He downs the remainder of his wine and tries not to sound too hopeful. ‘That sounds pretty complex, don’t you think?’
‘Not really. I mean, she faked cancer. Why not fake her own attack? Maybe she has a loose screw and she just did it for attention.’
And there it is, the next move that’s been bristling at the back of his mind. He’d begun the process already, carefully picking up the scalpel crusted with Holly’s blood with a surgical glove, and placing it inside a compartment of the tote bag he delivered to the hospital. He liked the thought of it living so close to her, and the contortion of her face as she discovered it. It was meant to be a threat, a reminder of what they shared that night, but she probably hasn’t even unpacked her bag yet. It was one of the many small gestures he has made over the past few weeks. But now, it can be part of something greater. All he needs to do is make one phone call.
‘Excuse me, ladies. I just need to step to the gents for a minute.’
Before he slips out the back entrance, he finds a waiter and says with a smirk, ‘Bruce, charge my bottle of wine to the two blondes in the conservatory. Oh, and get me an extra one for the road, please? See you soon.’
Chapter 35
Holly
Holly’s body is becoming a problem. It rolls into white folds when she curls into a ball on her bed. Cellulite shudders on the back of her thighs as she walks from the kitchen to the couch and back again. Whatever muscle she had built during her regular boxing sessions is now hidden underneath layers of disgusting fat. Not that she’s had occasion to, but she’s pretty sure that she’d fail that ultimate female test of buttoning up her jeans.
What is she supposed to do? Leave the house and get mobbed on the way to boxing? Blindly walk into a confrontation with him in the street, scalpel glinting in his hand? Or should she do one of her elaborate home workouts in her cramped apartment, knowing he could slip behind her when she isn’t looking, and wrap his fingers around her neck? Much as her workouts made great content for her feed, they were not the only way she got her body. No, that picture perfect arse was the result of an army of trainers and some focused fasting when she knew a swimsuit shoot was coming along.
When she first began posting on Instagram, she was rounder, and had fuller breasts and wider hips. But as her followers grew, so did their expectations. Health on Instagram is a delicate balance of muscle and bone. Women chant the mantra ‘strong is the new skinny’, a snarling reminder that it’s not enough to starve, you need to build superhuman strength as well. Holly trained until she got a healthy amount of ‘are you anorexic?’ comments on her pictures. Everybody wants to judge, but nobody wants to take responsibility for what that judgement destroys. At least they liked her. That’s the only thing that mattered then, that they continued to like her.
Well, not this time. This time, she won’t shrink herself to give a tangible display of her suffering. She won’t make herself smaller and smaller to be less visible. She won’t become that little girl weeping in her father’s arms again. Her pain cannot be minimised to make everyone else more comfortable. She’s raw, healing, distorted from the ‘acceptable’ Holly she used to be.
The world outside looks disarmingly still. Holly takes a shuddering breath and pushes her fear aside. She won’t be trapped in this airless, lightless apartment for a second longer, playing an empty game of house with the trinkets from her old life. She needs the air on her skin, and she needs comfort. And no matter how hard she used to sell it, there is no comfort to be found in the crunch of a raw carrot.
She wants that particular addictive scent of KFC to sink into her hair. She wants to feel the crunch of bones under her molars, and the tear of flesh between her teeth. Chips! How she wants hot, salty chips with ketchup drizzled over the top of them like a commoner, not in a neat little pot on the side.
Holly looks at her pink face in the mirror and holds back a sob. There is nothing to be done about it. Her skin is doing its best to patch itself together, but the strain of the effort has made her look as if she has gone through several invasive chemical peels. The muscles where he sliced through her are also forging new paths and, in so doing, have got lost. She tries to fake a laugh – hahahaha! – but, as predicted, only one side can break into a full smile. Her confused glands don’t salivate when she’s hungry. Instead, they send a message for sweat to pour down her neck. Right now, her neck is as wet as if she’s just had a shower. Shower – something she hasn’t done in days. Why would she need to when she barely moves during the day? Her long hair hangs limp down her back, its roots darkened with grease. It’s OK. She’ll just do it up in a bun and throw on a hoodie and tracksuit pants. This whole exercise will take less than ten minutes.
She swings the door open, bile rising in her throat. Dammit, her hands can’t stop shaking, no matter how much she tries to tell herself that he is probably at the hospital, cutting somebody else open. Her eyes scan the corridor in front of her – no sign of him. There is no mob or mess waiting for her either. It’s just past 10.30 a.m. They must be at work or university. It appears that even the mob has to survive and make ends meet. The air smells of glorious, fresh rain. Rumbling clouds overhead suggest more on the way. She wraps her hoodie tighter around her chest, and coils her long hair under the collar.
Stripped of her arresting prettiness, Holly feels giddily invisible. The businessman who walks past her continues his argument on his phone. She passes a construction site, and the workers simply eat their pastries, staring into space. How limitless her world has become! No constant awareness of eyes digging into her chest, her lips, her arse. No need to look down in public for fear of meeting a pair of hungry eyes that read any contact as an invitation to slither into her space. What was she pining for during all those years of her supposed ‘ugliness’? This is what true freedom feels like.
At this time of the day, the only people in KFC are bums, the elderly and the hungover grabbing a fry-up, smoothing the creases of the clothes they’re still wearing from the night before. This, this right here, is what she’s been missing from every juice bar and hipster café serving a sanitised brunch to the pursed-lipped, self-appointed elite.
She remembers one snowy morning, when London’s lifestyle-blogging elite had gathered at a similar time in a new health food joint in Portobello. As usual, the PR had said, ‘mid-morning is the only time we have where the café isn’t as busy’. This was bullshit of course. A mid-morning launch was the easiest way of limiting the guest list to those influencers whose influence no longer required the additional income of a day job. PRs only ever wanted the high rollers, the ones that didn’t need a leg-up in becoming known.
They all sat picking at the heaving harvest table, dragging modest plates of food to natural light where they would photograph better. Nobody really spoke at these events, apart from the ever-bubbly PR who was desperate to get everyone to stay a second longer. ‘Don’t forget the hashtag, ladies!’
One of the girls, a lifestyle-blogging stalwart who had just been announced as Karl Lagerfeld’s muse for the latest Chanel campaign, walked in after the food had grown cold and most of it had been cleared. She pulled the waitress over with a sinister smile, and made her stuff her goodie bag with branded granola, coconut oil and Manuka honey. Things she could easily afford, but that the waitress would probably lose her job over. She spent the rest of the lunch on her phone, patronising her travel agent for booking the wrong seat (‘I like business class, window seat, second row, not first. It’s not fucking rocket science’) on her direct flight to New York.
At the time, Holly was too busy making nice with the PR and covering the event to really acknowledge the source of her discomfort. Now she sees it plainly. People who exceed a certain status in life become despicable and bloated with entitlement. Even she had started caring a little less about the press invites that flooded her inbox, and got a little annoyed when the world didn’t automatically fall in line with her magnetic field.
There is a bit of all of us
in places like KFC, mired in grease and fat, scratching through dirty handbags for a few coins to buy an extra ice cream. We are all losers and deadbeats deep down, just longing for a way to distract ourselves with a little treat. Holly orders a large fried-chicken bucket, an egg roll, chips, and a strawberry milkshake. She settles in. Fuck the constant counting of calories and interrogation of ingredients in every single thing she puts in her mouth. It’s time to re-tox.
How did one lie and one basic desire to share photos of her food warp into this massive, uncontrollable thing? She hates herself for being so careless, for being naive enough to think she had created something special, a tribe. Fuck her tribe. It was never about her after all. It was about the dream, a plastic version of her she would never quite live up to if they spent enough time in her company. Once again, she is the Holly that is never quite good enough.
Half the bucket is already gone, and she’s been crying without realising it. She wipes her runny nose with her sleeve. She’d forgotten this feeling, the joyous anonymity of eating alone in a grubby corner of a fast food joint. Everything is simple and still. She hears the kiss of a camera. Looks up into the eyes of a mouse-like girl whose smile reveals a snaggle-tooth. Holly doesn’t quite register what’s happening at first, but there’s a small voice in her head that says, ‘It’s always the nerds that have the darkest hearts.’
A familiar terror aches in her chest. Wait, I’m not ready for my close-up yet. Oh God, not now. How many shoots did she spend agonising over how to nibble perfectly into a seed cracker? How many times did she terrorise her mother over dinners back home in shooting and reshooting her smiling simply over a salad, trying to erase every imperceptible flaw? It was never enough to create recipes that healed people. She had to look pretty while doing so as well.
What for? Why do women always have to eat behind their hands? Picking at the leftovers of their children as they stack the dishes? Always erasing the traces of food (is there something between my teeth?), scrubbing it or exercising it away. Making sure that what goes into their mouth is clean, healthy, sanctioned, the correct diet for a good girl. Is it really so revolting to be hungry?
If the little mouse in front of her wants a show, she’s going to get one. Holly grabs some chicken in her fist. ‘Mmmm oh yeah, this is so fucking good. Oh, I like that.’
More phones are gathering, flickering. It’s just fuel for the fire. When she’s done with the chicken she moves on to the egg roll, taking a vicious bite out of it. ‘Oh God, how I love me some factory-farmed egg in the morning! I can just taste the murdered new life!’ Orange yolk runs down her face and congeals on her chin. She takes a greasy finger and wipes it. In her periphery, she hears giggles and gasps. ‘Mmm, this is my best part.’ She sucks her finger, staring provocatively into the flashing lights.
You’ve gone too far. This is too far.
Up, down, up and down. The pornography that is public shame. They came here for a train wreck. Well, here she is, in all her filthy glory.
Chapter 36
Tyler then
Frankie’s illness introduces an urgency, a sense of recklessness. There is no time to lose when death is in the next room.
There are obstacles in his way – Frankie now lives with her parents and their relationship has its fair share of struggles – but he knows what he has to do. The hopelessness of this situation can be saved by a grand gesture. He still has the power to turn things around.
He smiles to himself as Frankie passes her days moving slowly around her home, going through the motions of cooking her raw meals and taking her handfuls of supplements. She has no idea about the surprise in store for her.
Frankie loves puzzles, so he gives her a clue each day.
The first, a tube map with a red circle around Warwick Avenue, where they first met.
The second, a bottle of gin, a reference to the gin and tonic she ordered on their first date.
The third, a dozen cupcakes from their favourite bakery in South Kensington.
And finally, nine bunches of red roses delivered to her doorstep, one for every month he had loved her, and a first edition of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. Inside the novel that sparked their romance he had inscribed:
Will you marry me?
Chapter 37
Holly
Holly doesn’t hear the incessant ringing as she throws up the last of her feast into the toilet bowl. She wipes down her fingers and dabs some disinfectant on the stretched corners of her lips. There’s something so soothing about hurting yourself and then making it all better again.
She steps into the living room bleary-eyed, and falls onto the couch, pushing aside the debris of old magazines and coffee cups. It’s safe, here in her nest. The flashing phone and her bloated, cramping stomach are all signs that she’s done something bad, but they feel as far away as the blurry wailing of sirens deep in the grey clench of the city outside. Shame, rage, despair, she just doesn’t have the energy to summon these emotions.
She can’t let the phone ring forever. If anything, the little red dots notifying her of missed calls and messages will eat her alive. After a deep breath of silence, the phone begins to wail once more.
‘Hello!’
‘Jesus Christ, I was beginning to think that you’d gone and offed yourself! Glad you could step away from destroying your public image to take the calls of your last supporter.’ Sweet, spun-out Zanna, with a voice that while enraged, is still strangely comforting.
‘Are you saying that you still support me, Zan?’ Not that Holly cares at this point. Her old life is a notebook, and she is tearing out its pages and throwing them out of the window.
‘That’s debatable. This is bad, Holly, fucking bad.’
It’s not funny. Really, it’s not. But something bubbles in Holly’s throat that comes out as laughter.
‘Oh. My. God. Are you really laughing right now?’
‘S-sorry Zanna, I know it’s not funny . . . I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . . sorry!’
‘Shit, babe, you’re worse off than I thought. Have you spoken to your family lately?’
She takes a deep breath in and out. Her father has called her once to give her a piece of his mind. She deserves all of this, he said, and while it pains him to see his little girl hurt, he can’t help but think she is learning an important lesson. She is welcome back at home, he said, but his voice caught over the word welcome, making it sound less like an invitation and more like a threat.
‘No.’ She chuckles over the phone, trying to catch her breath. ‘They hardly wanted much to do with me before and they want even less to do with me right now.’
‘Friends?’
‘I never really had friends. I had a few bloggers I met with once in a while to shoot each other’s outfits. What use am I to them now?’
‘So you haven’t spoken to anyone since I left last week?’
‘Nope.’ The giggles are catching in her throat again like a cough.
Silence. A rustling in the background and muted voices. ‘OK, Holly, listen to me. Holly, no, no more laughing. I’m really worried about you and I’m getting on the next flight back to London.’
‘You don’t have to do that!’ Tears sting the corners of her eyes. No, she really does. Holly simultaneously wants to push her away and needs her to come right now.
‘We’re going to figure something out, OK? You’ve made some big mistakes but you’re not a bad person, I refuse to believe that. We’ll get you some help and I’ll keep the mob at bay.’
*
Holly curls up in a ball, looking up as Zanna paces back and forth. She’s organising Holly’s life, as well as keeping the crises of her other clients’ lives at a manageable simmer. She mixes honey and cinnamon into a bowl of oats and slams it on the table in front of her. She doesn’t bother to mention to Zanna that honey is not technically vegan – she’d get walloped across the face. She relishes in the feeling that she has a mother, a proper mother, all over agai
n. At least someone can think for her now, so she doesn’t have to wear herself out wading through the fog of her own mind.
‘All right. I’ve called in a favour with a top psychologist in Mayfair who has agreed to give you an assessment. If relevant, which I think it will be, he will publicly make a statement that you are mentally vulnerable right now and call for the press to leave you alone. Most importantly, he can get you admitted into a nice hospital for a little bit of rest.’
Hospital. Rest. The stench of disinfectant. The face of him looming over her and creeping into her bedroom at night. She holds her head in her hands and starts slapping her face.
‘Whoa, whoa, hold up. If you carry on like this in public you’ll be put in isolation. Listen, you don’t have to go to hospital if you don’t want to, but we need someone to explain your behaviour to the public.’
‘I don’t care about the fucking public,’ she says through a mouthful of oats. And it’s true. It’s worse when only a few people hate you. You can picture their mouths twisting as they spew their particular poison. When the whole world seems to hate you, it’s different. It’s so overwhelming that the mind can’t process it. It blurs into a quietly unnerving white noise. The only real impact is that you can never get to sleep.
‘That’s not true, Holly,’ Zanna snaps. ‘And if you really don’t care, I’m just going to have to care for you. Now please, for the love of God, change out of that fucking hoodie. You smell like desolation and fried chicken.’
There is a banging on the door so loud that the door shakes on its hinges.
‘Zan?’
‘Don’t worry, babe, it’s probably just the cops checking in on you. Let me go and get it.’
Even with the pillow over her face, she can hear Zanna’s hushed, high-pitched tones.
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