by Naomi Joy
‘Adam killed those girls.’
The presenter looks at me askew, then continues. ‘But he says his unfortunate track-record is only because he’s drawn to helping people. He says he’s dedicated his life to it. And, you know, his story somewhat checks out: he’s donated huge sums to charities across the world, and was his own mother’s full-time carer growing up. He says his exes have only died in his care because they were sick to begin with. Nothing more and nothing less.’
I bite my tongue.
‘In fact,’ the presenter says, her tone shifting, about to drop a bomb. ‘Adam believes you broke into his house – using the key you’d kept against his knowledge – and poisoned Emelia’s food. He believes you are the real villain of this blog, that you played the parts of Adam and Emelia. He says you couldn’t handle the break-up, so you created a web of deceit that would see him punished for crimes you committed.’
‘What happened to Emelia, happened to me, is he suggesting I poisoned us both?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what Adam’s alleging. And, you know, correlation doesn’t equal causation, Holly, you must realise that. You didn’t really know what was going on in their lives. You keep saying “what happened to Emelia, happened to me” but you just imprinted your own experiences onto her. You never actually spoke to Emelia, did you?’
‘No, but,’ I stutter, trying to claw this back, ‘I suffered at his hands, and I know that she did too.’
‘You don’t know that, Holly, and Emelia herself wants nothing to do with you – she says she’s been through enough.’
I sit still. I’ve done so much for Emelia, I tried to save her life, and this is how she repays me.
‘You were jealous of her, weren’t you? You’ve known the power of illness your whole life; that’s what started your eating disorder. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d spent your life dedicated to fooling people into believing you’re sick.’
I have nothing to say.
‘It just so happened that Emelia had a double set of ailments you were particularly jealous of: a heart defect and cancer. No wonder you couldn’t resist.’
‘I–’ ‘Do you believe the donations you received were legitimate?’
I shake my head, worried now. I imagine the ticker at the bottom of the screen changing with his allegation quoted as fact. Holly Madison accused of poisoning Emelia Thompson.
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘I just wanted to help Emelia. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
‘You’re lying, Holly.’ She shifts, leans closer. ‘Stop crying wolf, stop making yourself out to be the victim. You were seduced by the sympathy you got from your followers from your previous lies and that’s why you did what you did. Is that why you can’t stop lying?’
‘I’m not,’ I say, tears lapping at my eyes.
‘It’s been suggested you are suffering from Munchausen by Internet. Do you think you are?’
‘No.’
‘Do you accept that you are a pathological liar?’
‘No.’
She throws to a new subject, knocking me off balance, turning this experience into a house of horrors rollercoaster, never knowing when her next screaming accusation will jump out from the shadows.
‘What do you say to people who are really suffering with cancer? Do you realise what a disservice you have done to them? You have taken away their credibility. Now they will be trolled and questioned online; they will not be able to garner the support that you have been able to enjoy because people won’t trust them any more.’
She’s got my back up. She hasn’t kept her side of the bargain to give me the chance to ‘atone’ and when I’m angry I can’t help but act on impulse.
‘Well, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. I was able to lie about who I was and get away with it. People should be aware of who they’re talking to on the internet.’
‘So it’s their fault for believing you?’ she interrupts, going for the jugular. ‘Unbelievable,’ she gasps, shaking her head. ‘That you would blame the people who gave you so much…’
I realise then that I’ve been too bold, that I needed to play this differently, but no one is in my corner and it’s difficult not to come out swinging when you’re being attacked from all angles. I understand why Emelia has stayed away.
‘You got everything from these people: support, attention, an income.’
She lets those words settle in, lets my silence incriminate me further.
‘Where’s the money?’ she barks. ‘Cancer Research haven’t seen any of it from your platform. None.’
‘I plan to send what I can to them in the future…’
‘Have you spent all the money? All ten thousand pounds gone, just like that?’
‘I spent it on rent, on food.’
The presenter rolls her eyes.
‘Will you wire your fee from this interview to the charity tonight?’
I hesitate. I wanted that money to buy my freedom, to get me out of here.
‘In fact, why wait for tonight? Let’s do it now, live.’
‘I need to make sure you actually pay me for this interview. I can’t give you what I—’
‘What do you say to Pauline Reece?’ she snaps. ‘Who is actually suffering from cancer and whose blog is now being inundated with hate mail.’
‘I understand that’s not nice. I get hate mail too and it’s horrible—’
‘Well, the difference is that you probably deserve it.’ She stares at me with dead eyes devoid of sympathy. She hates me.
‘Trolls are not my fault. You might think a lot of things are my fault, but trolls are not one of them, and listen, I just want to say this. My blog wasn’t all bad, my blog helped people too. And what’s wrong with adapted truth? People take comfort from so-called reality TV shows all the time and they aren’t real either. What’s the harm in a lie if it helps other people? It wasn’t all bad.’
‘You’re defending your lies now? You’re defending what you did?’
‘No, I’m just trying to give the other side. Everything you’re saying is so negative.’
‘You obviously thought you could get away with it. It’s clear you haven’t learnt anything.’
I stutter and I want to say more. I want to tell her that I have learnt from what I did, but she cuts me off and wraps up the interview before I have a chance to redeem myself. Someone removes my microphone and the presenter turns to the main camera and begins her outro.
‘For many, Emelia Thompson’s story was so convincing, and so tragic, that they parted with their hard-earned cash to support her. But she was exposed as someone else altogether: Holly Madison, a jealous ex of Emelia’s partner, Adam. Holly is a liar and a fraud and, as this interview has shown, it seems her preoccupation with invention is far from over. Will we ever know the truth about this woman? Will we ever know what drove her to commit such a blatant deceit? Is the rise of fake news to blame? Does anyone believe her story about being poisoned by Adam Long? Was she the one behind it all along? I suppose we may never know the answers. The only person who knows for sure is Holly, and, as she’s proven today, she simply can’t be trusted.’
Hot tears rush to my eyes but I try to cover them from the people in the studio.
‘On tomorrow night’s episode we will ask legal experts how far the law can go in prosecuting Holly for her deception. Should laws for committing crimes online be extended in the wake of this scandal? Join us at the same time tomorrow night to find out.’
The lights in the studio dim and the show’s theme tune plays, an off-air sign illuminating overhead.
‘Thanks,’ the interviewer says, then pulls her microphone from her top and walks off.
I sit back in the chair, utterly exhausted, sprayed with bullets, my credibility in tatters.
Five Years Later
Warm summer air surrounds me as I lie on a balcony in the sunny, picturesque village I’ve moved to in northern France. The sun drenches me in its ra
ys, the cool breeze a welcome relief.
You could say I’ve run away from my problems and I suppose that would be true, but no matter how far I travel from England the nightmare of what happened there still follows me.
First off, I paid everyone back. I sent the money I received from The Evening News show to Cancer Research and reimbursed the people who’d sent donations. But, unsurprisingly perhaps, the media stopped writing about me when I started doing the right thing.
After it was all over, I moved to France, to a village called Matignon. No one knew who I was, no one cared, and I have been free to start again. I live on a windy, cobbled street amongst other houses exactly like mine, built from granite with little blue balconies out front. There is a supermarket at the end of the road and a beach a short drive away. It would all be so perfect – it really would – if it weren’t so boring.
Truth be told, I’ve been thinking a lot about Emelia the past week. In real life she has passed away. It happened not long after the media storm and temporarily fired the whole story up again. Everyone had blamed me, of course, for hastening her demise. What no one pointed out was that Emelia died on Adam’s wedding day. He’d convinced Mishita to marry him, they’d stayed together for a couple of years – just long enough to make the divorce proceedings worth his while – and he’d taken her to the cleaners in court. He had money again, enough to keep him going until his parents died and he inherited the lot, probably.
He was evil. Even though he was found not-guilty for the murders of his ex-girlfriends I knew the truth. I’m sure if we’d ever had a chance to speak, Emelia would have admitted it too.
I often wonder what would have happened to her if I’d kept writing, if I’d continued Emelia’s story even though the ‘real’ her had left my life. What would have happened if she hadn’t jumped?
You know, I think she would have fought. I think she would have beaten the cancer. I think she would have married someone in the end, someone beautiful and compassionate, that they might even have had a baby together. And then, just when everything was perfect, then maybe, just maybe, the cancer would have come back.
I pull my laptop towards me. I feel like writing again.
My name is Emmeline. I am thirty-six years old and I have a degenerative disease with no known cure. I am a single mother to two young boys who will be orphaned within two years if a breakthrough in my treatment isn’t made. If you’d like to follow my story, learn more about my rare condition, or donate, the information is in the About Me section. Thank you for reading, I really appreciate your support. E x x x
About Munchausen by Internet
Munchausen by Internet is a relatively new phenomenon. It is described on Wikipedia as: A pattern of behaviour akin to Munchausen’s syndrome, a psychiatric disorder, wherein those affected feign disease, illness, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance for themselves. In Munchausen by Internet, users seek attention by feigning illnesses in online venues.
Reports of Munchausen by Internet first appeared in the 1990s due to the relative newness of internet communications, the pattern of behaviour identified in 1998 by psychiatrist Marc Feldman, who created the term Munchausen by Internet in the year 2000.
Notable cases of Munchausen by Internet
Debbie Swenson
Forty year old housewife Debbie pretended to be nineteen year old Kaycee Nicole online, a desperately ill woman battling leukaemia. In 2001, two years after the blog started, Kaycee ‘died’ of an aneurysm, shocking her readers and causing them intense grief. Soon, the truth was uncovered by a group of the blog’s followers who found the real Kaycee, a perfectly healthy American basketball player. After repeated questioning, Swenson admitted her fraud.
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Belle Gibson
Annabelle ‘Belle’ Gibson is an Australian blogger and alternative health advocate who fraudulently claimed to have donated significant income to charities and of having forgone conventional cancer treatments to effectively self-manage multiple cancers through her diet and lifestyle choices. After making an estimated one million dollars in sales from an app and cookbook off the back of her successful blog, Belle’s claims were called into question. Belle admitted that repeated claims she donated more than $300,000 to charity were ‘over-estimated’. In an interview with Australian TV show 60 Minutes, she claimed to have been duped into believing she had multiple cancers by a man who came to her house with electronic machines, paddles and lights and diagnosed her using so-called German technology. She claimed to have believed she had cancer. This contradicted an interview she gave an Australian women’s magazine three months before the 60 Minutes interview in which she admitted to fabricating her cancers entirely.
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Limeybean
Limeybean was the online moniker of an eighteen-year-old Londoner living with a rare form of tuberculosis, a disease that had killed both her father and twin brother. The con started in 2005 and Limeybean posted regular updates on her treatment and progress on LiveJournal. Limeybean’s deception is often referred to as one of the most far reaching and notorious fakes. When Limeybean succumbed to her illness, her death was announced on her friend’s Myspace page. The outpouring of grief was unprecedented, however, not long afterwards a medical student on the site exposed the fraud.
Limeybean returned from the dead and gave this statement in defence of her actions:
‘All apologies. So we’re clear, I had never intended for things to go this way. I had not meant to “die” from the beginning, but I wanted an escape and it gave me one should I ever want to leave. I’ve always had a problem when it comes to telling the truth on the internet, to be honest. After realising the effect my bravery in my illness had on people, I then used it as a vehicle to try and get some of the idiot emo kids on LJ (LiveJournal) to buck up and realise they don’t really have it all that bad… the lie was worth something, wasn’t it? How bad is a lie if it helps?’
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It is worth bearing in mind that these fabrications are often a manifestation of mental illness. Marc Feldman, the psychiatrist who coined the term Munchausen by Internet notes that in the vast majority of cases it’s women who come up with these ‘scams’, that they tend to be white, in their late teens to early thirties… and suffer from other mental illnesses. One theory as to why women are the main perpetrators of this kind of deception and crime is, according to Feldman, because, ‘Men tend to act out in overtly criminal ways and end up in prisons but, when women act out, it tends to be within systems. It also seems that women feel freer to use social media, and get their needs met through that avenue instead of being overly sociopathic.’
At present, Munchausen by Internet is not a formally recognised condition by the medical community, which means that hardly any of those people suffering are able to get help. Their behaviour is seen as voluntary and many who are ‘caught’ will simply start new blogs under new pseudonyms, just like Holly in this story.
Acknowledgements
The Truth was inspired by a real-life case of Munchausen by Internet that I stumbled across online. It is a fascinating, little understood condition, the full scale of which is currently unknown. With so many personal blogs that feature truly heart-wrenching stories about genuine struggles with cancer at all stages and severities, it’s awful that there are people who see blogging as a way to scam the public out of money and attention, or even as a means to con genuine cancer sufferers out of traditional treatment. The Munchausen by Internet case that I first read about even went as far as to encourage cancer patients to forgo traditional chemotherapy in favour of alternative therapies, acupuncture and a strict vegan diet. A few followers took the advice, one of whom was the parent of a young child with leukaemia.
There is another side to the condition, though. Many, if not all, people who engage in Munchausen by Internet suffer with mental health issues; borderline personality disorder being the most common. Life is never black and white, and neither is this issue, because th
e person behind the keyboard is probably suffering too; just in a different way.
That said, huge thanks to Hannah Smith at Aria, my fantastic editor, whose kind and constructive feedback got the best out of this character and helped me see the story in a new light. Thanks also to Vicky, Rhea and the wider Head of Zeus family who do such a stellar job, and to Chrissy for her amazing PR support. I’m so happy to be part of this wonderful imprint. Thanks too to Kate Nash, my brilliant agent, and Hannah at Rights People for representing my books overseas.
Special thank you to my mum, Jackie, for being a second editor and proof-reader to me, and to my sister, Charlotte, for reading everything I write. You’re the best. Thanks always to Colin for making my dream a continued reality. To all my lovely friends and family who are so supportive, I’ve been genuinely moved by the number of you who have reached out to me in recent months to say you’re reading and enjoying my books. Thank you, it has honestly meant so much. Here’s to you!
About the Author
Naomi Joy is a pen name of a young PR professional who was formerly an account director at prestigious PR firm in London. Writing from experience, she draws the reader in to the darker side of the uptown and glamorous, presenting realism that is life or death, unreliable and thrilling to page-turn.
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