it all. I watch the rain start to fall outside. I just want Adam to pay – I don’t want to drag Emelia through the dirt in the process. I think back to their wedding day, to the look on her face when I’d barged in, making it clear she wanted nothing to do with me. If she finds out the lengths I’ve gone to, how obsessed I became, she will wish me dead. She will never forgive me.
Huge droplets smack against the windows of the carriages as we gain speed, attaching like limpets then losing their grip and streaking across the glass, covering it in their glistening trails. In the distance, the bright lights of the station diminish and, as the darkness grows, I close my eyes.
I should have given some money to Cancer Research, I think, as I drift off. Keeping it all for myself had been a big mistake. A terrible oversight.
Eventually, I arrive at the final stop, Blackpool, and I shiver and shake as I walk through the cold and driving rain to a crummy guest house with brown windows and flaky paintwork on the seafront.
I stand before it now, almost embarrassed to walk through the door. There is a short flight of stairs up to it and a stained – once white – picket fence separating it from the main road. There is a patch of gravel and empty plant pots either side of the entrance, a bay window with sticky black tape over one of the smashed panes.
I open the front door and walk into the musty hallway. An oval mirror before me reveals that the wind has whipped my wig into an unkempt mess and that the rain has soaked my clothes to see-through. I tear my eyes away from my sorry reflection and look down the hallway. A door is open at the end and from behind it come the smells and sounds of a busy restaurant. A reception desk sits opposite. I move towards it and follow instructions to ring the bell if no one is on duty. For a while nothing happens, then an elderly woman appears. She is frumpy, a moth-bitten cardigan hanging off her shoulders and she looks annoyed with me for following the instructions to ring the bell.
‘Have you booked?’ she asks abruptly in a harsh accent.
‘No,’ I say, wiping away the incessant drip of rainwater that’s running enthusiastically down my nose.
She makes an exasperated noise and clunks a book on top of the desk. I look around stealthily as she flicks the pages, licking her index finger noisily in between each, using her spit to grip the next sheet along. Inside this place isn’t much better than out; the wallpaper is torn up and marked in various places and the carpet is faded in a perfect line down the middle where scores of patrons have dragged their suitcases along it.
‘You’re lucky. I have a room. Twenty pounds for the night,’ she says, her eyes fixed on me through a pair of spectacles attached to a chain. I imagine their usual resting position is atop her ample bosom.
I hand over the cash.
‘Name?’ she asks.
I hesitate.
‘ID?’
‘I don’t have any on me, sorry.’
She huffs and shrugs her shoulders, goes through the dilemma in her head, then, with twenty quid in her hand already, decides she doesn’t care that much and hands me a key to room six. I head up the stairs, past the four bedrooms on the first floor and up a further flight of stairs to the second.
I open the door. The room is cramped and oddly shaped but not unpleasant. There is a window at the far end with a view of the sea, a nice touch, and a lamp in the corner that picks out the outline of a double bed, a table, an armchair and a wardrobe. I lock the door behind me, put my bag down and sit at the foot of the bed looking out at the grey sea swirling beyond. I wonder if I should kill myself like fake Emelia did. I contemplate that it would be a poetic thing to do. It would certainly change the narrative, then the media would say, ‘Troubled blogger slips through the UK’s mental health safety net,’ or: ‘Online witch hunt sends blogger to the death she had prophesied.’
I look o
ut at the raging sea water from the window and imagine myself walking out in it, try to envisage what it would feel like to wade out there fully-clothed, the smell and taste of saltwater, the icy feel of the waves slapping against my cheeks as I stand up to my neck in it, trying to keep my head above the water.
I switch on the box in the corner of the room, flicking through the channels, my heart skipping a beat as his face appears. Adam. Then hers. Emelia.
I shuffle forwards. This is my worst nightmare; they’ve worked out I’m behind it and now she’s on a show alongside him.
She can’t have forgiven him, surely.
I crawl closer to their faces, my eyes on stilts as I stare, unblinking.
Adam speaks first, sitting on the bright blue sofa of a fluffy daytime television show trying to convince the presenters, and the public, of his innocence. He has lost some weight and his cheeks are sharper and more angular than usual, his navy shirt hanging loose from his shoulders.
He speaks, his voice wobbling.
‘The allegations that Emelia made against me are abhorrent. She was, and is, so dear to me.’
He’s changing tack, I see, coming out swinging against a dying girl who people thought he was trying to kill wasn’t the right call. I wonder if he’d fired his lawyer. I stare into his sad face. Not so smug now you’ve been caught, are you?
‘You know, I’m glad I have the opportunity to speak to her today, to ask her why she wanted to frame me for something I didn’t do, to ask her why she resorted to poisoning me with rat-killer. I keep thinking, was she really that unhappy? Was I really that cruel? Maybe I was.’
The female presenter with bush baby eyes cuts in and sits on the edge of her seat. ‘Emelia, do you want to reply?’
Emelia hasn’t looked up at the camera yet, or at him, but she does now, raising her voice, finding her strength.
‘I want to start by saying that I did not write this blog and, though I know that’s hard to believe given the detail that’s in it, I want to try and put things right.’ She takes a deep breath, she’s thinner, I wonder how long she has left. ‘What people are saying about me is cruel and twisted and confusing. I have cancer, lots of people are accusing me of lying about that, but it’s true. I raised money for Cancer Research, I have the bank statements to prove that I sent them the funds as soon as I received them. I don’t know anything about the donations that were sent to the blog. This is the only bank account I have – and the police are digging into it now, but because the donations were sent via an American payment provider it’s taking a long time to get the information we need.’ She pauses. ‘I also want to make it clear, from my perspective, that I didn’t believe Adam was ever poisoning me. I don’t believe he planted things in my food to make me sick. I was ill long before we met and, though he wasn’t the model husband – far from it – he didn’t do that.’
He wasn’t poisoning her?
‘The only thing I can recall is that I kept diaries where I’d write things about Adam poisoning my mind, I’d find evidence that other women had been in our house and he’d make me think I was going crazy – I think whoever wrote the blog had read my diary and wanted to make something big out of a couple of offhand comments about the more difficult days in our relationship.’
I got it wrong?
‘Who wrote the blog, then, Emelia, if you didn’t?’ asks the presenter.
‘I think he did it,’ Emelia replies, stone cold.
Adam looks stunned. She is such a fighter. I’ve always loved Emelia. It should never have been me behind the blog – she would have done it so much better.
‘I didn’t write a single word of that blog, Emelia, you know that. What would I have to gain from incriminating myself? It’s preposterous!’
‘You did it because you’re in debt. Because your parents have cut you off from their trust fund. It’s the only reason why you’re with Mishita – for her money.’
Emelia hands the presenter a wedge of bills, all with final notice warnings at the top.
The female presenter leans back, wild eyed.
‘I – I, err, I don’t think this is what we should be focusing on here,’ Adam stutters, trying to swerve the gunfire.
Emelia sighs from her seat then gets up. ‘You loved me, but you were in debt, and you had to plan a life for when I’d no longer be around. It makes so much sense now that I know. I hope Mishita is prepared for the truth. She’s just a bank balance to you, nothing more, and so were those people online, the ones you tricked by pretending to be me.’
His hands pulse in his lap. He’s scared.
Emelia stands up, her pale skin bright in the studio lights.
‘You know, I’m not sitting here any longer, with him. He’s already ruined my life enough. Let him have his fame if that’s what he wants. You make me sick,’ she says furiously, then leaves.
‘Quite the allegation,’ the female presenter says after a long beat of silence, barely able to contain her excitement, her eyes looking Adam up and down. ‘She’s accusing you of fraud, Adam, of being behind this deception the entire time, how do you respond to that?’
He looks at the floor and grabs a tissue from the pack on the studio table.
‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,’ he whimpers, then leaves.
9
Holly
I sit, arms wrapped round knees, glued to the updates on the TV. I haven’t let housekeeping staff inside my room since I checked in and the towels in the bathroom are growing musty, the air damp. Facebook tells me my parents are setting off to the Great Barrier Reef today for a two-week vacation. You’d think they were gap year kids the way they’re living out their retirement. If only they knew how chaotic things were for their daughter on the other side of the world. Not that I’d want them to fly back to help me. I’ve always looked after myself, I don’t need anyone else.
I turn my attention back to the TV set – adverts over, a lurid daytime show I’ve become rather too fond of broadcasts the latest developments in Emelia’s case.
The first thing I see is her face, then the over-drawn eyebrows of the female presenter.
‘Emelia Thompson has been sensationally arrested this morning at her parents’ home for a number of charges brought by her ex-husband, Adam Long.’
My heart thuds. Arrested?
‘We have a few updates on the case, thanks to sources close to the investigation speaking up.’
‘The first is theft. As she openly admitted, Emelia stole an artefact from Adam’s work collection – a Roman necklace that she went on to auction without his consent, or indeed, the collector’s. It was simply not hers to sell. Adam maintains that he never knew about the necklace, and certainly didn’t propose to Emelia with it.’
Liar.
‘The second charge is defamation of character. The third is fraud. Cancer Research have released a statement to say that, though the money from the auction came to them, all the funds raised via Emelia’s blog are unaccounted for. The police have traced the donations platform to a bank account in her name and that’s enough to arrest her.’
I struggle to believe what I’m hearing, and my mind runs laps as I try to figure out what to do next. Shit. She’s going to go to jail because of what I have done to her. I fume at the TV.
‘Despite these explosive claims, Adam’s detractors remain steadfast: Why is he not being investigated for the claims Emelia made in the blog? And, though that’s an interesting angle, Emelia’s arrest this morning tells us that the police have enough evidence to charge her and not enough evidence to charge him. There’s more to her story than she’s letting on.’
I hug my legs tighter to my chest as I gape, increasingly concerned, at the rolling footage of Emelia being led into police custody. Her head is shiny and her make-up unkempt. She looks like she hasn’t had a shower since all this started and guilt consumes me, crawls up my back and squeezes round my conscience. What have I done to her?
I watch, transfixed, as her head jerks upward
s and she pleads to the cameras.
‘Help me.’
Her voice cracks and she stumbles to the floor. Two policemen catch her, then lead her roughly inside the concrete building behind.
My mind races as I think about what the police will ask her. I imagine her sitting, dumbfounded, elbows resting on a small metal table, a cup of black coffee beside her, a burly officer shouting across the table.
You were wrong about Adam. He didn’t set up this blog, you did. Of course you did. You pretended to raise money for Cancer Research, but the truth is you kept the majority for yourself. You lied for attention, for money, and to make yourself feel better. Your illness is not an excuse.
A knock at the door jolts me back to the present and I panic, flinging myself from my position on the floor to the bathroom. The rat-a-tat-tat sounds again and I twist the chrome lock shut, breath coming fast, furious images of police crashing through the door playing fast in my imagination.
‘Housekeeping.’
Oh, thank God.
‘No, not this morning, thank you!’ I shout, tense, listening for the roll a trolley being pushed away. I wonder how much longer I have here before the staff start getting suspicious.
Everything is running away from me, I am completely out of control, I have ruined Emelia even though all I wanted was to save her. I just need something, anything, to help slow things down.
How am I ever going to fix this?
10
Holly
The ticker at the bottom of the screen changes and I lean forward to get a better look.
BREAKING: MOTHER OF DISGRACED BLOGGER TO GIVE PRESS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING ARREST.
The screen shoots back to the studio and a female news presenter with neat blonde hair and smart burgundy blazer announces Emelia’s mother is due in front of the world’s cameras. My breath catches in my throat.
The next thing I see is a room full of reporters and cameras. I pause the picture to take it all in: white paper blinds pulled shut over the windows, a blue patterned carpet, the London police logo on a screen behind a white table decorated with microphones, two chairs tucked in behind. That is where she will sit, on one of those plastic topped seats. Like a schoolchild. There is a certain buzz in the room – this is no ordinary press conference, and this is no ordinary story – and the journalists are lively, talkative.