Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online

by Amy Heydenrych

  The footsteps, the sense that he is there, that he has always been there, and one day he will snuff her out for good. If she listed his actions one by one, they’d see his determination, they’d know that the first attack was no mistake. Every act of violence was meant for her. They’d call her paranoid, mad, but she can’t shake the feeling that every act of violence is a token that she somehow earned. It won’t stop. Maybe it never will. It’s the anticipation that drives you crazy, the hand held in the air preparing to strike.

  Her hands feel detached from her body. They crawl like serpents up her face and tug at the microphone and the earpiece.

  ‘Um . . . sorry, Olivia . . . I’m feeling a bit sick . . .’

  (Broadcast ends)

  ‘GET THIS OFF ME!’

  Holly’s screaming and screaming, and she can’t stop. She can feel the silence all around her, hands touching her. A faceless crowd is trying to contain her agony. In the heart of it, she hears a steady familiar voice.

  ‘Sweetheart, what’s going on? Let me help you.’

  Holly holds her hands up to her face. It feels like it’s swollen to twice its size and it’s being sliced all over again. Having all these devices, all these hands near her face is too much to bear.

  ‘All right. So, is it the make-up? Sit here, angel, just breathe with me, in and out, slower, there, there, you don’t need to move a muscle. Someone will come here right now and sort this out for you.’

  Zanna’s soft hands feel cool against her burning skin. She doesn’t want this face. What did she do to deserve this face? It’s turning on her and tearing her apart. She worked so hard for the old one and wants it back! Hands begin to flutter around her, wiping and clearing. A bottle of sugar water gets shoved to her lips. She’s not meant to eat sugar, it only aggravates inflammation in the body. Don’t they know that? She spits it out. Water takes its place. Holly surrenders to being cleaned and the panic begins to subside. By the time she’s opened her eyes a change has taken place. Nobody says it, but she can tell by the way the crew awkwardly makes way for her and Zanna to walk out the door to the taxi idling outside. She has gone from being a person worth hearing to being a crazed victim. Her panic is contagious, and nobody wants to touch it.

  ‘Oh God, Holly. I’m so sorry. I pushed you into something you weren’t ready for yet. You were doing so well, I honestly thought you were ready,’ Zanna whispers.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine, Zan, really. I don’t know what got into me just then. My face just got so painful, and with all those wires and bright lights, I felt claustrophobic and freaked out.’

  ‘Was it something that Olivia said? I’d briefed her in detail before the interview and told her that some questions might be triggering.’

  What questions?

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Let me put it another way. When she tried to ask you whether the attacker would strike again, you darted off the set. Is there something you’re not telling me? Do you have reason to believe he will be back?’

  That scalpel, still scabbed with her blood, slicing through her picture.

  ‘No, I’ve told you everything. You don’t know what it’s like to have another human being look at you with such hatred. He meant to kill me that day. I’m sure of it.’

  Burnt, broken faces, crackling and creasing beneath her spine.

  ‘OK, well you can trust me with anything. Remember, I’ve kept quiet on more celebrity divorce announcements and drug busts than I have shoes in my cupboard.’

  Zanna’s phone starts buzzing. She answers, listens for a moment, narrows her eyes, ‘Yes, yes. Wow, OK are you sure? Yes, I’ll ask her right now, I’ll get back to you later.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘The producers of the show. Turns out a surgeon from St Mary’s Hospital called in just after your live interview. He’s pretty certain that the guys who fixed your face botched it up.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Yes, he says that he could see redness, inflammation and unnatural scarring.’

  ‘But I was caked in make-up!’

  ‘Well, he’s an expert apparently. He wants to help fix it ASAP. He even has a gap this Friday afternoon.’ A gap, like he’s quickly going to bandage Holly’s wrist. Could it be Jack? It must be. It’s all too easy to trust.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Dr Eugene Warner. I’ve heard of him before. An old stalwart in the industry, and renowned plastic surgeon. I’ve arranged for a good handful of my clients to put their faces in his hands. He’s very skilful and, most importantly, very discreet.’

  Zanna’s network of privilege never fails to surprise her. There is an intricate market out there where anything can be bought or sold, but only among the already-blessed. She pulls up a picture of him on her phone. An old, studious-looking man frowns back at her. Not young. Not him. It doesn’t stop her from wanting to shout at the taxi driver to stop the car so she can run.

  ‘I’ll think about it, OK? It’s all been a bit much to take in today.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Still, I would give it serious thought, Holly. I’m worried about you. You haven’t posted as much as you usually do over the last few days, and today is the first time you left the house wearing something other than yoga clothes.’

  ‘I’m always only wearing yoga clothes.’

  ‘Yeah, but you wear your nice ones. Not your ragged around-the-house yoga clothes. If you need a break to get over this, it’s fine. I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. If you need to talk . . .’

  She stops her there. ‘Thanks, Zanna.’ Thankfully, the taxi is pulling up outside her apartment. ‘I think I just need some rest. It’s been a big day.’

  ‘Hey, Holly?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘None of this is your fault, you hear me? I know it’s obvious but I feel that whenever a woman goes through some sort of trauma she needs to hear it over and over again. It’s not your fault. No matter what you have done or think you have done. Not on that night, not ever.’

  No matter what you have done . . .

  The shaking consumes her so violently her legs threaten to give in. She knows. She must have known all along. Holly smiles back as best as she can, before turning around and running inside before Zanna can spot the heavy, messy flow of tears stinging her face and crawling into her scars.

  Safely ensconced in blankets, she balances her MacBook on her knees and googles her symptoms: warm, swollen skin, slight yellow pus seeping out of the wound. The chills and sweats that plague her late at night. Searching her random symptoms online has always been a soothing habit that she likes to entertain. Usually she just stops at a basic diagnosis but sometimes she goes deeper into one of the hundreds of forums where people discuss and compare their symptoms. To her, these places are some of the loneliest on earth. And if they are indeed home to the loneliest on earth, then it’s good to be in the company of kindred spirits.

  According to a quick search, she definitely has an infection and should see a doctor immediately. Dr Eugene Warner is not hard to find on the Internet either. She likes his warm, lined face with its big ruddy nose. He would look more at home on a farm than in an operating theatre. He seems like something firm she can hold on to. Maybe he’s even someone who can take control and stop the fever that threatens to consume her life.

  If he really can fix her face, she might not have to be ugly again. She knows what that’s like, and she remembers wearing it as a second skin. Ugliness doesn’t always lie in how you look, but it also thrives in the negative spaces of all that is missing. It is the lack of a smile from a stranger, the absence of a look from a man passing by, the way the barista at the coffee shop doesn’t feel a need to impress you. Obscurity is pervasive and persistent. She escaped it once, but if she’s not careful, it may not let her go this time. For now, she will cling on to the small hope that Friday holds a turning point in her story, and that Dr Warner will perform a miracle and pull her back to the person sh
e was before.

  Chapter 23

  Tyler then

  Now that he knows, he sees signs everywhere. Holly’s every post is drenched in newfound clarity. She is blatantly, profitably, maintaining a lie.

  It takes everything in him not to throw himself off a bridge, swallow some pills, end the noise in his head for good. Because he could have stopped this much earlier. If only he had been the doting boyfriend he made himself out to be, he would have actually given a shit and examined Holly’s profile to begin with. Instead, he wrote Holly off as another frothy wannabe supermodel using Instagram for exposure. He dismissed Frankie’s interest in her as an annoying extension of her fascination with reality TV and fashion magazines. He’d got so used to editing that aspect of her out. If he’d seen the signs from the start, he could have done something before it was too late. Frankie wouldn’t have died.

  The black cab drops him outside Paddington station an hour early. This is deliberate on Tyler’s part – it gives him more time to watch the trains and the people go by. It is a silent, ever-moving painting that is soundtracked by the science podcast he has blaring on double speed through his headphones. The board of destinations always excites him. Each city flickers with the potential of pure anonymity, with the chance of having everyone leaving him the hell alone. Today, however, he is en route to one specific destination: Exeter, Holly’s hometown.

  Holly’s younger years are strangely undocumented. While she had apparently lived in Exeter her whole life, there was no online history of her time there. If Tyler hadn’t seen her on TV interviews, he would doubt she existed at all. It was as if her life only truly began when she started making smoothies.

  Four hours later, he steps off the train and paces down the high street. This isn’t the perennial greyness of London city, swarming with suits. Here, he stands out. The feeling of youth is everywhere, in the throngs of students running for the train, in the unlikely piercings and full sleeve tattoos. Tyler’s mind goes where it always does, down a lonely path of imagining how Frankie would like it here, what shops she would go into and what they would have talked about. He makes his way to Topshop, where the bio on Holly’s website says she used to work.

  It is not difficult to break the disconnected circle of sales assistants. Tyler has a smile that could charm anyone.

  ‘Anything I can help you with?’ asks an attractive girl with skin like brown velvet.

  The lie slides off his tongue, smooth as butter, ‘You can, actually! It’s my little sister’s birthday and I want to surprise her with some summer dresses.’

  ‘Oooh, lucky girl!’

  The girls flutter around him, holding up various floral and striped options.

  ‘What do you think? Is this her taste?’

  He makes a show of examining the print and cut of the dress. The cheap high-street fabric gives him an unwelcome rush of gooseflesh. Thank goodness he left his Tom Ford at home and opted for a simple band T-shirt and jeans instead. The scent of his money would have been stronger than the combination of these girls’ stale perfume.

  ‘Absolutely!’

  He splurges a hundred pounds on a few identical dresses. The girls chatter excitedly as they ring it all up, the perfect time to mine for information.

  ‘So, ladies, how long have you been working here?’

  One girl with a bitter black-lipped mouth and greasy hair, who is clearly the manager, speaks for them all, ‘I’m embarrassed to say I’ve been here for over five years, while these two started, like, a year or two back.’

  ‘Ah – so you would definitely know the famous Holly Evans then?’ An uncomfortable look passes over the manager’s face, so brief he almost misses it. Her sidekicks stare at him blankly.

  She edges towards him, friendliness disappearing fast, ‘Who are you exactly?’ The others, sensing the shift in mood, scuttle into the bright depths of the store. The sudden rise in defensiveness surprises Tyler. Surely anyone exposed to Holly’s lies would feel as outraged as he does? What exactly is she defending?

  ‘Relax, I’m not a journalist or anything, but I have been directly affected by Holly’s story,’ he says quietly. As customers float in and out, attended to by the shop assistants, he whispers the heartfelt story of how Holly’s medical advice resulted in the death of his one true love. By the end of it, she is looking at him adoringly with sad, wet eyes. She shares her name – Andrea – and tells him to wait for her at a nearby pub.

  By the time she arrives, he has found a bottle of tolerable Merlot and some bar snacks. He likes how impressed she seems, how his presence makes her stand a little taller. They snack on peanuts and discuss the weather until she is ready to talk.

  ‘I was friends with Holly once, but I always knew there was something off about her.’ Andrea says this with the authority of someone who is always first to discover an indie band or a new, secret gin bar.

  ‘How so?’ He leans forward, making her feel like the most important woman in the world.

  ‘Well, she was always just a bit secretive, you know? Even when I worked with her every day and spent most evenings with her, I never felt like I could quite pin her down.’

  ‘Was she as secretive about her cancer?’ he ventures.

  ‘Well, I do have an eye for detail, that’s why I make a great manager. Nothing goes unnoticed,’ she says proudly. ‘When Holly started chemotherapy and everyone else was caught up in sending her flowers and feeling sorry for her, I started picking up on little things. She had these glassy, faraway eyes the whole time. You know what I mean? That deeply happy look you see people get when they fall in love. There was not a trace of fear. I know a few people who have had cancer or gone through a trauma, and they always focus on the details. They bore you with the gore of what they’re going through. Not Holly. When it came to any physical details beyond the caption of her Instagram posts, she would go surprisingly quiet.’

  Tyler’s heart is pounding now. Excitement and rage pulse through his veins. He asks her, voice shaking, ‘Do you think she was faking it?’

  ‘I know she was now. While I had my misgivings, I still wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. After months of endless chemotherapy and health drama, she just didn’t pitch up for work one day. I thought the worst, of course – the way she was talking about her illness, it seemed possible at that point that she could just die in her sleep.’

  ‘But she didn’t.’

  ‘No, and we never saw her again, not face to face anyway. The truth came out soon after that.’

  Tyler would have given anything to see the look on Holly’s face when her world came crashing down. The humiliation in her eyes as she realised the game was over.

  ‘How did it happen? Did someone catch her in the act?’

  ‘Well, nothing dramatic happened if that’s what you’re asking. Her father came to visit me as I was locking up the shop one evening. He explained that the hospital had called to discuss Holly’s “psychological situation” after some sort of “incident”. He’s usually such a proper man, but that day he was all over the show, asking me questions about what exactly she had told me.’

  Andrea’s eyes avoid his now, and she starts playing with the bowl of nuts in front of her.

  ‘He told me that day that she may not be sick with cancer, but she’s sick with something else, a mental disorder he couldn’t explain just yet. He made me swear to secrecy.’

  The anger is rising in his chest again. His teeth clench as he asks, ‘And how exactly did he do that?’

  When someone is hiding the truth, always follow their eyes. Tyler learnt that as a little boy when he used to mine his father’s platitudes for clues on his mother’s health. Back then his father’s eyes would dart to the sound of crying from her bedroom, wild with worry. Today, Andrea’s eyes betray her for a split second as they flit to the sparkling black Audi parked outside and the Marc Jacobs watch glinting on her wrist. Tyler doesn’t let her speak; he doesn’t want to hear it.

  ‘He paid you off, d
idn’t he?’

  She looks down and gulps the rest of her drink.

  ‘That’s none of your business, is it?’

  Tyler slams the table with his fist, wine splattering onto his wrist.

  ‘Considering that somebody I loved died because nobody cared enough to out a con artist, I would say yes, it actually is my business.’

  Andrea’s lip quivers. ‘Don’t you dare make assumptions about whether I cared or not. Do you know how it feels to care about a friend, to buy into their story and then find out it was all a lie? I felt like a fucking fool, a loser. How could I have not followed my instincts? Instead, day after day, I showered her with attention and supported her as she started to build her fake empire.’

  She’s more confident now, defiant, ‘So what if he paid me a lump sum to not say anything? Someone like you wouldn’t understand how tempting that is when you’re a few years out of uni and haven’t made anything out of your life yet. It’s hard enough getting an internship, let alone a job. Some of my friends had struck it lucky through their parents’ connections but I wasn’t keeping up. It felt like everyone else was all over social media flaunting their Kate Spade handbags, new cars and spa weekends in the countryside and I had none of it.’

  He wants to punch her in the face. ‘You know how much more money you would have made selling this story to the Daily Mail?’ Stupid, simple woman.

  Her chubbiness suddenly looks more childlike than jaded, the gothic make-up more a costume than a lifestyle. ‘It’s more complicated than that. Holly’s dad is – how do I put this? – influential. He employs my dad and my uncle, he donates to my mum’s charity every year. Living here, you’re part of an ecosystem, a family, and you can’t turn your back on family, even when someone does something so wrong.’

  ‘So your integrity is something that can be bought then? That doesn’t sound so complicated to me.’