by Bella Mackie
Bryony.
The details were scant. She’d been found unconscious in her bedroom at 7.30 p.m., by a member of staff (read, maid). Paramedics were called, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. The article mentioned the tragic death of her mother just months before, intimating that suicide must be a possibility. I knew that was nonsense. Bryony wouldn’t have killed herself in a fug of grief. She didn’t dive down to those emotional levels, everything was boredom, mockery or desire for her. Base level stuff. The family spokesman had pleaded for privacy at this difficult time, and apart from the basic stuff about Simon and her gilded life, no more information was given.
I spent a frenzied hour checking Instagram, news sites and gossip blogs. Her last post was at 4 p.m., a photo of her on a rug looking at a sausage dog (hopefully this one was just on loan #WHEREISFENDI) which sat beside her. The caption read ‘when bae wants love’. So no helpful pointers for the press which would help them with their tragic rich girl narrative. Elsewhere, a few Instagram friends professed their shock with prayer hand emojis and crying faces. RIP was floated around a lot, an expression I’ve always hated. Rest in peace. No matter how lively or funny or desperate to live you were. Just rest now. A generic, pointless comment. But there were no new details, nothing to grasp at. Where was Simon? Was he at home when it happened or was he out with some new fling, dining at a private members’ bar, making a business deal? How did he find out – did the maid call him or did the police? Was he alone now, without his wife, without his daughter – his only recognised child, his parents gone? His brother dead. Did he have an inkling of what was happening yet? How could he. He’d managed away my existence just as he’d managed every other troublesome detail in his privileged life.
But I was alone too. With every other death I had made it happen, been there for the last breath, felt like I was in control. Here, I was just like everyone else who had picked up a paper. I knew nothing and could tell nobody. For the first time in a long while, I wanted my mum. I wanted her to know that her daughter was the one who was alive, that I was doing this for her, that I would never let her life have been discarded and forgotten by these people. But I wasn’t going to be one of those people who thought that they could sense their dead loved ones smiling down on them, and I wouldn’t be pulled into a maudlin pity party for myself. I opened a bottle of wine, and ran a bath. Bryony was dead, the details could wait. Her demise meant so much more than ticking another one off my list. It meant that the list was almost complete. One more to go. Daddy dearest, I was coming for you.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Writing all that down made me laugh. What a hammy cliffhanger to end on. But I’d finished the story of Bryony’s demise at 2 a.m., in total silence and darkness. Even Kelly wasn’t snoring. I was wired by the end of it, remembering the moment when I realised that I only had one target left. I’d been so close and it had felt so monumental. From the confines of this cell, I wish I’d enjoyed those moments a little more. I should have gone dancing after every murder, or bought myself precious jewellery for every target I’d crossed off the list. I had a list; did I mention that? A physical list, I mean. It was written down in pencil on the back of a photo of me and my mother. The Latimers had given it to me one Christmas, shortly after I’d moved into their house. It wasn’t a huge surprise, given that it was my photo. But Sophie had found it in my desk drawer and taken it to the framers to be displayed properly.
‘You must see this every day, my darling,’ she said when I opened it. ‘Your mother loved you so very much.’ I knew this of course, and I didn’t need Sophie to tell me how much. Besides, I’m not sure Sophie had spoken to my mother really, beyond brief arrangements about playdates which always took place at the Latimer house (‘So much easier for the kids with all this space,’ she’d tell Marie), so her insistence at constantly reminding me that I had been so loved used to get slightly irritating. Jimmy used to roll his eyes when Sophie would trill about how proud Marie would be of my exam results, or my ‘excellent’ fairy cakes. Thank fuck for Jimmy.
But it was a nice frame, and I’d hung it by my bed at the Latimers’. When I moved out, it was always displayed somewhere I could see it when I woke up. When I was planning how to kill Kathleen and Jeremy, I’d taken it off the wall and held it, looking at Marie’s face a while, wondering what she’d make of my intentions. Probably she’d have been horrified and anguished, devastated that I’d decided to waste my life trying to avenge her own. But she wasn’t here to tell me that, so I didn’t have to give her opinion much weight. And besides, I was doing this for myself as well. Marie was dead and gone. In life, she’d never wanted to right the wrongs done to her. But she’d never wanted to right the wrongs done to me either. We both suffered because she was too weak to demand what was fair. I’d ended up as an extra in a family that wasn’t my own, with no security or safety net. With the shot of losing my mother and the chaser of seeing my father parade his legitimate family all around town. If I wanted to redress the balance, she could hardly protest.
Before I’d put the photo back on the wall, I’d taken the pencil I was making notes with and scrawled the names of every Artemis I figured I’d have to kill on the back of the frame. The marks were light enough that you’d barely notice them unless you were really looking, but every time I’d drawn a line through a name, I’d held the pencil down, dragging it through every letter until they were completely obliterated. It was a small but important marker. But I could have bought some nice jewellery too.
After I’d finished recounting the tale of Bryony and her sad encounter with some peach serum, I’d fallen asleep, waking in a panic when the morning bell sounded. I was still holding my notepad, and Kelly was moving about the cell, singing a hideous rendition of a One Direction song. I assume the original was dire enough, but her pitch made it endlessly worse. I pushed the paper between the mattress and the bed frame and said good morning. Stupid, careless mistake to risk Kelly seeing my work. I watched as she brushed her teeth and applied foundation that was slightly too dark for her skin. I was surprised to see how many women made an effort to look nice while locked up when I first got here, but now I understand it better. Prison will try to dominate every part of you if you’re not careful. From prosaic things like how many pairs of socks you can have to more intimate ones, like changing the things you dream about. Before I came here, I had vivid and surreal dreams almost every night. Now I dream about just one thing. Running down the river path, wind behind me and sky all around. Don’t need Freud to analyse that. So if a bit of makeup helps ground you a little bit, I understand. But blend it better, Kelly, that’s all it would take.
I felt fairly confident that she’d not seen the notepad. Her demeanour was as blandly cheerful as ever, and she wittered on about a visitor she had coming later that day. ‘A friend,’ she said, as she applied coat after coat of spidery mascara, ‘but maybe he wants more. Couldn’t blame him.’ Kelly looked at me in the mirror, and I could see that the girl was desperate for me to ask her more about this visitor. But I wasn’t in the mood to listen to a slightly delusional monologue about how desirable Kelly was to the opposite sex, and so I pulled on my tracksuit, told her I hoped it went well and headed off to the library.
I should finish off explaining what happened with Caro since it’s why I’m in here, wearing a polyester tracksuit instead of something nice from MaxMara. It’s why Kelly is the closest person to me, since Jimmy won’t reply to my letters and I’ve realised I have very few other friends. I knew that before really, I didn’t exactly spend my time cultivating close relationships before all of this. I was possessed, I see that now. Only focusing on my plan to cut down the Artemis family and not even having the foresight to build up a life that would be waiting for me once it was all done. Stupid, of course. I relied on Jimmy to be there when I was finished, thinking that he’d be enough and that the rest would come easily. And most people are sort of terrible. Thick or dull or a hideous combination of both. I could never tolerate
it, and so I never tried to. My current predicament has hardly disabused me of this notion.
But Jimmy wasn’t the constant in my life that I presumed he would be. Two days after Gemma Adebayo had told me that I was free to go, I had been woken up early by a hammering at my front door. I opened it blearily, and was promptly arrested for the murder of Caro Morton. I was taken back to the police station, this time with less concern for my comfort or wellbeing, and charged. As I sat with the detectives for several hours that day, it all began to come out. Jimmy had told the police he thought it was a murder immediately, yelling about how much I hated Caro. My jealousy, it was suggested, led me to push her violently off the balcony and hope that it would look like a tragic accident. The other girl left at the party gave a signed statement saying that I’d argued with Jimmy about his engagement and then asked Caro to come and smoke with me outside. This mousy girl, who I later found out was called Angelica and who was decidedly less weedy than her appearance had suggested, was instrumental in the case against me. Who knew that the girl with a fulsome collection of Alice bands had it in her?
I was refused bail, after it was passionately argued that I was a risk to the public, which made me screw up my face in disbelief and swear loudly, something the judge didn’t appreciate much. My appointed brief, a flailing graduate who hadn’t even read my notes before he entered the courtroom, did nothing to push back on this and was fired the moment I exited the building and was remanded into custody.
It was then that I got my first taste of jail. It was a horrible shock initially. The centre I was sent to was a grim concrete block behind a huge wall in South London. I was strip-searched, relieved of my possessions and sent to a holding cell. It was freezing cold and I spent three days obsessing over what, if anything, I had left in my flat which might point the police towards my actual crimes. I visualised every corner of my home, mentally walking around the flat to try to remember anything I might have been sloppy enough to leave on display. I couldn’t sleep, and my mind kept distorting the images I tried to conjure, making me start again and again until I wept with frustration. By day three I felt calmer, having forced myself to breathe deeply for an hour. By then, I was confident that nothing would point towards the Artemis deaths. This was bolstered by the knowledge that the police weren’t looking for anything that wasn’t connected to Caro, and nobody knew of my connection to the murders anyway. As far as they were concerned, I’d spontaneously pushed a love rival off a balcony in a fit of jealousy. Unless they were hoping that I was the kind of person who kept a deeply confessional diary, any evidence for that would be sparse. How ridiculous that I only decided to start a deeply confessional diary once I was actually in the bowels of the criminal justice system.
I hired a new lawyer, Victoria Herbert, and prayed that she would be the Rottweiler she promised to be. A Rottweiler in Hermès scarves and Louboutin heels. The way I liked it. Herbert was bullish about my chances at getting off. There was no forensic evidence, apart from some contact Caro and I had had during the course of the night, and the bulk of the case was based on testimony from Angelica Saunders and Jimmy. Jimmy, giving evidence against me. Jimmy, the only person I truly cared about, telling the court that he believed I had pushed his fiancée off a balcony, not looking at me once during the trial. Jimmy, pictured in the Sun one Friday, walking hand in hand into court with Angelica. Her in a hideous tweed pencil skirt and ballet shoes looking proud. Jimmy might have left me in a bemused heap but I began to respect Angelica’s hustle.
The jury deliberated for six hours. Victoria sat with me during that wait, which felt like a year. When we were told that the jury was ready to return a verdict, she was ebullient, assuring me that a quick turnaround was definitely a good sign. For all her bluster, she was completely wrong on that count. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. The word echoed around the courtroom as people gasped and one man shouted something angrily from the gallery. I stood there, my hand reaching for my throat, trying to remember to breathe and failing. I looked towards Jimmy, who was sitting with his head on Sophie’s shoulder as John patted his arm mechanically. Only Jimmy’s sister, Annabelle looked at me, tilting her head as though she were sizing me up for the first time.
And that was that. I was sentenced to sixteen years and taken to Limehouse a week later. I missed the window for an appeal, stuck in shock and unable to know what to do next. But then George Thorpe came along, a middle-aged white man here to save the day as he imagined he was born to do. He had an appeal granted, arguing that there was further eyewitness testimony which was not sought out by police at the time.
I appointed Thorpe at considerable cost after I got here, realising that Victoria Herbert was much more interested in promoting herself as a glamorous attack dog than actually being one. She appeared in Grazia off the back of my case, barely pretending to bat away praise and using the word ‘empowered’ far too much. The staggering fee my new brief charged was made possible because he offered to do it on a buy now, pay later basis. I could see his rationale for this – he wanted some publicity and I could give it to him in spades. I imagine he was aiming for QC, and felt like a high-interest murder case might bolster his chances. He was quite the showman. At the many high-profile trials he’d worked on, the media slavishly reported on his arguments, his floral language, his habit of thumping the table when he was mid passionate defence of his clients. Thorpe had a stellar success rate which meant I felt relaxed about his final bill. Whatever happened, I’d have enough money to put him on a permanent retainer once I’d laid claim to the Artemis empire. Credit to Thorpe, he exposed every possible flaw in the trial, and he used the press to highlight those flaws, knowing that they’d run any story they could on the Morton murderer. During the trial, they’d painted me as a bitter and damaged girl in love with her step-brother (he wasn’t of course, but the tabloids love them some incest-lite), but once I’d been sentenced a new angle was needed. Now I was damaged, but no longer bitter. My fragility was played up – ‘She had nobody really, except for Jimmy’ – and images of me were printed where I looked shy and vulnerable rather than hard and arrogant. These photos were provided by old workmates judging by the clothes I was wearing, and I’m only in them because they were mandatory. It’s amazing what you can decide somebody is like simply from a photo. Thorpe had an old school friend who worked in PR seed some stories about Caro’s mental health problems and hints were dropped about her eating disorder, her love of a good party (read: drugs) and her temper. Awful tactics really, but this isn’t a discussion about media ethics and besides, I would’ve taken one hundred stories ripping Caro to shreds if it had helped my case. I’d have read them even if they hadn’t helped my case.
I have been festering in Limehouse for fourteen months now, and waiting on the appeal for nearly half that time. When I first appointed him, I would call George Thorpe daily, and write long letters to him urging him to explore the balcony again or to force Caro’s therapist to testify to her mental state. I was desperate to be out in days, not weeks, and I was furious every time the lawyer told me to be patient. When it became clear that I would be here for a while, I fell into a depression of sorts. I’m not somebody who gets depressed. I sometimes feel a rising panic in my throat and a need to escape, but I’d never understood people who get so sad that they retreat from life. Perhaps prison makes us all more empathetic, or maybe it’s just natural to get depressed in a place which has strip lighting and communal showers. I started to sleep more, and for a time it felt as though my brain were swimming in treacle. My thoughts slowed down, I stopped exercising and on one particularly low day, I watched the Emmerdale omnibus all the way through with Kelly constantly telling me who everyone was without wanting to slam her head against the wall once.
One day eight months in, I woke up and did 500 press-ups. I was fed up of this alien mood and scared that I would languish in it forever if I didn’t force myself to climb out of it. So I started a strict regimen, waking up at the same time every day, pushing my body
harder and harder with exercises in my cell and walks around the yard. I spent hours in the library reading anything that would give my head a break from this place, and I pestered my lawyer again, but this time with more focus.
And now I am near the appeal decision, and writing this all down to take my mind off it. I am confident that I will be freed, and have already written my speech to read out on the court steps. I think I’ve struck the right tone – injured but magnanimous – and I will wear just enough makeup to look attractive but not so much that I look like I’ve spent fourteen months having a nice time. I want you to be able to see the dark rings under my eyes, and immediately know that I have been nearly broken (but not quite!) by my ordeal. I will talk about how we must remember that despite the trauma of being incarcerated, there is another victim in all of this. Caro, I will say, looking straight at the cameras. I lost nearly two years of my life to this injustice, but Caro lost her whole life that night and we must never forget that. Perhaps I’ll end neatly by announcing that I will be establishing a mentoring scheme for female prisoners with eating disorders in her name, in the hope that I can help even one vulnerable woman. She’d fucking hate being called vulnerable.