She goes to Facebook first. Thousands of hysterical fans have been posting on her page. A trend has started where people share pictures of when they met her at book signings. Image after image of her with her arms around red-faced, emotional, smiling young women. She, the luckiest girl in the room. Holly starts to wonder if she’s already dead and her spirit is hovering over her body, flicking through her social media profiles with ghostly fingers. There are angry demands to the ‘managers of her Facebook page’ to deliver a statement as to what happened and how she’s doing. Nobody would guess that, besides her publicist, she has no staff at all. Every post made on that page is a result of her own hard work.
Instagram is even more overwhelming. After she works her way through the cluster of likes on her latest post (an atmospheric, warm-toned portrait of her almond-milk flat white taken at Starbucks), she gets to the tags. More than eight thousand people have tagged her in photographs in the past few hours. She scrolls through the bright rainbow of food photographs, being sure to like each one, until they all start to look the same. She almost misses the first blurry photograph of herself collapsed on her knees, hands over her face. Then they keep coming, a flood of pictures from all angles that swallows her whole. There’s no need for her to remember even a single moment of that night. Everything, from her blood-soaked clothing to the paramedics lifting her from the floor, has been casually recorded. While the captions and comments to each photo are compassionate, Holly can’t help but feel the force of everyone tugging at her trauma, trying to grab a piece of it to claim as their own.
Still, it is soothing to go through all the get-well wishes and imagine a world of strangers gathering to support her. Surely, if so many people are outraged, she doesn’t need to feel so uneasy? Surely there would be signs that she did something to deserve it, signs other than the sticky mass of guilt clinging to her chest?
Years ago, when she was in and out of hospital and hunched over her computer researching alternative therapies, she felt desperate and isolated. But with every milestone reached and picture shared, she found new followers and friends, all connected by the basic human desire to survive. These same fans, and more, will carry her again. Panic rises. Her thoughts turn to the horror that lies beneath her bandages. Ugliness. Shame. Invisibility. She has to be stronger than the pain that lies ahead of her because it’s the only power she has. If there is one thing Holly knows, it’s how to heal.
No matter how many hundreds of likes or comments a person has on social media, eventually they all run dry. The room has darkened by the time she gets to the last one. It’s not enough. She’s always waiting for something just out of her reach that she can’t quite make out. Sometimes she thinks she keeps checking her phone in anticipation of receiving something important enough for her to want to put it down for good.
The aching shadow of her concussion begins to close in on her. She really should get some rest. But wait, there is one more message. A private message. She sees it in a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye. A video from a private account. It plays automatically, before her shaking fingers can stop it. It keeps looping long after she has dropped the phone to the ground with a gasp. Over and over again, a scalpel slicing a signed photograph of Holly’s face into ribbons. A caption that taunts, ‘This is only the beginning.’
Chapter 3
Holly then
‘Tell us what it feels like to have cancer in your twenties?’
Holly can’t form any words. All she can think about are the bright lights in her face, the sweat collecting on her shaven head. Her endlessly moving hands. It’s the first time she’s done this. Where the hell does she put her hands?
The interviewer stares at her, a smile frozen on her face. She has perfect eyebrows, thick and lush. Holly’s fingers reach for her own. There is nothing but skin. The last round of chemotherapy took her hair away.
The silence stretches. She wanted to be here, and now she has to say something. Holly takes a deep, ragged breath.
‘Like any woman in her early twenties, I didn’t have my life completely figured out. Although I had done well at school and uni, I took a boring retail job to make some money and, before I knew it, a few months had turned into a year. I thought feeling constantly stressed, fatigued and lonely was my normal. I just felt horrible all of the time but I thought it was a phase I would get past when I grew up. So I missed my symptoms and by the time I saw a doctor I’d probably been sick for a while.’
The interviewer nods, eyes on Holly and not on the clock. She’s doing it just right. The thrill shakes her tired bones. Her voice changes, stronger now, deeper. Maybe her words will have the power to reach out and educate someone before they get sick.
‘Of course, that was before I had to come to terms with the possibility that I may never have the chance to grow up. When the doctor first said “cancer”, I was numb. Only a few days later did it sink in and I just cried about the big things I wouldn’t get to do: discover who I really was, have a career, get married, have a baby, travel. Then there were the little things, like the daily stories from my friends, tasting different foods, dancing, yoga, walking down the street with a really amazing song playing through my headphones. I mean, shit, what about all the songs and the playlists of songs that I would never discover?’
The life she spoke of sounded so sweet, imbued with the rosy glow of tragedy. She’d always wished for a life like that and imagined it was right around the corner. But Holly never danced or did yoga. She didn’t really listen to music. Most of all, there were no friends with daily stories or messages fighting for attention on her phone. Before her cancer diagnosis, nobody gave her a second glance. She slouched through the world collecting clothes she hated and eating food that made her feel worse. Fat. Tired. Unlovable. Another washed-up consumer trying to numb herself to survive the drudgery.
How could she tell the interviewer that getting cancer in her twenties was the best thing that happened to her? That she finally realised she had something to fight for? That it was toxic, but not as toxic as the home it helped her pull away from? She turns to the camera and digs the words out from deep within her heart, flashing a smile that overwhelms her small, gaunt face.
‘My profile has grown quickly and suddenly, and I am so honoured and overjoyed that so many people want to walk alongside me on this healing journey. But if I have this platform, I want to do something good with it. I want to inspire you and have a real impact on your life.’ She points a finger, graceful as a dancer. ‘Don’t wait. You are enough. You are beautiful and talented and smart right now. If you are not feeling completely in love with your life and in awe with your luck, you have the power to change things. Nourish your body and your mind. Get healthy, get fit and get your head strong, because there is no challenge this world throws at us that we cannot fight till the death: not even cancer.’
Chapter 4
Tyler
Tyler steps into his Chelsea apartment, bloodied brogues swinging in one hand. He wipes them with a deft flick of a dish towel and places them on the counter so his cleaner can’t get out of polishing them.
He makes his espresso on the stove with a cheap little gadget he found in Istanbul. The whole thing spills fucking everywhere as he lifts it off the heat. Bloody shaking hands.
He shouldn’t have come home. The buzz is still crawling on his skin, seeping into every pristine surface it touches. It’s not welcome here. What he’s done, what he did. It was just this once. Like a one-night stand or trying out coke. A small, necessary diversion from an otherwise perfect path. A rite of passage. She deserved it, and now it’s done. His eyes flick towards the dish towel, now stained brown. How many times has he come home from the hospital, with some unfortunate bodily fluid marking his clothing? It’s all been innocent enough, collateral damage of a job he loves. But this mess just won’t do.
He laces up his Stan Smiths – so clean, so classic – and heads out again, dish towel bulging in his pocket. The buzz stings through hi
s thighs, down to his toes. He paces past Harrods. Kings Road is quiet and slicked with rain. The dish towel is thrown – going, going, gone – into an empty bin outside a pastel-hued ladies boutique. The solitude should make him feel invincible, but it only makes the buzz grow louder. His steps quicken until he finds a bar in Fulham and orders a double Jack and Coke a few minutes before they call last orders. He strikes a conversation with a pretty, yoga-lean young thing who laughs at whatever he’s saying and clutches his arm with a desperate grip. It’s the last chance to find someone to go home with for the night. Panic shrills around him in a tinny falsetto. But it’s not as loud as the buzz. Yoga girl is dancing now, brushing against his thighs. He imagines the inside of her bleak south London house share, the mouldy walls decorated with shawls from India and the scent of incense masking the damp laundry airing on a crowded clothes horse. The sex would be high-pitched and experimental enough to drown out the buzz for a few minutes, but her neediness would kick in quicker than his hangover. The investment is not worth the return. Besides, he hasn’t been able to get hard in six months. He disappears while she is mid-twirl.
An off-licence provides an easier short-term solution in the form of a quart of cider and a loose cigarette. He takes it deep into Hyde Park and settles in front of the lake. What would she make of him tonight, drinking cheap booze out of a plastic bag? Oh, what is he on about? She would have loved it. She loved him best when he loosened up, when he acted as outrageously as she did. Even though she’s long gone, he still feels as if he’s performing for her, as if she’s standing somewhere in the distance, just out of sight and smiling.
There was always a bit of a ‘fuck you’ spirit coiled within her bones. She could be spotted from a mile away, wild red hair raging against the collar of her vintage Harris Tweed Chanel suit, reading Machiavelli on the tube. No matter how wealthy she was, or how successful she became, she had the ability to shock him when he least expected it, to remain the principled, audacious woman she was when they’d first met. You don’t meet girls like that every day, ones that truly don’t give a shit.
Thinking of her pushes the buzz to a shrieking pitch. It aches in his temples. She would be proud of what he did tonight. He’s sure of it. He wouldn’t need to explain to her that it was justice for everything Holly had done to them, a small step towards rectifying the order of things. She’d have understood that sometimes things needed to be destroyed for the greater good. The heavy ink sky has diluted to a transparent grey. It’s that sickening hour when the lost and the lonely from the night before collide with the achievers of the morning.
The pavement is sticky and littered with the debris of a night that has had the joy wrung out of it. He sidesteps a broken beer bottle as he takes out his mobile phone. He’s not sure what he expected, but Holly’s Instagram is unchanged. Despite him feeling the scalpel pressing down on the soft meat of her cheek a few hours before, her photographs aggressively portray a life well lived. There she is, smiling radiantly while holding a green juice. In another shot, she arches herself into a yoga pose on an unnamed beach – girls like her are always in tropical locations for no apparent reason. A ‘no make-up selfie’ shows her pale and glistening before the camera with wide, searching eyes. The last shot – an elegantly lit flat white americano – he knows well. He watched her take it from his corner at Starbucks as she huffed, rearranged and strained to get the right angle. He’d smiled then, scoffing from the corner at the triviality of her last meaningless moment as the scalpel grew hot in his hand.
Tyler’s not very good at social media – he prides himself on keeping a healthy distance these days – but he knows enough to click on the little icon to the right. Here are the photos of Holly, the ones other people take of her, the ones she doesn’t have the power to edit and frame. The screaming interior of McDonald’s instantly fills his screen. In its centre, Holly kneels on the ground, clutching her face, soaked in blood like a warrior emerging from battle. Despite the fuzzy footage and awkward angles, there is something iconic about it. It feels like a moment in history. A warm feeling swells in his gut. He delivered Holly’s reckoning and stripped the mask off her face to reveal the quivering fraud below.
But the comments on the photos tell a different story. They wail in a cloying crescendo:
@SusieS
How could this happen to such an angel?
@SarahTaylor
Oh Holly, you represent everything that is good in my life! I feel like this attack happened to me!
@VegansofLondon
We love you babe, you’ve healed once before and you’ll heal again! Be strong, we are all supporting you!!
The words of support seem endless. Intimate messages crowd every picture, from women who act as if they personally know the sunny blonde on their screen. It’s suffocating. By the time he reaches his apartment and slumps on his bed, the buzz overcomes him like a sickness. He didn’t teach Holly a lesson at all. Instead, he has created a martyr.
He goes into the dark, musty room next to the kitchen. In contrast with the rest of the house, it is undecorated. A smell of old incense clings to its scant contents. He digs into one of the boxes to find the folder of scraps that adorned the fridge when they used to share it. An old shopping list with DISHWASHING LIQUID underlined twice. The take-out menu for the curry place down the road. A silly picture of them posing in a photo booth at a wedding, she in a top hat and him in a tiara. Finally, the thing he was looking for – a magazine cut-out of Holly in tiny denim shorts and a floral bikini top, smiling into the camera. Frankie kept it up there as inspiration. He can still hear her laughing, saying ‘Holly will remind me not to eat the entire box of chocolates,’ like that extra softness around her hips mattered. Bright, radiant Holly, an invisible, pious goddess. Teach us, wise guru, how to abstain. Teach us how to be good.
He takes the picture with trembling hands. Holds the still-bloodied scalpel in the air. Presses down the record button. He means to slice the image only in half, but the buzz takes over, screeching in his ears, shaking his hands back and forth, over and over again, insatiable. ‘It’s not over yet,’ he whispers as he presses send. It’s not a fully-formed plan, but a dark feeling without a shape. It’s only the beginning.
Chapter 5
Holly
‘Hey there, sweetie, it’s time for another test. I’m so sorry, my love.’
A thin nurse with a warm, Mancunian accent fishes for Holly’s arm under the hot sheets.
‘Oh, it’s OK,’ Holly says brightly. ‘I’m used to it. How many am I in for today?’
‘Just the one. Doctor wants to make sure you didn’t pick up tetanus. That’s all.’
‘Well, that’s a walk in the park then, isn’t it!’ She tries to smile but her cheeks feel weighed down and numb from the dressing. There is also that creeping fear that any sudden movement could break her. Gently does it. Still, no matter how scared she is, she likes to be that positive, cooperative patient everybody remembers. ‘Oh, the funny blonde girl in Ward A, of course I’ll take her some water!’ ‘You’re looking for Holly? Oh yes, she’s everybody’s favourite on this floor. We’ll be sad to see the back of her.’ Countless hospital visits have taught her that you want the nurses on your side, and word gets around. They deserve a little brightness in their relentless slog.
The nurse bustles around her, checking her blood pressure and the incision where the drip had been placed.
‘Oh, by the way, your boyfriend stopped by while you were sleeping. Such a kind, gorgeous guy. You had us all green with envy!’
‘Boyfriend?’ Holly cries, the innocuous word scratching in her throat.
‘Yes, he stayed for ages, just watching over you. We offered to wake you but the poor thing said you needed your rest. He brought you some things from home too.’
She gestures towards a worn-out weekend bag on the ground with the faded logo of her university. She uses that bag for everything – from visits to the gym to moving cities, but seeing it here fills Holly wit
h terror. It takes everything she has not to pull out her drip and run. How did he get into her home? How does he even know where she lives? She can’t bear to unzip the bag and look inside. Should she tell the nurse she has been single for as long as she can remember? That something is desperately wrong?
Maybe it would set into action a series of events that would keep her safe. Holly’s eyes flick between the bag on the ground and the medical file in front of her. She can’t tell anyone anything yet, not until she understands it herself. It’s too risky.
‘What’s your name?’ she changes the subject, speaking slowly and carefully so as not to split her stitches. The nurse’s face breaks into a wide, snaggle-toothed smile. ‘It’s Aurelia.’
‘Fancy. French?’ Her voice sounds painfully garbled, like she is hearing herself speaking through the fuzz of a radio.
‘Yes, legend has it I was conceived in Paris. I know, I know. My parents are so original.’
Holly tries a laugh, which sounds more like grating metal.
‘At least it was romantic. My parents have hardly ever left the country. I was probably conceived in a toilet while the pub was having a lock-in.’ Holly’s mother and father have coexisted miserably for as long as she can remember – so much so that she wonders whether their union was owed to some unfortunate series of events that cemented their despairing inertia into something resembling a family.
Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online Page 2
