People LIke Her

by Ellery Lloyd

  “If only I could sleep as soundly as him, but what’s happened over the past few days has kept me awake at night,” I murmur softly, panning the phone round. “I’ve let you all down, I know that. I’ve let this little man down too. I haven’t been the best I could be. I should’ve taken time away from these little squares to really recover from bringing this new human into the world. I should have taken self-care seriously, so I could care for him—and for you all. Instead, I took on too much, and because my head was all over the place, I fucked up.”

  I take a deep breath, gaze sadly out of the window for a moment.

  “I just really want to take a moment here to talk about kindness. There are some amazing things about this Instagram community, but perhaps we should learn to bear—forgive the pun—with each other a bit more. We need to lift each other up, not knock each other when we’re down. It’s so easy to fire off a comment, write a post, send a DM, without really thinking through the implications. But perhaps we should consider how what we write affects other people out there. I know that I certainly will from now on.”

  I take a break before pressing record again. The roads are getting more rural—I don’t even think I’ve seen a house in the last half an hour, although I have seen quite a few distant corrugated barns, a fair number of sheep, a burned-out trailer, and a hand-painted banner about Brexit stretched across some hay bales. I record a few more emotional musings—the nature of fame, the purity of the love I have for my children, how my husband has been my rock throughout, never for a second doubting me. Then I sign off.

  “As you know, I am stepping away from social media for a while to really evaluate what it means to be here. Never in my wildest dreams, when I started out with my little shoe blog, did I imagine that I would touch a million mamas. So many wonderful things have come out of my life on the grid, and I don’t want to lose that, but I also know it’s taking its toll on my family. We’re all learning how this brave new influencer world works, kind of making it up as we go along. But I need a pause on my journey, a little metaphorical foot rub, a second to catch my breath. So Bear and I are on our way to a digital detox retreat. No social media, just me hanging out with this perfect little human and truly connecting with him, with myself. Because you can’t get this magical time back, can you?”

  The DMs are rolling in thick and fast by this point. You do you, Mama! You give so much, Emmy, we’re right there with you! Don’t leave us, Mamabare, we need you! Such powerful words, you inspiring superhuman! Sending hugs and rainbows!

  Only the odd Why aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I hope you disappear forever creeps in.

  Bad luck, lurker. I’ll be back in five days. I save the stories into my Highlights, so any followers bereft at my social media blackout can rewatch them over the next five days.

  “Nearly there,” says the driver, waking Bear up with a start.

  As we pull up the scrubby track, it becomes clear that Irene wasn’t joking when she said this would be rustic. I have no idea how many people will be at this thing—who’s running it, even. Hagrid perhaps? As I am walking up to the house, the porch light comes on and a woman appears at the door. Dressed in a bobbly cardigan and cord trousers, and with her wispy white hair piled on top of her head, she doesn’t look much like a former tech exec to me.

  “Emmy, welcome! We are so happy to have you here. Please come in, make yourself at home. This will be your sanctuary for the next five days, the place that will disconnect you from the rest of the world, so you can truly switch off,” she says, arms open expansively.

  The driver helps us inside with the bags, which she instructs him to leave in the hall. He confirms the fare, and she pays it in cash. We check the boot and the back seat for any last bits and bobs that might have spilled out, and then she waves him off.

  “I’m afraid we will need to search these for contraband phones and laptops before we show you to your room.” She laughs. “Just take a seat here; there’s a Moses basket behind the sofa for Bear. What a lovely little baby he is.”

  She already has a cup of tea on the table, and pours me one from a patterned china teapot while pointing to a plate of cookies. Christ, this house looks like it was decorated by a suburban housewife—there are teddies clutching hearts on the mantelpiece and one of those dreadful driftwood signs that says LOVE IS WHAT MAKES THIS HOUSE A HOME. The rug under my feet is that black-and-white faux-Moroccan La Redoute one that has its own Instagram account.

  I settle into a grey velvet armchair and take a big sip from what I’m a little surprised to see is a #greydays mug.

  Then, nothing.

  It was so easy. That is what amazes me. How simple the whole thing was. All that creeping around, all that watching your house. All that time I spent observing your movements, as a family, as individuals, accustoming myself to the pattern of your days. The part of the plan that had always given me the most trouble was trying to work out how I was going to get you here. I had all sorts of complicated ideas, spent ages working out various elaborate machinations. I was going to snatch Coco in the park, and leave you a trail of clues. I was going to come along to one of your events, try and persuade you to let me give you and Bear a lift home. I was going to goad you online so insistently, so viciously, that you would feel compelled to unmask me, track me down—the point of the plan being that I would make this as simple as possible—and come here to confront me in person. I was going to write you a series of anonymous letters . . .

  All it needed in the end was three phone calls. It came to me as soon as you announced the name of the “digital detox” retreat.

  There was something typically “you” about that, wasn’t there? Something typically Emmy. Announcing in advance the name of the place you are going on retreat, combining a bout of soul-searching and contrition with a free holiday.

  Five days. Perfect. I could not have asked for everything to fall into place more neatly. If I am lucky, it will be several days before anyone notices anything is amiss. And even when they do, so what? There is nothing to link you to this place, you to me. Only the driver—and how will they find him?

  My first phone call was last night, to the place you were meant to be staying. I told them I was your PA. Nobody questioned it. I told them I was calling to confirm the travel arrangements for today. They were sending a car, weren’t they? Of course, came the reply. It was all booked. Would I like them to reconfirm that? I said if it was not too much trouble. And the car would be arriving at Emmy’s at eleven a.m.? Wonderful.

  My second phone call, early this morning, was to the same number, to apologize. Was this the same person I had spoken to before? Apparently it was. Was there anything I needed, they asked? “I am so sorry about this,” I said. “It’s the baby. The poor little thing has been up all night with a temperature and has just been sick again.” We were waiting, I told them, for the doctor’s to open to see if we could get an emergency appointment. Would it be possible to postpone? We were so sorry about the late notice, I told them. Emmy and Bear had been so much looking forward to it.

  They were very understanding about the whole situation. I promised I would call back soon with Emmy’s diary to hand to discuss alternative dates. They asked me to pass on all their best to Emmy and get-well-soon wishes to little Bear. Of course, they said, they would call and cancel the car and explain the situation.

  My third call was to a local minicab company. Could they do a pickup from an address in London, at eleven a.m. today? I asked about the car, the kind of car, they would be sending. A blue Prius, they said. I told them that would be perfect. The name of the person they were collecting was Emmy Jackson. She would have a tiny baby with her. She would probably have quite a bit of luggage too. The drop-off address? I gave them the address of this place, and told them how to get here. “Once you have found the lane,” I said, “you just keep going. I’ll be here. I’ll be keeping an eye out for you. Yes, I’ll be paying cash. How much? I’ll have it ready.”

  Isn’t it st
range these days, how we all just jump into people’s cars, trust that they are who we assume they are, trust that they will take us where we think we are going?

  And now here you are.

  I could see, even as you were walking up to the front door, even before you got inside, that you were wondering if this could really be the place. I guessed you’d been expecting something a bit fancier, a bit less domestic. I could see you thinking that none of this looked much like any of the pictures on the website, could see your gaze resting on various items around the place, Grace’s little decorating touches, slightly smirking.

  If I had ever had a moment of hesitation about all this, that half-stifled smirk would have quashed it.

  Propofol. That was what was in the cup of tea. A commonly prescribed muscle relaxant and sedative, with some retrograde amnesiac qualities. You took three sips of your tea and fell asleep midsentence. Given those amnesiac qualities, I doubt you’ll even remember that.

  Let me explain all this carefully. You deserve that, at least, I suppose.

  The propofol was to knock you out so that I could get you upstairs (albeit with one long rest on the landing and a lot of huffing and puffing), get you into bed, get you hooked up on the drip. The drip is to deliver the midazolam. That was the stuff that was the hardest to get hold of. The stuff I had to smuggle out bit by bit, one partly used discarded vial at a time, the stuff I have been stockpiling in the fridge for some time now because I need it to make this whole thing work. It is no wonder they have to keep a close eye on it in hospitals. It is strong stuff, midazolam, a powerful muscle relaxant and antianxiety medication. That’s why we give it to people before they have operations. Not just to knock them out, but to suppress their natural instinct to panic, to struggle, to flee.

  In an ideal world—if this were all happening on TV, or in a movie—I would just have set you up and left you there, on the bed. Unfortunately, in the real world, for all the reasons I have already explained, that’s not the way things work. I don’t want to kill you, after all. And you can’t just sedate someone that heavily and leave them unsupervised for that long. For this to work, for this to turn out the way I am intending, I am going to have to be here to keep an eye on you. Not all the time, naturally. I am not sure I could stand it, being in the same room the whole time, given what’s going to happen over the next few days. I’ll be downstairs, mostly, or outside, pottering around in the garden. It’s only about once every six hours I’ll need to pop back and check your blood pressure, make sure your breathing is okay, that your airways are not in danger of occlusion. At intervals I will want to measure the level of CO2 in your blood. Every so often I’ll need to dose you up again, adjust your drip. Oh, don’t worry, Emmy. I am—or at least I was—a professional. You’ll be very well looked after. I have some oxygen right here in case you need it. I am just about to fix you up to the finger probe, and then we’re all set.

  Did I mention you’ll be in my daughter’s room? Did I mention you are in my daughter’s bed?

  Were you awake, were you chemically capable of panic or even serious concern about your future, I know the question you would be asking. Don’t worry, I would say. Bear will be right with you.

  Now that you are all set up I am just going to go down and get him out of the Moses basket and bring him up. Don’t be afraid. I am not going to do anything to hurt the baby. I am going to bring him up, and I am going to put him here right next to you. He’ll be right next to you on the bed the whole time. It’s a big bed. It’s all set up for cosleeping. He’s not going to go anywhere. I won’t be doing anything to the baby at all.

  I reckon a couple of days will be long enough. Three, tops. I hope you understand, Emmy, that I am going to be taking no pleasure in any of this. No doubt there are going to be some moments of doubt, some struggles with my conscience. There will be times, I am sure, when the impulse to stop all this becomes almost overwhelming, when I am seconds away from going upstairs and telling you it is all over, when I am gripping the arms of my chair to keep myself in it. I have brought earplugs, some CDs and cassettes. Things I used to listen to when Grace was a child, mostly. ABBA, the Beatles.

  It will be the dehydration that does it. An adult human, a healthy adult human, can go for up to three weeks without food—but they’ll only last three or four days without water. A child? They’re unlikely to survive half that.

  And all the time you’ll be lying right there next to him.

  I reckon I’ll give it four days. Just to be on the safe side. Then I’ll give you one last dose of the midazolam, a half dose, a twelve-hour one, and unplug everything and fold up these sheets of paper and write your name on the outside and leave them on the table downstairs and I’ll go.

  It should be morning when your eyes open. It’s always lovely, the light in that room as the sun comes up.

  Understand this, Emmy Jackson. I am not evil. I am not mad. I don’t want to witness your child’s suffering, or cause him unnecessary pain. I don’t want to be there when he dies; I don’t even know if I am going to be able to bring myself to look at him. I am not an unfeeling person. I can imagine, all too easily, all too painfully, what it will feel like to be you at that moment, to wake up groggily, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and realize you are in an unfamiliar bed, and wonder with a start where the baby is, and reach for him.

  I have no desire to witness what will happen next, to observe the moment your heart breaks, the moment you realize that every happy memory you have of your child will now be almost unbearably painful, forever marked by loss. The moment you begin to piece together what he went through in those last few hours, those last few days. The moment when you begin to howl and you don’t know if it will ever stop.

  I can remember all those feelings. I can remember seeing my daughter go through each of them in turn.

  Sometimes, because I believe people should face the consequences of their actions, I have forced myself to picture what will happen next.

  To imagine you groggy, distraught, stumbling downstairs, tripping over the edge of the carpet.

  To imagine you clutching something to your chest. Something wrapped in a blanket but oh-so-cold; something you can’t imagine ever letting go of.

  I remember Jack telling me how long the ambulance crew took to persuade Grace that she would have to loosen her grip on Ailsa, just for a minute. I can remember Jack telling me how worried Grace was that she would be cold, would feel cold. Kept asking him to fetch blankets, screamed at him when he just stood there. I can remember him telling me about how Grace was babbling to Ailsa even as she finally handed her over, was telling Ailsa not to worry, that Mummy was here, that everything was okay.

  And I imagine you standing in the living room at the bottom of the stairs, cautiously looking around, hesitant, unsure at this point whether I am really gone, whether you are really alone.

  And when you spot the envelope I can see you crossing the room and opening it, and starting to read there at the living room table, still standing, letting each page fall as you have finished with it.

  And then you’ll know. What the point of all this is. Who the real villain of the piece turns out to be.

  You made me, Emmy. You made me into what I am. You made me capable of doing this.

  The burden I have borne, this regret and pain and sorrow and anger, I have carried long enough. I am glad to be near the end now. This is not about revenge. This has never been about revenge. It is about justice. And when it is over, all I want to do is close my eyes, and know that I have done what needed to be done, and rest.

  Goodbye, Emmy.

  Dan

  It’s a scene I have been anticipating in my head all week. As I’m seeing Bear and Emmy off. As I’m working that afternoon, typing away in the kitchen of the empty house. As I’m making Coco’s dinner, giving her a bath, and reading her to sleep. As I am watching TV, watching whatever I want to watch on TV, eating whatever I want to eat and as much of it as I like. The next day, as I am s
itting in a café with my laptop, occasionally checking my phone for messages from Emmy and quietly impressed by the totality of her silence (I hadn’t expected her to take the whole communication-blackout thing anything like as seriously as she has) or as I’m explaining once again to Coco where Mummy is and when she’s due back. As Coco and I are watching cartoons in the morning and waiting for Doreen to come and as I’m waiting in the evenings for another picture of my daughter to appear on Ppampamelaf2PF4’s feed and as I’m confirming with Doreen that it’s still okay that she takes Coco on Saturday, as we’ve previously discussed. As I am booking my train ticket and working out how best to get from the station to Pamela Fielding’s house. As I am looking at pictures of Pamela Fielding’s house on Google Maps. As I am falling asleep with a whole bed to myself in the evenings and practically as soon as I am awoken each morning by Coco calling plaintively down the corridor to let me know she’s ready to get up.

  It’s a bright day, Saturday, so I suggest that Doreen and my daughter go for a walk along the canal, then stop off at the playground next to the skate park. That should kill most of the morning. I give Doreen some extra cash for lunch, suggest they stay out to eat and check out the city farm in the afternoon. My idea is enthusiastically received.

  By my calculations, what I need to do should take me six hours.

  I give it five minutes after they’ve left, and then I depart the house as well. I didn’t say anything to Emmy about any of this before she went. Far better, in my thinking, to present it to her afterward as a fait accompli. Maybe I won’t tell her anything at first, just wait until she notices that the RP account has been shut down, wait until she asks how I got the stolen laptop back.

  Like a lot of writers, there is some part of me that genuinely thinks I would make a pretty good detective.

  All the way to the Tube I’m imagining to myself what I’m going to say to Pamela when she opens the door.