What She Left: Enhanced Edition

by T. R. Richmond

  Discussing the merits of my work, the mechanics of ‘project Alice’, this person had made a mistake; one injudicious utterance and, hallelujah, it was like a mist lifting. ‘We can make Alice whoever we want her to be,’ they’d carelessly said. ‘We can invent a person and reinvent ourselves in the process.’

  Larry, I was keen to rush off a short missive to you straight away, but there’s work to be done. I’ve been shot down previously over an inadequately prepared hypothesis. There’s evidence to be collected, arguments to be marshalled. I need to make it bombproof. I am convinced, however. As with all the most seemingly obtuse and impenetrable problems, the solution is blindingly obvious.

  Fliss and I are heading out this evening: a well-received Tempest at the Mayflower. I’ve always been rather drawn to that most enigmatic of protagonists, Prospero – god-like, childlike, master of his universe, ex-communicated, crippled by love and a lack of it, flawed yet capable of forgiveness. But don’t worry, my old friend, I won’t be swayed by his display of benevolence. Justice must prevail.

  Mahler’s Fifth, a cup of Earl Grey, the draft of my resignation letter (one I’ve begun on so many occasions before) in front of me. It’s not a bad life, this. Notes for the structure of my book, the Alice book, scattered pell-mell across my desk. After this afternoon’s woodland walk, I rather suspect it may have an unexpected ending.

  Text messages sent by Alice Salmon,

  4 February 2012, between 23.47 p.m. and 23.59 p.m.

  To Ben Finch:

  You’re right we’re something passing stopped … you there? Fancy meeting me at our fave spot???

  To Megan Parker:

  Soz for being a rubbish friend. Love you missus x

  To Luke Addison:

  That didn’t go how I intended – I’m such a fuck-up. No wonder you hate me ☹

  To Elizabeth Salmon:

  How could you? How could you?

  To Luke Addison:

  Not waving but drowning

  Part VI

  * * *

  THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU, YOU

  Blog post by Megan Parker,

  26 October 2012, 17.15 p.m.

  I read on Twitter this morning that I’m insane.

  It made me laugh out loud. Seriously. You have to laugh otherwise you’d cry. Otherwise this stuff would drag you under.

  After we lost Alice, her family were first in the media’s spotlight. Then it was any man she’d ever as much as spoken to – depending on the publication, they were either ‘exes’, ‘romantic liaisons’, ‘love interests’ or ‘conquests’. Then friends joined the list of legitimate targets and I was top of the pile. I was a sitting duck.

  There was a spell when I couldn’t leave the flat – a tight, chummy huddle of journalists camped outside, bringing each other Starbucks and greeting me whenever I opened the door with a shutter-clicking hail of ‘Megan, Megan, how are you feeling today, Megan?’

  A dead adult never ignites quite the coverage a case involving a child does, but one editor went as far as claiming our story had a ‘tragic Shakespearian quality – two almost-sisters, torn apart by death’.

  Funny how they’re such experts on me. I never realized I had ‘the classic, suburban upbringing’, that I was ‘a typical Libran’, that my sadness was proving ‘an unbearable millstone’.

  Grief counsellors have been wheeled out, articles illustrated with colourful drawings and infographics. Coping with loss. What to expect when your best friend dies. Celebrities who’ve lost their besties.

  I tried cooperating – forced myself to look into their cameras, responded to their questions because, like wasps in a jar, I feared antagonizing them. When that backfired, I refused to engage, but it made no difference: they’d decided on their angle anyway.

  Having rinsed me, one website ran a photo of my mum and dad on ‘a break from supporting’ me, the snide subtext, as evidenced by the ‘Parker parents enjoy a beach stroll in Devon’ caption, presumably being that they weren’t allowed a weekend away for their anniversary. It was far from the sole such case. Stuff about parenthood, friendship, how our city centres have become Friday- and Saturday-night no-go zones – they’re all fair game, if Alice is the ‘hook’. Spotting a bandwagon, one broadsheet jumped aboard with a feature headlined ‘Salmon story highlights Leveson’s impotence’. Apparently I raise some interesting questions.

  I forget what I have – and haven’t – said. I’m utterly worn out by it, yet still they circle jackal-like for another bite of the corpse, another twist, an encore, a sequel.

  There’s been interpretation, extrapolation and exaggeration (Alice would have said that reminded her of the Just a Minute catchphrase); leaps of logic and faith; two and two added together in a credible way to make five. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

  I read somewhere that I quit my job not because of my wish to return to full-time education, but because I was left incapable of working. Fellow employees – unnamed – had witnessed me become ‘a shadow of my former self’ and ‘in danger of buckling under the blunt force of bereavement’. There have been a lot of unnamed sources.

  Only this week, one blog broke the ‘news’, sandwiched between stuff about Jay-Z and Jim Davidson, that Alice and I ‘regularly’ smoked weed. Well, hello. Since when has three or four times in the last ten years constituted regularly? The justification? Half a line from a mutual friend. (Don’t worry, Nik, I don’t hold it against you; you were a lamb to the slaughter.)

  Among the pop-up ads for fifty per cent off shoes, the personal injury claims, the guarantees to lose seven pounds in seven days, I’ve been given the wrong surname, the incorrect age and had my home town transplanted to Cambridgeshire. For what it’s worth, my dad wasn’t a manager in a furniture store; it was an upholstery firm. It was a semi-detached house I grew up in. The holiday I had with Alice’s family when I was eleven was in Greece not Turkey. Even the nice stuff they say is tainted. It wasn’t a ‘picture-postcard’ childhood we had; it was a typical, normal one and it’s disingenuous to recast it.

  I’ve been called a religious fanatic, a party girl, a PR dogsbody, a run-of-the-mill twenty-something. What’s happening to me has parallels to what’s happened to Alice. I should count my blessings, though. I’m here to read it.

  A few sites – presumably because they feel the angle would strike a chord with their readers – have called on the public to leave me alone. ‘How much more should this woman have to take?’ they asked.

  I can see why the never-ending nature of news intermittently wore Alice out. ‘It never sleeps,’ she told me once. ‘Like me!’

  For every individual who decrees me nice, there’s another who protests the opposite – who pitches in when I’m debated in chat rooms like the double-dip recession or the cleanliness of table cloths on TripAdvisor; suggestions of ‘brave’ countered by ‘broken’, ‘loyal’ parried by ‘false’, ‘normal’ by ‘weird’.

  I’ve come to see why celebs and politicians employ spin doctors. It’s never been my bag, that brand of PR, the sneaky and furtive dealings that pushed names into – and kept names out of – the media, the back-room trades for which Max Clifford was so famed, before the media beast he’d tamed turned on him. Serves him right: that’s what you get if you swim with sharks.

  They must have had enough of me by now? Surely they’ll soon move on, locust-like, to their next victim? Haven’t they had their pound of flesh? Please leave me alone now.

  Naively, I thought it would be helpful to blog, but it’s merely fanned the flames, so this is definitely my last post. Besides, here’s what they ought to be focusing on. How Indiana Cooke is capitalizing on a calamity. ‘A unique perspective on the Alice Salmon case,’ the advance publicity for his book is promising. ‘An explosive insider’s account of the case that’s got the country talking.’

  Smelling a bestseller, the publishers announced it could be on the shelves as early as next summer or even spring. They should be ashamed. Him, too,
and his self-satisfied, self-deprecating creepiness: sucking his glasses and informing interviewers there’ll be another chapter in this whole sorry saga.

  PR teaches you to stick to the script, but sometimes you have to speak from the heart. ‘Spit it out,’ Alice used to say and I will, I will.

  I’m sorry if my grief isn’t enough for you, if it isn’t the right kind of grief – but please leave me alone now. No one knows how much I’ve lost.

  Comments have been disabled on this blog post.

  Letter sent by Robert Salmon,

  3 September 2012

  Harding, Young & Sharp

  3 Bow’s Yard

  London EC1Y 7BZ

  Mr Cooke,

  The task has fallen to me to write to you on behalf of my family.

  For the record, I wish to state that we in no way sanction, approve or applaud the contents of your book. That’s one word you won’t get to use on the cover: authorized.

  My mother’s wittering about one description of it she spotted: ‘hybrid of page-turner and social science’.

  ‘Grave-robbing, more like,’ she says. Peculiar way to spend a life, she reckons, digging up the dead.

  You bastard, Cooke. I’m enclosing a print-off of an email Alice drafted, but apparently never sent, on 10 December 2004. Bet you won’t include this in your so-called ‘all-inclusive’ book. Yes, you carp on about truth – well, publish this, then your claims might have less of a hollow ring.

  I caught the tail end of a Radio 4 show recently on which you were pontificating about ‘righting wrongs’ and your ultimate faith in the law. Well the law hasn’t delivered us answers yet so perhaps it is an ass, after all.

  I’ve discharged my filial duty by informing you of our position on the book. What my parents didn’t request I inform you – but I will – is that Mum hasn’t gone near a drink for some weeks now and has vowed to never do so again. We’re incredibly proud of her.

  Listen to me, I’m doing what I vowed not to – entering a dialogue, conversing, elaborating. It’s true what they say, you do draw people in. But don’t let your famous ego run away with you. Mum says you mean less to her than one single mote of dust. Her words.

  As for my father and me, we know a dirty old man when we see one; we actually feel pity for you. Contain any temptations to self-aggrandizement or any inflated sense of grandeur, professor – hearing of your assignation with Mum was actually a relatively minor blow, given the tragedy we’ve experienced.

  I began this fully intending to compose a legal missive, but it appears to be transmogrifying. Alice used to say I was a stuffed-shirt solicitor. ‘Take a risk every now and then, Robster,’ she’d say. ‘It’ll do you good.’ So I will. I have a confession: I left you a voicemail on 24 May, which I shouldn’t have. For that, I apologize.

  Regardless of that, do keep uppermost in your mind our warning about leaving this family alone because I won’t elaborate here on what my father has vowed to do should you ignore that request.

  Even if you do attempt to bother them, they’ll be gone. They’re having a fresh start, moving, changing their contact details, wiping the slate clean. You won’t find them, professor, and Mum says you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. She says you, like the rest of the world, can go hang. She says Alice – the real Alice – will live on longer in her heart than she will in any book. And you can put that somewhere else, she says, somewhere the sun don’t shine.

  Incidentally, none of us have the slightest intention of reading your book.

  Yours,

  Robert Salmon

  Email sent by Alice Salmon,

  3 February 2012

  From: Alicethefish7@gmail.com

  To: Lukea504@gmail.com

  Subject: US

  Attachment: Lemmings.jpg

  Hey Mr L,

  Been thinking about us – been thinking about v little else, in fact, for the past two months and I’ve come to a conclusion. I’m not going to lie, I’ve gone round in circles and I’ll never not hate what you did, but I don’t hate you. I can’t. I love you. I love you and the rest is detail. I need more time before we talk, but it’s important you know now. That’s all.

  You made a huge, selfish mistake, but I’m no paragon (look it up!) of virtue and I’m not prepared to let my pride derail our future. Don’t panic, I’m not getting all heavy – let’s take a chill pill before we even reconsider moving in together – but that’s what we could have together here – a future.

  Remember the day we went up on the Eye? I want more days like that. That was the best. Up in the sky, flying; London, our London, spread out beneath us. I pretended to be gazing at the river and Parliament and the South Bank, but it was you I was fixated by, you, and I was consumed by a sugar rush of awareness: Some girls spend a lifetime waiting for this.

  I’ve been in a trance these past two months – going to work and the gym and seeing the girls – it’s not as if I haven’t been busy, but it’s been black and white, vanilla, nothing’s sparkled or sung or stood out. I feel very alive when I’m with you and when I remember that my decision seemed phenomenally simple. Here’s the thing, Mr L, I want us to be together, not because I’m afraid of the alternative – I’d cope, I’d be just fine, we both would, but who wants to cope? Who wants to be just fine? Bollocks to that old bollocks. I deserve more than that. We both do.

  I’ll have to go in a mo; the boss is chasing me for a story. I’ll ring this man who apparently came home from work last night to find double yellow lines painted across the entrance to his drive and I’ll document the words he uses: ones, I expect, like ‘shocked’ and ‘fuming’ and ‘bureaucracy gone mad’. And you call me a high-flyer! Have just tapped your number up on my phone keypad – I might have deleted it from the contacts list, but it’s etched onto my brain – and nearly called you. It’s so hard not to. I can hear how you’d sound when you pick up: the tone of your voice, your cadence (look that up too!). But I need more time and space to get my head round what’s happened – let’s not skate around it, what you’ve done – and you need to respect that. Can you do that for me please? Our two months will be up next week and there would be a certain appeal to us meeting then, a symmetry, but you mustn’t push me, Luke. Besides, part of me likes the notion of saving talking to you – having it to look forward to. I’ll keep it in my head all weekend when I’m trailing round the Hampton (it’s going to be a messy one!); it’ll be my secret, our secret. Does that make me sound bat-shit crazy? Well, aren’t we all a little bit? Especially when we’re in love. Because have I mentioned that? I LOVE YOU.

  Ax

  PS: This is all assuming you want to carry on dating me, of course, because you might have met someone far smarter and far prettier in the last eight weeks. There again, you’d need more than eight weeks to find someone who’d put up with your incessant carping on about films and shirt ironing OCD!

  PPS: If you ever pull a stunt like this again I’ll cut your knackers off!

  PPPS: I love you.

  Email sent by Elizabeth Salmon,

  8 October 2012

  From: Elizabeth_salmon101@hotmail.com

  To: jfhcooke@gmail.com

  Subject: Her

  Dear Jem,

  Bet you didn’t expect to hear from me again, did you? I never expected to be back in contact. I never expected any of this. Well, don’t fret, I’ll be out of your hair soon. But having chatted to Meg, I feel obliged to email. I appreciate the two of you no longer see eye to eye, but you need to put aside your silly prejudices. She’s opened my eyes.

  ‘Sorry for not being in touch recently,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to avoid reminders. The longer I left it, the harder it got.’

  ‘Sweetheart, come here,’ I said. She tumbled into my arms and I inhaled deeply: a smell that reminded me of a smell that reminded me of Alice.

  I visited under the pretext of returning the Kazuo Ishiguro book. Bless her, clearly unable to face knocking she’d left it on my doorstep one n
ight, but I figured if Alice gave it to her, it meant she’d have wanted her to have it.

  ‘I still miss her every single day, Aunty Liz.’

  It must have been well over ten years since she’d called me that: the ‘aunty’ unshowily dropped at exactly the point Alice abandoned calling this girl’s mum ‘Aunty Pam’.