by Terry Tyler
I'm given a fake tattoo on my neck; a dragonfly, which I quite like. Also, a fake nose-ring; I refuse to have it pierced. Brody has his hair cut short, and dyed dark brown. He stopped shaving as soon as we knew this was going to happen; his beard must be dyed, too.
Andy becomes a punk, with a bright red Mohawk. He treats the whole thing like a great joke, which takes the pressure away from what we're doing, but Brody remains serious; he is the only one of us who questions the validity of our new passports, but Dennis assures him that his man who knows a man (who probably knows another man) will ‘arrange’ it so that our documents are added to the official passport database.
Bloody hell.
All part of the service, apparently, as they would be useless without this step.
This must be costing Jaffa a packet. I daren’t ask.
Brody is given brown contact lenses and glasses; Yasmin plucks his eyebrows away from the centre, tints them, and puts tiny wads of padding into his jaw to make his face look fuller. She plucks Andy’s eyebrows into high arches and colours them black, gives him blue contacts to hide his green eyes, and shades his cheeks so artfully that his face looks genuinely thinner. All these modifications will have to take place again, when we leave.
Next, Dennis takes photos of our new selves, then heads off into the night; I expect to see him set off with a suitcase filled with bundles of cash, but Jaffa tells me that all such transactions are made with Bitcoin, or similar.
When he is back, Jaffa will book our flights.
The next day is uneventful, and we wait in Jaffa's private living room, hidden from the rest of the community.
Every half hour I almost tell Jaffa to stop it all, so I can go back to my normal life here at lovely Lake Lodge. Brody tells me to talk about how I feel, but I'm not good at that stuff. Talking about it won't stop me feeling it, anyway.
We discuss our destinations. Brody and I are going to rural eastern France, while Andy has chosen India.
"I want to bum around for a bit. I fancy sticking a pack on my back and just going where the mood takes me; I never had the courage to do that, before."
Night falls; we sleep on camp beds in Jaffa's bedroom and use her private bathroom, so that no one will see us.
I worry about Kendall wondering where I am.
Brody sleeps well, but I lie awake.
If someone had told me, two years ago, that I would be in this situation, I would never have believed them. I'm scared witless. This is no virtue-signalling on social media―this is the real thing.
We are defined by the choices we make.
I allow myself to feel just a tiny bit of pride.
We get up at four-thirty, ready to leave at six.
The passports are here, our flights booked.
I am no longer Lita Stone. My name is Michelle Boucher. I have lived in England all my life, but had a French father. Brody is now Stephen Faulkner, qualified to teach English as a foreign language. He can speak more or less fluent French (hence the choice of occupation), though I will have to pretend my father and I were estranged, as all I know is the little I learned at school. Pity I chose to study the wrong language at Hope.
Brody gave me the beginning of his crash course yesterday. Enough to get by; I am going to be busy over the next few months.
Andy the punk is now called Robin Barker.
"Robin?" he says. "That's not a punk name; can't I be Sid or Joe?"
I rather like Michelle. It's glamorous.
That's it. We're ready. Our new smartphones contain our flight details and tickets. Our bags are packed.
A couple of people are out and about as we walk out of Jaffa's house into the cold, dark morning.
"Damn it, what the hell are they doing up so early?" Jaffa urges us to get into the back of her Land Rover and shut the doors, quickly.
I see Morgan and Anita approach; I inch the window down until I can hear enough to know that Morgan is asking what's going on.
"Brody and Lita have been taken off the rotas, they've been missing for a couple of days, but here they are, luggage and all―and who's the other guy?"
"All will be revealed in the fullness of time," Jaffa says. "Should anyone ask, you have not seen them for days. You don't know where they've gone. I mean it. This is serious."
"We don't know where they're going, anyway," says Anita.
"No, you don't. And that's the way it will stay. Sorry to sound so mysterious, but it really is imperative that this is kept completely quiet. I'll have a word with everyone this evening, but until then I'd be grateful if you'd keep it zipped."
"If you say so," says Morgan, but he doesn't sound happy.
We're just driving off when I see Kendall at the door of our cabin. Kendall never sees six a.m.; she must have been up, worrying, waiting for me to come back.
I can't leave without saying goodbye. I just can't.
"Go on, then," says Jaffa. She doesn't sound happy about it. "Make it very quick."
I leap out of the vehicle and I dash over to the cabin, ushering her in and pulling the door shut behind us.
Kendall just stares at me for a moment. Then she says, "I like the hair. Not sure about the nose ring."
I know she's waiting for me to explain where I've been, and why I've just turned up at six in the morning looking like a boho-punk artist. "I'm sorry. I couldn't tell you. I still can't. Where we're going, I mean. What's happening."
She shoves her hands in the deep pockets of her dressing gown; she looks really pissed off. "Why not?"
"You'll find out. Very soon. But we have to go before that happens. I can't say more. I would if I could, honestly."
"You can't even tell me? I won't say anything to anyone, I promise."
I shake my head. "It's better you don't know. Truly it is. That way, no one can force it out of you."
Her face breaks into a smile. "You mean if some seriously heavy guys do that thing when they put a flannel over your face and pour water onto it? Is it something totally immense and scary?"
I laugh, and relax. "Yeah, it is, rather."
"How long will you be gone for?"
"I don't know." I stare at the ground. This is the hard part. "I have absolutely no clue. We'll come back if and when Jaffa thinks it's okay for us to do so."
"So I may never see you again?"
"You will. I promise you will." I throw my arms around her and hug her so close to me. My little sister. "I'll write. When I think it's safe. Look out for a letter, okay?"
And then I really do have to go.
On the drive I'm overcome by all the sleep I haven't had over the past few nights; I shut my eyes for a moment and the next thing I'm aware of is being jolted awake by the opening of car doors, Brody shaking my shoulder and the lights of the airport. I'm still totally zonked when Jaffa and Dennis wish us goodbye, bon voyage and good luck, but they don't lecture us any further; we've been through everything we must and mustn't do, over and over.
Jaffa gives me a huge hug. "I'll miss you," she says, "but it needn't be forever. The future is an unwritten page, isn't it?"
I blink back my tears to stop them spoiling my careful black eye make-up, but Jaffa needs no such restraint.
Finally, they melt back into the Land Rover and disappear into the gloomy dawn.
Michelle, Stephen and Robin are all alone.
"I suppose I can tell everyone my name's Rob," says Andy, as we drag our suitcases through the entrance doors. "It's still not very punk, though, is it?"
At the check-in desk, a Passenger Service Agent says, "Have a great flight, Michelle!"
A little voice in my head tells me that I could still text Jaffa, right now, tell her to scrap the film, and I could go back to planting spuds at Lake Lodge.
I could, but I don't.
Nick would never forgive me.
39
Pandemonium
Many hours later, we take a leisurely drive through the countryside of Poitou-Charentes in the car rented by Stephen Faul
kner, and make a final stop in a small, anonymous café, sixty kilometres from our new home.
I'm gazing into my café au lait, miles away and still feeling pretty zonked, both mentally and physically, when Brody grins, and points to a corner of the room.
Three laptops, for customer use.
"Fancy a little browse around the internet?"
I frown. "What for?"
He gives me another grin, slightly shifty this time. "Jaffa posted the vids on the site two hours ago, and set up all the social media posts. She was actually planning to send it to The Speaker as soon as she knew we'd left the country, so they could do their own analysis of the fake 'happy families', but they agreed not to publish anything until she'd gone live."
"Bloody hell. I assumed it wouldn't be until tomorrow."
"Don't worry. She promised me she'd wait until she knew we'd be on the road, destination unknown." He grins at me. "Come on. Let's have a quick butcher's. You want to, don't you?"
Of course I do.
I have no idea what I'm going to see
Until now, I've been floating above it all; it hadn't quite registered in my brain.
It does now.
Boy, does it.
We're everywhere.
While we were chugging peacefully through the quiet French countryside, stopping off to admire a view here and there, I hadn't a clue that I was having my fifteen minutes of fame, over and over again.
Social media is in uproar.
Lita Stone and Andy Reynolds are trending on Twitter, uChat and LifeShare, and we're headlining on the more gossipy news sites.
'Offline Day girl Lita Stone blows the whistle on Hope Villages'
'Blogger Lita claims mass sterilisation in Hope'
'Mandy and baby Soraya, Joley and baby George―has the country fallen in love with Populus images?'
'Murder, forced miscarriages and routine sterilisation―are Hope Villages no more than 21st Century concentration camps?'
It's so quiet in the café, in direct contrast to the pandemonium unfurling in front of us. I'm here, and that's all back there, in the strange, artificial galaxy behind these screens. If I shut my eyes, all I hear is the bubbling of the coffee machine, the muffled chinking of cutlery against crocks, low voices, the beep-beep of the till.
It's good. Real life. Peaceful.
I have this weird feeling of being on a spaceship, looking down at an insane, chaotic world.
"Bloody hell," says Brody. "Look at this, but brace yourself." He touches my shoulder. "The downside was bound to happen."
I look; it's a short article on Town Crier.
'Who is Lita Stone? A once respected blogger and social media influencer, known for 'telling it like it is'. But has her year in a Hope Village played with her sanity? Is she crying out, wildly, in a desperate attempt at revenge against the people who, according to her disturbed mind, killed her friend? Or is she merely seeking the attention she lost when readers turned away from her blog?'
On Global Online:
'Can Lita Stone be believed? Doctors at Hope Village reveal that she refused treatment for severe psychological problems, and categorically deny her claims.'
Rebecca 'Bex' Grey on LifeShare:
'I was Lita Stone's Client Key Worker during the last two months of her stay in Hope 37, and can confirm that she was diagnosed as bipolar, with possible schizophrenia. She suffered from devastating mood swings, was aggressive and unable to cope with any sort of upset. I just hope that, wherever she is, she is able to find the psychiatric help she desperately needs, before she becomes a danger to herself, or others.'
"Bastards! And Bex―bipolar? Schizophrenia? The lying bitch!" I'm struggling to keep my voice down. Brody puts his arm around me and gives me a comforting squeeze.
"Hang in there. It gets better. Look."
On The Speaker:
'We the people call for Nutricorp, Nu-Pharm and the government to explain themselves. Whereas Lita Stone admits that some of her claims are no more than hypothesis, Andy Reynolds' professional analyses of the so-called vitamin pills and medication given to male residents at Hope Village 37 cannot be ignored. Furthermore, our experts can now confirm that the 'families' presented by the management of the Hope Village project as great success stories are indeed images created by a computer program, as claimed by both Stone and Nick Freer. What we must ask ourselves is why such a deception was necessary; this, in itself, tells us a great deal.'
"You've done it!" Brody hisses. "Never mind social media and stupid bloody Town Crier; The Speaker is a respected paper. It's their words that matter."
I glance round; a few people are looking at us. Disgruntled faces. I smile and apologise for making a noise; they return to their own conversations, and I breathe out.
I scroll up and down, flick back and forth between sites; it's too much. Every known aspect of my life is being picked apart. Widow Skanky is everywhere. Photos of Andy taken from his social media pages. That picture from my blog, looking over the top of my glasses.
I think of Andy, on his way to India.
I think of Kendall, and of June, without whom we couldn't have made this happen.
I think of MoMo, and what a tizzy she must be in.
I think of Esme, of all the Beckys and Duncans, of Bag Checker and Scan Monitor, even of Dwork.
I think of Doctor Kacszynski, and I laugh.
And I think about Nick. How he should be here with us, too. Safe.
"You're being hailed as the hero of the common man," Brody says.
Jesus H. If I thought Offline Day went viral, it was invisible compared with this.
Thank goodness I never shared many photos of myself on social media.
It's brilliant, all of it, even the bits that say I'm nuts (though Bex had better get her running shoes on in case our paths ever cross again), but I feel as if I have no hands, no voice, a sense of frustration that comes from a lifetime of being able to communicate with everyone, everywhere, whenever I wanted to. I long to comment on these pages, to contact Kendall and Jaffa.
I say this to Brody as we walk out to the car.
"It's something you're going to have to get used to," he says. "Lake Lodge has been good training for you, though, hasn't it?"
"Yeah, it has, but it was good to know that I could be online when I needed to be, or wanted to―"
"That's over, for some time, or if you do anything at all it will have to be with Jaffa and Dennis's guidance only." He rubs his dark beard, as though he'd forgotten he'd got all that fuzz on his face. "When we get to where we're going, you'll have to get used to making friends with real life people, and taking photos that are just for us to look at. You know, like people did in the olden days."
I feel suddenly depressed. Isolated.
He takes my hand. "It'll be okay. You've got me. We'll get there."
Our cottage, owned by a friend of Jaffa's whose name I don't know, is small, basic, but comfortable. It's situated on the outskirts of a small, unremarkable French town.
I keep thinking, this is just a holiday, right? Just a week or two of restful isolation, then I can go back to Lake Lodge. Be Lita again.
I'm not Lita any more, though. I'm Michelle Boucher.
I sit on my new bed and look at my boyfriend with the short, dark hair, who hums as he puts our meagre possessions away in drawers. I look out of the window at the narrow, cobbled road outside. It's picturesque. Cute. But it's not home.
It's France. I don't want to live in France. I've never wanted to live in France. Nothing wrong with the place, it's just not where I live.
I want to go home.
I hope it was worth it.
I don't know if I'm unselfish enough for this. I don't know if I can deal with the sacrifice I've made for the greater good; I'm no saint.
We are defined by the choices we make.
Yeah. Very nice as a meme, on a background of a sunrise over a mountain. A bit harder to actually live, though.
40
&nbs
p; Warrant
7 a.m. 25th January
Caleb Bettencourt insisted, at first, that there was no point in going to Lake Lodge, because they would no longer be there.
"They'll have left the country. I want the flight manifests from every single fucking plane that left every single fucking airport, I don't care how small, over the last two days. Lists of passengers on every boat, every ferry. CCTV images, the lot."
But there was no trace of Lita Stone or Andy Reynolds, anywhere.
At this point, DCI Rodney Ferris suggested, in a mild fashion, that Lake Lodge might be a good place to start, after all.
At a loss, Bettencourt agreed.
"I can't believe they'd be stupid enough to still be there, but you never know―and some of those filthy weirdos must know where they've gone. Leave no fucking stone unturned. And tell your men to get their arses in gear and find out who runs that fucking website."
Ferris winced at Caleb's language. Could these trendy types employ no mode of verbal emphasis other than the F-word? Still, it was through Caleb that he'd been granted the privilege of meeting the charming Guy and Mona Morrissey, in person, just the day before. A delightful lunch, during which Mona told him he should consider himself a personal friend of the Bettencourts.
This was the icing on his cake, after he was asked (by the Chief Superintendent himself) to head the investigation.
Ferris was used to a time when libel and slander were considered only civil wrongs, but his superior reminded him that allegations as serious as those made by Lita Stone are considered an offence under the Public Disorder Act of 2026.
"Between you and me," he said, "I believe the act was passed for the specific purpose of preventing these whistleblowers inciting domestic unrest. Free speech is becoming a thing of the past, and not a moment too soon, in my book."
The Chief Super was a friend of the Bettencourts, too; with great pride, he told Ferris that Mona Morrissey had asked him to supervise the search for Lita Stone as a personal favour.
No matter, then, that Ferris had to make the London to Northumbria journey on this freezing January morning, when he should have been tucked up next to his wife, their Labrador keeping their feet warm at the bottom of the bed.