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

by Amy Heydenrych

  It is a fact that both thrills and enrages him – everybody wants to believe the guy wearing the white smile and the sharp suit, even if they can smell the stench of rot rising from beneath it. He touches her thin arm and holds her eyes. He’ll give her a story she’ll never forget. After he’s done with her, the world will remember Frankie the way they should, as his girl, and his alone.

  As the team sets up their cameras, he orders a tea with full fat milk and a scone with double cream. Victoria’s pen scratches on her notepad, clearly noting he is not vegan, or gluten- or sugar-free. Tyler drums his watch. He has a consultation in a few hours and this is wasting his time. He wants to growl in the cameraman’s ear to hurry the fuck up, and insult the woman setting up the mic until her acne glows red. He knows better, though, and he just needs to hold it in for a while longer.

  ‘Ah, sorry about all this, Tyler, we’re all ready to begin our chat now. Don’t pay any attention to the cameras. It’s just you and me. Let’s begin with a little introduction. How did you first hear of Holly Evans?’

  ‘My fiancée . . .’ He coughs for effect. ‘My late fiancée found her on Instagram. She didn’t pay much attention to her at first – she was just one of many girls posing in bikinis in exotic locations, punting a diet or a project. But there was something warm and intelligent about Holly that she picked up on. She started off as a motivational figure in her life. When she – sorry, this is hard for me – when she got cancer that all changed. She became obsessed with Holly’s diet and lifestyle, and took her advice to heart.’

  ‘What did that involve?’

  ‘Well, she had an aggressive, yet potentially curable tumour but rejected any medical treatment or operation in favour of a raw diet. This consisted of a juice in the morning, a smoothie mid-morning, another smoothie for lunch, several bananas a day and a salad of chopped greens for dinner. As well as various natural herbal supplements and monthly colonic irrigations.’

  ‘Are you of the opinion that this was unhelpful to her potential recovery?’

  ‘Absolutely. As a medical doctor, I spent years in medical school understanding how illnesses spread throughout the body and how the right treatment can address this rapidly. While I will agree that a diet free of dairy and sugar could possibly prevent the growth of cancer cells, there certainly hasn’t been enough testing for us to lean on this theory entirely.’

  ‘Did you clash over this?’

  A slamming door, harsh words she didn’t mean, a phone that kept on ringing, no matter how many times he called.

  ‘No! No. I loved Frankie with all my heart and supported her through everything. We were soulmates – we had the kind of love you only find once.’ The camera zooms on his broken eyes. ‘I voiced my concerns, and pleaded with her, but it was only ever out of love and she knew that.’

  Surely she knew that?

  ‘She sounds incredibly special. Tell us a bit more about Frankie.’

  ‘She was the ideal woman – beautiful, smart, kind. She was so strong and really successful. Frankie worked in finance, you know. She was high up doing investment stuff that I never really understood. She made anyone she spoke to believe that anything was possible. I loved how she always listened to me and how she made me feel.’

  This is the problem with love, isn’t it? As soon as you start describing it, it sounds inane and dull. Words cannot capture the magic; not even memory can.

  ‘It must have been very painful to see her die.’ Victoria stares at him wide-eyed. The camera crew moves closer still, getting a close-up of his face. It’s time to give it all he’s got, the money shot.

  ‘It was the most unthinkable pain, beyond anything I have ever experienced. Combine this with the frustration that she was wilfully taking her own life and it becomes an acid that burns everything it touches. And it’s not gone, and it will never be gone. How can I ever find any closure when she didn’t have to die?’ Tears fill his eyes naturally. He fakes many interactions in his life, but he’s never had to fake anything when it comes to Frankie. It was, it is, it always has been, all real.

  ‘Do you think Holly directly contributed to Frankie’s death?’

  ‘Absolutely. She took a lie and presented it as fact. She did this in such a forceful, compelling way that even intelligent women like my precious Frankie took it as fact. Holly doesn’t understand that when you have thousands of followers and brand endorsements, people take what you say to be the honest truth. Nobody researches these days, and why would they, when they have found something they want to believe in? With that sort of following comes grave responsibility.’

  ‘With great Instagram stats comes great responsibility.’ He can see the headline for the insert whirring inside her mind. Tick, tick, boom.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You mentioned that she was buried in an intimate family ceremony. Tell us more about the mood on the day.’

  He knows what she’s doing. She trying to get her viewers to identify with the pain he went through. She wants them to imagine themselves in the back pew, tearing up when they see his broken face leading the procession. The partner left behind. But he can’t talk about that, not on television, where Frankie’s parents and friends may see him.

  ‘All I can say is that as a doctor, I would encourage all your viewers to only believe in the opinion of someone with a medical background.’

  ‘Tyler—’

  ‘I would advise a balanced diet rich in good fats, lean protein and dark leafy greens. I’d also highly recommend you take two days a week where you eat as you please. Honestly, just snack, eat burgers, and eat whatever you want to. It’s time we all stopped taking ourselves too seriously and regained a healthy relationship with food.’

  ‘That’s really valuable information, thank you. But I think what we’re looking for is a bit on what it was like to say your last goodbye.’

  She won’t let go of this, will she? Nosy, opportunistic little witch.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just, I just can’t relive that right now. It doesn’t feel right. That time was sacred.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Tyler.’

  ‘Are we done now?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Tyler.’

  She keeps saying his name – as if in its repetition he will forget that she is a stranger. The camera gets packed away and he finishes the rest of his tea. Takes a deep breath as he gets his head right, back into the space of the caring surgeon. He shuffles in his chair. There are several missed calls from the office. He’s late again, and it may start to draw unwanted attention.

  ‘I’m sorry if I pushed too hard at the end there,’ she says in a low voice, as if they’re friends now.

  ‘Oh, it’s not a problem. It’s just something I find really hard to talk about in public.’

  It’s not that he is emotionally unable. He can’t talk about it because he has no memory of the day. He can’t remember the faces of Frankie’s family as the funeral procession marched in, carrying the coffin that held her body. He can’t recall the eulogy, or the song that they played in her honour. He doesn’t know if they chose her corporate mugshot as the cover of the funeral program or whether they went with that free, smiling picture of her at the beach. These details still keep him up at night, shaking with ugly, growling sobs. The end of Frankie should have been a moment when the world held its breath, when London’s choirs joined together to sing her favourite song, when rows of the sunflowers she loved so much lined the streets. Instead, it is just a blank space. Why would he remember anything? He never attended Frankie’s funeral. He wasn’t invited.

  Chapter 43

  Holly

  Holly sits cross-legged on a bench outside the stone cottage, her pen hovering over a blank page. The sky is so clear that she can see all the way down the mountain and into the green valleys below. Today, Ayo has given each of them the task of writing their life story from beginning to end. It should be so easy, but Holly has no idea where to start. Where did the lies begin and the truth end?<
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  She has a creeping fear that she is not progressing the way she is supposed to. Although they hold their ‘sharing’ meetings every day, Holly has not been able to speak. What would she say, that she faked her own cancer? That her lying hit a dead end, drove her crazy and caused her to binge on fast food? Sometimes she is so ashamed of her actions she wants to disappear off the planet; other times she holds on to tattered scraps of her innocence.

  Maybe that’s where she should start, back at a time when she was innocent, when she told lies because that was the only way to survive. The words appear on the page in a tangle, her handwriting excited and rushed. This feels like the beginning of a breakthrough. Better still, it feels like the pathway towards forgiveness. She’s so lost in her story that she doesn’t notice Ayo walking up and sitting next to her.

  ‘How are you doing over here? That looks like quite an essay!’

  Holly’s hands unconsciously move to cover the notebook. It feels too raw to reveal just yet. ‘Yes . . . I think I’m starting to understand my actions a little better.’

  ‘That’s wonderful news!’

  She laughs nervously. ‘I guess it’s about time. I’ve been here three weeks and haven’t exactly been participating as much as I should. That’s what you want to talk to me about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh goodness, honey! You really need to stop beating yourself up. Everybody recovers differently. There’s no map that shows you how to do it. You just have to push on through.’

  Holly can’t open her mouth and say anything. She knows that as soon as she tries to say a word, it will clog her throat and come out as a sob. This acceptance feels like a beautiful gift that she is unworthy of, especially considering everything she has done. Finally, she whispers, ‘That makes me happier than anything in the world.’

  Ayo sighs. ‘I’m glad to hear it. We really care about you here, Holly. We know what you’re going through, even if it feels like your problem is bigger than anyone else’s right now. I can assure you that we’re all the same. Once you start opening up to us, you’ll see that there is no judgement here, only love. But . . .’ Her face falls.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have received some disturbing news. I usually make a point of telling my guests to disconnect from all media, especially anything to do with their shaming, but I have to make an exception in this case.’

  Her heart sinks. There cannot be anything else to discover. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it might have legal implications, especially in the wake of that journalist discovering a scalpel in your home. Don’t panic! It also might not, depending on what you tell me now. There is a man who has been doing interviews on international TV news channels, claiming that his girlfriend died due to following your medical advice. Apparently, she believed that you cured your cancer through only eating the recipes you shared, and now that your cancer has been disproven, he wants to press charges against you for consumer fraud.’

  Anger jolts through her, making her knees shake. She didn’t force anybody to believe her, did she? All she did was put information out there. Without that simple hashtag that started it all, nobody would have even known her name.

  ‘The accusations must have been blown out of proportion, Ayo, you have to believe me!’ A door opens in her mind, a quiet creak, and a shadow arches in to form a shape.

  ‘Holly, we’re not going to go into that. All I see here is possible evidence that you consciously or unconsciously led one of your followers to believe they could cure a terminal illness using raw foods.’

  The birds are shouting all around her in a cacophony. The wind howls. She doesn’t think she’s crying, but her face is wet and her mouth tastes of salt. It can’t be. It was never meant to come to this.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Holly, just tell me that you didn’t make any definitive statements that your diet cures cancer. More importantly, assure me that you didn’t say your diet cures cancer in order to sell a product. If you didn’t, I am happy to keep you hidden here. But if you did, I have to send you home so you can respond to police questioning.’

  ‘The police want to question me?’ She wants to scream, run, take her chopping knife and find the heavy pulse of her jugular vein. How does she summon the strength to face this?

  ‘Yes. I mean, after everything that has happened, it is all starting to add up a bit.’ Ayo leans forward and holds Holly’s face in her hands, ‘But listen, girl, we’ve got this. Zanna is the ultimate pro and she can stall the questions for a little while. Just take the afternoon to go for a long hike and think if you ever said anything that could be construed as concealing the truth. Check in with me later and we’ll take it from there.’

  *

  Holly turns left and heads towards the most remote trail. There’s a reason hikers steer clear of this path, she soon discovers. It is steep, rocky and ridden with patches of slippery moss. These obstacles don’t slow her pace. If there’s one thing she knows how to do right, it’s walk. Isn’t that how she started in London, pacing the streets alone with a fistful of imaginary friends flashing inside her phone? Those were simpler days – she couldn’t understand the shape of what she was building yet. She was just posting recipes and making connections, brick by brick. Every comment was thrilling, and she thought that the marketing reps sponsoring her products were her friends.

  How did her experiment with her health, with the truth, become deadly? How did it accumulate enough weight to convince another human being that it was a cure?

  For the past few years, every meal she faced in her life was an opportunity to prove just how pure she was, how healthy. Her skin, her body, her hair, her life, were all a result of a path she chose at random. The truth is that since coming to the retreat she hasn’t seen the rapid decline in her health she expected to see, and she’s been eating fish, eggs and all the bread she could find for the first time in years. Old Holly preached against the toxic qualities of gluten and would have been terrified of getting bloated after eating bread, yet she hasn’t felt uncomfortable. Not once. Even without her daily wheatgrass shot and cleansing lemon water, her skin is glowing. There are no ingredients to make her calming evening turmeric and chamomile almond milk latte, yet she is sleeping through the night. Her legs are strong and lean from hiking, despite not practising the daily Ashtanga yoga sequence she swore by on her blog. Life somehow exists, thrives, outside the rigidity of her rules. Now, she finds out a life has ended within them.

  She strains her mind for one particular lie, but it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Every picture, every motivational quote, added up to convey a message. Hell, she even used the settings on her camera to filter every picture to look the same. Anything that didn’t fit within those bright, perfectly lit frames was labelled as wrong. Who did she think she was? She’d only read one book on nutrition, and hadn’t even studied anything after school. All she knew was how to style a good window display and pose for a photo. Looking at it that way, she can see it all for what it is. Disgusting.

  The path thins and a canopy of trees imposes a sudden darkness. Within the howling wind, she hears the trapped cries of the thousands, millions, of people who truly had cancer. Their moans as they grit their teeth through another round of chemotherapy. Their desperation when they receive a scan that shows that, yes, the tumour has grown once again. Their sobs as they assure their families that they must find joy and live on without them. They rage and scream, haunting and taunting her. The dark door in her mind is blasted open, revealing the quivering tar-like truth behind it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, the stones and the trees her only witnesses, ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  Someone died. A young woman trying her best to heal from a genuine terminal illness died on her watch. She knows what she has to do, and it makes her sick to her stomach. Still, there is some hope. She remembers the raw shopping lists she painstakingly put together. She’d spent a whole week researching what exactly nutritional yeast was and whether it was a heal
thy addition to a meal plan. She had taken care. It can’t be true that her innocent actions killed someone else. But if it is, it’s time she took responsibility.

  The weather is turning. Holly pulls up the hood of her raincoat and makes her way back to the retreat, running the last stretch and into Ayo’s office.

  ‘Holly, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m OK. But I need to ask you something. Can I see her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl who died, or the footage about her. I did something terrible but I know I took complete care in all the nutritional plans I put together. If I can just hear what I have been accused of, I’ll be able to fully shoulder the responsibility of what I have done.’

  Ayo looks concerned. Something in her expression suggests she has been in a position like this before.

  ‘Are you sure this will give you closure?’ The rain pelts the windows outside. A storm is brewing. Holly wishes she could soar like the birds above the clouds and find shelter. Even this idyllic cottage in the countryside cannot protect her now.

  ‘Well, something close to it. Maybe it will help me get my head around it.’

  She wants to confirm the terrible truth she suspects, the beast lurking behind the door.

  ‘You sure this won’t be salt in the wound? It can be quite damaging to see how badly our reputation has been broken through shaming.’

  Holly nods her head solemnly. ‘I’m sure. I have to do it now or I never will.’

  ‘Fine. I will get the clip and play it on one condition – that you watch it with the rest of the group.’

  Her heart plummets. Once they all see the clip, she will be confirmed in their eyes as a monster.

  ‘Surely that’s more damaging to me?’

  ‘Just the opposite, actually. No matter what you feel as you face your shame, we can help you share the load. You’ll have the reassurance that you’re not alone.’