Suze cuts me off. ‘Look, I know you didn’t mean it; I’ve known you since you were five. We’ve both been stupid, but we’re still friends. That’s something you can’t break.’
I give Suze another hug and feel a wash of love for her as she squeezes me back.
It’ll be OK.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Unlinking my arms from Suze, I pull it out and stare at the screen.
There’s a tiny blog notification. Oh God, not another message.
Someone I don’t know has superimposed a grey cap on a selfie of me. Printed across the picture is the tagline: Dishonest Davies: When you want to lose weight but you think nah, I’ll just Photoshop
My stomach plummets.
Dishonest Davies: When you tell the teacher the dog ate your homework
I’m a meme.
‘Issa?’ Somewhere far away I can feel Suze’s slight hand shaking my shoulder. ‘Ignore it; it doesn’t matter,’ she says, glancing at the screen.
But I can’t take my eyes off the image. My face is a meme. And memes don’t disappear.
They stay online.
Forever.
CHAPTER 55
Lily
The papers have finally received our injunction, and the reporters outside have packed up and left. I’ve still got the two security guards there, patrolling the lane, but at least we can open the windows. At least the house feels vaguely back to normal.
Online, it hasn’t blown over. If anything, it’s getting worse.
Mindy almost came out to Suffolk this morning to speak to me, but I promised to look over and sign off their blogpost today.
I’m staring at the words the team have written, but I’m so tired my eyes keep blurring the lines on the screen into one black smudge.
I don’t know how to start this blog, other than to say how sorry I am for betraying your trust. No one is perfect. No one. We all make mistakes – it’s part of being human. And I never claimed to be perfect.
At the time the picture came out, me and Bryan had already decided to separate, though we hadn’t yet made it public.
It hurts me so much to think that I hadn’t told you all what was going on. I didn’t want the media to find out. But keeping our separation a secret made everything worse. Now the story has blown up, and I’ve been forced to tell you.
I feel so bad – every single one of you means so much to me. You’re all my best friends . . .
There’s a pause as I reread the last line they wrote as me: ‘You’re all my best friends.’
Something about the phrase makes me wince.
Best friends.
I think of that ginger guy who kept hammering on my door and professing his love for me. LilyDentist, who was convinced I’d stolen her identity. The girls who battered on my taxi windows before the meetup. All those thousands of angry tweets from followers. The reporters and photographers who were camped outside my mum’s tiny cottage the last few days.
You’re all my best friends.
I feel quite sick.
What am I doing? What am I actually doing? I can’t put this statement out. I can’t go back to making videos of me and Bryan wandering round London, acting blissfully in love. I can’t keep calling my fans my ‘best friends’ while flogging them overpriced lipsticks and tote bags with my name on it.
I take a deep breath.
My Tweetdeck, Schedugram and Facebook LilyLoves brand pages are lying open on my laptop.
Every single one of them is inundated with abusive messages. Nearly every comment contains the word ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘whore’.
With a frown, I swiftly copy and paste a selection of the worst comments into a blogpost. Seeing them all lined up like that starts to give me an idea.
Taking a shaking breath, I tap Mindy’s call icon.
‘Hello? Are you happy with the blog? We’ll post it now and get it out to the papers.’ Her words cut through my thoughts.
‘I . . . No,’ I say, surprised at how firm my voice sounds.
‘What do you want us to change? We can do another if we need to, but we really need to get this out ASAP. BeautyCult and Wendy’s Wishes are on the brink of pulling out.’
‘Tell them to cancel the contracts. I don’t want their sponsorship,’ I say quietly.
There’s a pause at the other end of the line.
‘Cancel? What do you mean?’ says Mindy.
‘I don’t want to partner with any more brands.’
‘Can I remind you that brand sponsorships are sixty-five per cent of your projected income for this year. Our commercial team has worked for months to secure these deals for you. And you don’t want the contracts?’
‘No.’
Mindy’s voice lowers. ‘Can I ask why?’
I take a deep breath, and tell her my plan.
CHAPTER 56
Melissa
I don’t want to go to school.
I don’t just not want to go into school; I would rather a sinkhole opened up underneath my feet and plunged me into soundless darkness than walk into class and face everyone.
As I walk along the corridors to morning registration, I stare at the floor. There are splutters of laughter coming from either side. My heart speeds up and my whole body burns with shame.
A group of year eights see me and immediately start whispering to one another, pulling out their phones.
I can’t even look at them.
I try to pretend they’re not looking at screenshots of my blog. Or looking at the meme. That they don’t know . . . I mean . . . maybe they don’t. Maybe I’m just being stupid and paranoid. No one cares that much about one stupid blog, do they?
Suze banned me from typing my name into Google or social media, but late last night I started scrolling through my phone and found an article called ‘Ten Ways You Can Tell IssaAdores Blog Was a Fake’. It had over 3,000 shares.
It made me feel so sick, I couldn’t read it. Suze forced me to delete my blog last night – but the posts are still there. All you have to do is type ‘IssaAdores’ into Google images and you’ll see hundreds of screenshots of each blogpost. Every stupid lie I wrote. Online. Forever.
I hunch over my shoulders and walk into registration.
Chloe and Louise are already sitting down. I try to make out I haven’t seen them, but as soon as they spot me, their loud voices lower to theatrical whispers.
I slide into the seat next to Suze and flick open my homework planner. My fingers are shaking so much I can’t turn over the page.
There’s a burst of laughter from the other side of the room. Chloe has obviously just said something, as all the girls glance at me and then look away, sniggering.
My eyes fill with tears. I can’t deal with this right now. I can’t actually do this.
I wish I had never created my blog. I wish I’d never even watched LilyLoves.
The cheap laminate desk in front of me is spinning.
Chloe says something else. She hisses ‘Issa!’ and there’s a peel of laughter from her gang.
It’s like a white-hot poker of humiliation piercing my chest.
There’s a light breeze across my shoulder. It takes a few seconds for me to notice Suze is standing up. Her tiny nose is upturned and her chest is thrust out.
What the—
‘Suze!’ I hiss, flapping my hand at her to sit.
Maybe she doesn’t know what’s going on?
Suze ignores me and takes a step towards them.
‘Chloe,’ she says, in her delicate voice.
Then again, clearer.
‘Chloe.’
The laughter stops.
And everyone turns to look at her.
CHAPTER 57
Melissa
Chloe raises one eyebrow. Suze is still standing up, the sleeves of her loose jumper billowing against her fingertips, her blonde bun sprouting spiralled wisps of hair either side of her face.
Chloe pulls a face. ‘Uh, yeah?’
‘It’s OK – h
onestly. Sit down!’ I hiss, tugging at her sleeve.
I’m not even sure Suze can hear me, but she doesn’t budge.
‘You know what. We all make mistakes,’ says Suze, her voice quiet but clear.
My pulse starts to race.
‘We’re not all honest, all the time. But we all deserve a second chance.’
Oh God. What is she saying?
Louise, who is looking over one shoulder, scoffs. But Chloe doesn’t smile. She tosses her hair away from her face and leans forward, clicking her tongue against her teeth.
‘Y’know what, Suze? You’re a nice girl, so I’ll be kind,’ she says. ‘I have never – and I mean never – taken a boy’s image and plastered it over the internet without their permission. I have never lied to newspapers and created fake news for attention. I am not that messed up. And I doubt anyone else in this room is.’ Her eyes briefly pass over me.
‘I didn’t . . .’ I mouth, but the words wither on my tongue.
Chloe tilts her head up. ‘That’s just not who I am,’ she says.
Louise butts in. ‘Yeah, and you shouldn’t hang out with someone like that. It’s just not OK. Honestly, would you ever lie like that?’
The laminate table in front of me blurs. I can’t look at any of them.
Oh, why did Suze say anything?
It’s all true. Chloe and Louise are right.
‘See?’ says Chloe. Then she gives a simpering smile. ‘It’s OK. We all fell for it.’
‘Are you real all of the time?’ whispers Suze.
‘What’s that?’ says Chloe, flicking her hair over one shoulder.
‘Are you completely honest online?’
Chloe snorts. ‘Um, of course I am, Suze. What are you implying?’
Suze takes a big breath. ‘We all edit. We all filter ourselves.’
Chloe takes a millisecond to rearrange her features, but then she rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. That’s not the same thing. Issa changed who she was!’
‘And you don’t?’ says Suze.
My heart is in my throat. I glance at Chloe. She just stares back at Suze, two small spots of pink appearing on her cheeks, her mouth open.
Rebecca from the back desk nudges Louise. ‘You did use that app to make your nose slimmer in selfies!’ she says.
Louise visibly blanches. ‘Well, yeah. But that’s only when it looks revolting.’ She spins round to Rebecca, whipping out her phone. ‘And don’t expect us to believe you haven’t Photoshopped those eyelashes!’
My heart has been drumming in my ears this whole time, but now it starts to slow. I dare to glance at the other girls. Everyone was looking at me and Suze, but now they are bickering, comparing selfies.
Suze stares at Chloe.
Chloe doesn’t say anything.
Suze raises one pale eyebrow under her glasses, and comes to sit down next to me.
Mrs Brown bursts into the room, interrupting all of us, and shushes the class so she can call for the register.
Suze’s hands are in her lap under the table. I reach out and give her small, warm hand a squeeze.
‘Thank you,’ I mouth, sniffing back tears.
She squeezes back.
CHAPTER 58
Lily
Hello, everyone. This is a slightly different side of me than you are probably used to. Most of you know me as Lily, who loves make-up and Instagram and Twitter and making videos. But what you probably don’t know is that the life I had – I mean, the one I was living on YouTube – wasn’t really me.
That makes it sound like I have some scary alter ego, but that’s not what I mean. I’m not trying to reveal that I have some horrible dark secret – I just want to . . . This is very personal for me. It’s hard to articulate . . . OK, here goes. A lot of people who watch my videos seem to think that because I am able to film myself and broadcast it to millions of people, my life is wonderful – always happy, always going on amazing holidays and trips, that my relationships are perfect – but that couldn’t be more wrong.
My life isn’t perfect; it’s probably not even close. Me and Bryan were never perfect, but how would you know that? It’s my fault, really. I built up this expectation, this lifestyle that everyone seemed to love. I wanted it to be my life, but it wasn’t.
No one’s life is always Instagram-ready. That’s the truth.
So now – bear with me – I want to start being real on my channel . . . well, more real than before. I want to focus on women’s issues, and I want to use my platform to help those who need it.
If I’m honest, the last few days for me have been tough. Really tough. But I realized I can’t be the only person who’s felt this way. I can’t be the only woman to get thousands of messages calling me a ‘whore’ or ‘slut’ without knowing the whole story. So many others have suffered online abuse. Celebrities who’ve had naked pictures leaked. People at school who’ve been cyberbullied, those who’ve been hacked or blackmailed. What happened to me the last few weeks has made me realize that we all need to be better.
I want you to know it’s OK to feel bad – everyone does sometimes. But there is help out there, and I want to talk about ways we can all help each other.
I know my new videos won’t be for everyone, and that’s completely OK. But for those of you who want to stick around, stay tuned, and if you don’t, that’s fine too . . .
I’m trying hard not to refresh the comments on my latest video – ‘LilyLoves: Why I’m Speaking Out About Online Abuse’ – for the umpteenth time this morning.
Biting my lip, I switch to my latest blogpage and refresh the stats.
156,568 page views, and counting.
I breathe out slowly.
Alongside my video, I created a word cloud of all the comments I received after the cheating scandal broke. The thousands of messages that threatened rape, called me a slut, or a whore. Then I hired a designer to help create a visual graphic of the abuse. I partnered with an online safety charity, and I interviewed women who’d had intimate photos leaked online and others who’d had their lives destroyed by social media.
The video rounded off with a clip of me talking to the camera – being honest about my experiences with the internet – how incredible it has been, but also how pressured I’ve felt by everything that has happened.
I can’t stop refreshing the page. It means so much to me. I feel terrified – like it’s my very first video.
The responses have already started pouring in. Not comments about my make-up, or how I look – but people genuinely connecting with my words. People telling me they cried watching it. People saying they feel the same.
It’s like when I was at that meetup, when I was speaking to everyone face to face. I felt so happy, so connected. Like we’re one big community.
I watch as the comments roll in, and I feel that frisson again.
This is why I do YouTube. This is why it matters.
I need to do more of this. But, this time, it’s up to me. I’m not partnering with any brands. I’m not selling anything. I can film anything and talk about whatever I like. I have an audience, people who want to listen. I just need ideas.
I look down at the blank page on my screen . . . and start typing.
***
Mum is taking me for dinner tonight at the Crown, our local village pub. It’s sort of to celebrate the relaunch of my channel, but mainly it’s an excuse to stop me sitting at home obsessively refreshing the comments on my video.
‘Nope, you’re leaving this at home,’ she says, plucking the phone from my hand and putting it on the table.
I open my mouth to protest – I feel almost naked without it – but then I remember my new resolve: every day, I’m going to make time to unplug.
Mum opens the cottage door and the smell of warm twilight air wafts into the sitting room. Linking arms, we walk through the low door and out into the night.
To be honest, I don’t know how people will respond to my new videos long term. My subscriber count
stopped falling at about 1.9 million, and is beginning to creep up again. I’m planning to partner with a variety of charities with causes I care about, but I don’t know if people will even want to watch them.
My income will take a massive cut. I know that. The only commercial thing I still have is my miniscule advertisement revenue, but I’m thinking of bringing out some new product lines, with fifty per cent of the profits going to charity.
For the first time in years, I’m actually excited about the videos I’m going to make. And I’m nervous – genuinely nervous – about what people are going to think. I’ve made a list of upcoming ideas. I’m going to film something on how to deal with online bullying – Mindy has set up interviews for me to speak to victims and advice centres. Then I’m going to talk about how women are portrayed in the media and on Instagram, the way we’re expected to look and act a certain way.
I know not everyone is going to like the more serious LilyLoves – but that’s OK. If people want to watch a fake, sanitized life, there’s enough of that online already. But there’s not enough of this.
For so long, I’ve been holding back on what I create. Not at the start, when I was filming just for me, but since my following got huge, I grew self-conscious. Everyone kept calling me a role model, and I wanted to please everyone. But you can’t, can you? And, if you try, it’ll just spectacularly backfire, like it did with me.
I shouldn’t have pretended my life was perfect: it didn’t just harm me; it harmed other people too.
When we get to the pub, I go to the bar to order our drinks. My eyes scan the cosy beamed inn and pass over a group of men gathered around a table by the inglenook fire.
Wait a minute . . .
My heart does a weird flip. Chris is there, sitting in the corner of the pub with a few of our old friends that I vaguely recognize from the village. My mouth drops open. He’s smiling down at his beer, the flickering light from the fire illuminating his stubbled cheeks.
Why is he here?
He glances over at me, but then his eyes move to my left. Mum has appeared by my side at the bar and is smiling at Chris. I look at her questioningly.
My [Secret] YouTube Life Page 18