The Disappearance of Emily Marr

by Louise Candlish

  I saw that I couldn’t possibly go to work. I phoned Charlotte, grateful to get her voicemail and not have to speak directly to her. I said there was a legal emergency to do with my day off on the Wednesday, but I would be in, as usual, the next day, Saturday, always our busiest of the week thanks to the standard back-to-back birthday parties. I could only pray she did not discover what the emergency was, if she had not done so already.

  That done, and Matt’s voice already fading from memory, I sensed the beginnings of what would become the defining emotion of this period: besieged, hunted – and it was still a full day before any photographers would arrive at my gate. I tried to do normal things, treat this as a spontaneous day off: I took a shower, but the water felt like an assault, the nerve endings in my skin ten times more sensitive than usual; I watched television (I was not on air myself – not yet) and did some laundry, anything that allowed me to pretend for two minutes that I’d never seen Nina’s article and she had not set in motion something truly diabolical. I successfully ignored my ringing phone, declining call after call, including one from Phil, but I could not keep myself from the laptop. By the early afternoon, a search of my name yielded thousands of listings – thousands, from a standing start six hours ago! – and the numbers were increasing with every minute. I was fixated on those comments below Nina’s column, which now numbered many hundreds. There were breathtakingly bold statements of opinion regarding my appearance and sexual desirability, shockingly easy expressions of agreement that I was a hateful witch who deserved to die or a slut who would not be kicked out of bed. Thankfully the killer angle had not been so readily embraced, but other notorious women of history were freely referenced, mostly famous prostitutes and mistresses. Some became queens, others remained the grubby cast-offs of sportsmen, but not one, from Mata Hari to Monica Lewinsky, was a woman to whom I had ever wanted – or thought – to liken myself.

  It was less a sick joke now than a waking nightmare. Scanning my text messages, I read one from Matt: I hope you’re managing to lie low. My supervisor just told me to go home early. First time ever!

  He was my unlikely sole supporter that first day; there was an unconditional loyalty in our communications that reminded me of the happier days of our relationship. There were times that terrible Friday when I wished he were back in the flat with me, that we’d never parted, never moved here, never met the Laings or the Meekses or the Woodhalls.

  That evening, as guides began to appear to the background of this contagious new scandal (Get up to speed on the Emily Marr crash!), I took the opportunity to read the evidence of those questioned before and after me at the inquest. Alexander’s girlfriend, a gentle, dark-haired beauty who had a place at Oxford in the autumn and whose photograph was placed next to mine for good/evil contrast, explained that she’d received a text from her boyfriend when he was en route that final morning, established as the penultimate communication from any of the three (the very last being Hugo’s voicemail to his father): ‘Mum insisting we come back to London. In a state but won’t let me drive. Call you when back.’

  Exact findings were given of the toxicology tests, heard by the coroner on the first day: Sylvie had had a blood alcohol level of 260mg per 100ml of blood, the legal limit being 80mg per 100ml. Paramedics had described how she and Hugo had had to be cut free from the overturned wreckage; Alexander had been thrown through the windscreen and been ‘close to decapitation’.

  The pathologist had been present to answer questions and Arthur had asked him if any of the three might have been conscious between impact and death. The pathologist replied that death would have occurred instantly. I wondered if that was any comfort, given the statements of some of the witnesses. One, a woman called Lisa Hawes, had said of Hugo as he flashed by at ninety miles an hour or more, ‘He had a look of total terror on his face. I’ve never seen anything so awful in my whole life. It was like someone on a rollercoaster who’s just seen that he’s come off the track and is plummeting to the ground.’

  I tried to go to bed early and escape these terrible details through sleep, but I couldn’t steady my thoughts enough to lose consciousness. I’d spent so long at the computer my brain continued to sift and search, as if the thousands of pages I had not yet seen were backed up, opening one after the other, never quite fast enough to outpace the incessant arrival of new ones.

  The following morning, Saturday, almost every national newspaper reported on the inquest, less for the value of the story itself (it was a tragedy to be sure, but whatever Nina liked to believe Sylvie Woodhall was not Princess Diana) as for unprecedented social media activity that had followed the original column, which was described as ‘campaigning’, ‘incendiary’, ‘electrifying’.

  In the Press, there was a new piece by her entitled WHY I BLAME EMILY MARR FOR THE LOSS OF ALL OUR LIVES, in which she linked me with drug dealers and fraudsters. ‘At best, she is a poster girl for brainless Britain,’ she wrote; ‘at worst, the most casual and amoral of killers-by-proxy’. Elsewhere in the national press, a rival tabloid had a feature called WHY 30 IS THE MOST DANGEROUS AGE, based chiefly on the fact that I had begun my affair with Arthur at this age. The same picture from the wedding was shown, with the caption: Emily Marr: A Danger to Society? A second photograph from the same event was captioned Beautiful on the Outside, Ugly on the Inside.

  I was in no fit state to work, concerned though I was that this would be my third day off that week. As I dithered, Charlotte phoned and made the decision for me. She was in a state of high agitation. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were mixed up in all that business?’

  By then it seemed remarkable that there should be any living soul only just being made aware of my infamy. ‘I told you I was there the morning of the accident,’ I reminded her quietly.

  ‘But you said you hardly knew the guy?’ She didn’t pause for an answer, exclaiming, ‘This is a disaster, Emily, he’s some sort of world-famous doctor!’ as if I had not noticed of my own wit. ‘Ash said people have been taking photos of the shop on their phones, and we’ve had two reporters on the line already, on a Saturday!’

  But I was rapidly learning that there was no such thing as a weekend on the internet, no closing hours, or even minutes. ‘Will you be able to cope without me?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to. You can’t possibly come in, it’s all anyone’s talking about. We’ll be mobbed for all the wrong reasons.’

  ‘I’m sure it will have died down by the end of the day,’ I said, hearing the pathetic plea in my voice. ‘Shall I aim to come in as usual on Monday?’

  ‘Let’s leave it for a while, speak again on Monday or Tuesday,’ Charlotte said. ‘See if it has died down.’ But I knew – and understood – that, whether the frenzy had abated or not, she meant we would talk only about formalising my departure. My poor attendance record was one thing, but she couldn’t risk her business being associated any more closely than it already was with a woman fast becoming known as the country’s most hated home-wrecker. Ugly on the inside.

  Having been indoors now for thirty-six hours, I decided to brave an expedition to the shop for bread and milk. For fear of being recognised, I tucked my hair inside my collar and, for the first time in years in public, wore no make-up at all. Managing the errand without being accosted, I walked back the long way, past number 11. The flowers and notes were back on the railings, though none of the reports I’d read stated with any certainty that Arthur had returned to live there. My instinct told me he had not.

  Returning to 199 with my bag of provisions and a stack of newspapers in my arms, I noticed a cluster of men at the gate, young, casually dressed, apparently familiar to one another: photographers, four of them. Spotting me, they began to issue a stream of low-key questions and comments, as if we were good friends delighted to meet accidentally: ‘Here she is’; ‘All right, Emily?’; ‘What do you think about Nina Meeks having a go at you like that?’; ‘How do you feel about being an internet sensation?’ It was chummy, alm
ost festive, the way they bantered as they followed me up the path to get their shots (there was none of the shutter-clicking you associated with paparazzi, only the silent surveillance of digital equipment). It would later be considered a ‘PR strategy’ but when I hid my face in my newspapers it was in fact because I was too shocked to look up from my feet; the result was that none of the photos would identify me clearly.

  They stayed until early evening and then returned the next morning, pioneers of what by Monday would become a pack befitting the winner of a television talent show or a home-coming Olympic medallist. It was a surreal development to a situation already impossible for me to absorb or comprehend, and, inevitably, my value system began to lose its solidity. I unearthed the ‘emergency’ cigarettes I’d hidden in a kitchen drawer when Matt and I moved in and smoked my first one in almost eighteen months – then a second and a third. I was promptly sick.

  I received more voicemails and texts that day than I had in the previous year. I made only one myself, to the hospital ward. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to visit this weekend,’ I told the sister on duty, trying to sound unflustered.

  ‘That’s probably for the best,’ she said matter-of-factly, which told me that the news had reached even secure hospital units. I begged her to try to keep any offending newspapers from my father. Though he had lost the ability to follow anything longer than a sentence or two, he might see a picture of me he recognised, something dredged up from my childhood, and become confused or distressed. He certainly didn’t need to know his only daughter had been elected a national hate figure.

  Again, with no excuse but cowardice, I avoided calls from my brother.

  That evening, I had the discombobulating experience of seeing myself discussed on television. On one of the twenty-four-hour news channels, two journalists and a retired coroner debated whether or not the media storm begun by Nina heralded a brave new age of journalism, the death of celebrity culture and wannabe reality TV in favour of real stories about ordinary people.

  ‘What has captured everyone’s imagination is that this is real-life drama, as opposed to “reality” drama, in which no one actually behaves as they would in real life because their aim is to become a celebrity.’

  ‘But aren’t we just making a celebrity of Emily Marr? Isn’t this just a different way of getting to the same result?’

  ‘It’s not the same at all. There’s nothing whatsoever to suggest this woman has courted our attention.’

  My breath caught at this note of support: did it mark the end of this nightmare, the return of reason?

  ‘You’re saying this is a private tragedy and it should have remained private?’ asked the presenter.

  ‘I’m saying this is a personal agenda on the part of Nina Meeks, not a story of national importance. Inquests into road traffic accidents take place every day of the week up and down the country. There’s nothing about this one that merits more than a report in the local paper, or maybe a summary of the more lurid elements in the Daily Mail.’

  ‘But the fact that there is so much interest suggests Meeks’ instincts were right, people are finding meaning in this one in particular. Don’t you think it’s possible that every so often we get a young woman in the public eye who is representative of her generation, and Emily Marr is ours? She’s a Christine Keeler figure, a Monica Lewinsky, an important symbol?’

  ‘Our first poster girl for immorality this century?’ the presenter asked, clarifying.

  ‘Well, I could name plenty of others who might take that honour.’

  There was knowing laughter and then the supporter spoke up once more: ‘But there’s nothing new about having an affair with a married man and not thinking about the consequences, is there? All this “old morals” stuff the Press is peddling is hogwash. We all know there’s been sexual infidelity since time immemorial; there’s always been this sort of scandal in communities. And the man Marr had an affair with is hardly Jack Profumo, is he? Or Bill Clinton? He’s not a major political name —’

  ‘He’s one of our leading surgeons,’ the presenter interjected, ‘with an international reputation.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s not a public figure in their league, is he? He’s not a household name.’

  ‘He is now!’

  The one I thought of as my defender grew exasperated. ‘Look, if you want my opinion, this is a witch-hunt, pure and simple, and we should be very careful about taking part in it, because normal citizens are not equipped to deal with sudden persecution of this intensity. This young woman has had no preparation, no media training. She could be sitting at home watching this, completely terrified by the situation she finds herself in.’

  ‘I doubt that! She may not be working the press right now, but who’s to say she won’t pop up later this year in the jungle or the Big Brother house? Publishers would pay a fortune for her story, if she acts quickly enough.’

  The retired coroner, asked his opinion at last, said, ‘I’m pleased to see the public being educated in the nature of coroners’ inquiries, the work these unsung heroes do. Inquests like this answer important questions for loved ones, they explain what would otherwise have remained unexplained, and that can be a great consolation to surviving relatives.’

  On this gentler note, the presenter brought the discussion to a close. I told myself the story would get no further than this cable channel, which couldn’t have huge viewing figures, especially on a Saturday night, when most people were out meeting friends, letting their hair down, starting love affairs that were nobody’s business but their own.

  The next day, I read Nina’s belated obituary of Sylvie, published that morning in the sister Sunday of the Press. People reported on Twitter and other sites that they’d been reduced to tears by it. There were, when I looked, 812 comments posted under the online version. If anything, activity seemed to increase at the weekend. Was this all anyone did? Read about how sexually depraved a woman they’d never met was and post a comment saying the country had gone to the dogs?

  Did Arthur read the obituary too? And if he did, had he, as I had, lingered on one sentence in particular: ‘It was Sylvie who was driving that terrible morning, yes, but the truth is she was driven to that tragic ending’?

  What were his feelings about the monstrous circus that now surrounded the deaths of his wife and sons? Did reporters hound him as they did me, and if they’d run him to ground, where was that ground? The cottage in Sussex, where Sylvie and the boys had spent their last night? The Inn on the Hill? His office in Harley Street? Where was he? Was anyone comforting him as he needed to be comforted?

  Even then, I longed with all my heart for it to be me.

  On Monday morning, with reporters and photographers multiplying in the street outside, my doorbell rang incessantly and the thumping on the door could be felt in vibrations on the first floor, in rattling window frames and shuddering floorboards. Voices called up to me from below, sometimes rough, as if waking me in an emergency, other times more musical – ‘Em-i-lee, Em-i-lee’ – in the hope of enchanting me to an open window, preferably half naked and camera-ready. They did not seem to consider that mine was only one of three flats in the building and that others might be disturbed by this harassment. By chance, the couple in the lower flat were on holiday; the occupants of the flat upstairs, three medical students from St Barnabas’, kept irregular hours and so I could never quite be sure when they were in or out. A point of particular drama and distress came when one of the students, a Malaysian called Ashraf, let himself in downstairs and reporters forced the door as he tried to close it behind him. His footsteps, the soft, familiar ones of a neighbour who often came home at dawn, were followed by a stampede of others, coming to a halt, inevitably, at my door. I don’t know how long the hammering and shouting went on but I wedged a heavy armchair against the frame and earplugs in my ears to try to wait it out. I had no doubt that poor Ashraf’s image would appear online, with the suggestion that he was yet another lover of the murdering
slag on the first floor.

  In the evening, watching from a painful angle by the living-room window, I saw Marcus Laing come down the road on his way home from work and, reaching his gate, turn to face the assembled media next door. His demeanour was relaxed, his expression open-minded. A minute later, my bell rang in the short, abrupt way of a genuine caller, as opposed to the lengthy din caused by a thumb pressed down for minutes at a time.

  I did not answer, of course.

  ‘See? You’re wasting your time, guys,’ I heard him say as he returned to the pack. ‘She’s gone away. We haven’t seen her since last week. Why don’t you try her work?’

  I didn’t hear the response, but guessed he was being told I had failed to turn up for work again. Perhaps Charlotte had even announced my dismissal.

  ‘There you go, she must have left town.’ I didn’t know whether he was trying to protect me or just voicing wishful thinking. ‘I don’t blame her, either,’ he added, ‘with you lot on her case!’

  ‘Know her well, do you?’ one of them called out. ‘A friendly kind of neighbour, is she? Got a thing about married men, apparently,’ which caused the rest to shout with laughter and rain further questions down on poor Marcus. His gait visibly tenser, he paced back up the path, head down as he turned in to his own gate, so I couldn’t see his face.