‘I blamed everybody else for my problems, I always have. When my face got cut, I was angry at my attacker, then I got so angry with my fans who turned on me. After everything I had built, after all the love and support we had given each other, they were so quick to turn on me. Things they praised me for in the past – my weight, my hair, the way I speak – suddenly became an opportunity for ridicule. It made me wonder if they ever followed me out of warmth, or whether I was just one of those people everybody loved to hate. I’ve never known the secret to being liked, you see. I don’t have that intangible thing that others have.’
She takes a deep breath. ‘Regardless of how I feel about anything and what was real or fake, it now turns out that someone out there, a young woman, took my advice to not undergo chemotherapy in favour of a raw, vegan diet and died. So, I guess that leads us to now. Ayo invited you here to support me as we watch this woman’s partner describe her story in detail. I don’t know whether to feel angry or sad or ashamed right now, and I don’t know how I’ll react. I feel like my mind is not my own anymore.’
She waits for the outrage and insults, but there is nothing but the sound of the rain gently falling outside. Ayo stands up and walks towards the TV screen, avoiding eye contact. ‘There is no right or wrong way to react, Holly. The only thing you should try and feel is compassion. We are so often separated – by our ethnicities, class, sexual orientation, and our phone screens – that we forget there is a real human behind the image. Your fans only saw you for the sum of your photos. Try to see this girl for the living, breathing human being she was. She must have looked up to you a lot and would have liked that.’
The screen flickers on in a kiss of static. Already, Holly’s blood congeals with humiliation. Only a few months ago she was standing on that otherworldly platform herself, blinking under the spotlight, blushing underneath industrial-strength hair and make-up. Those same presenters had gushed over how lean she looked in her black Stella McCartney dress and had sighed as they tried her raw Thai-spiced salad. Now they face the camera, eyes wild with glee. They never loved her dress. They never loved her hair. They never loved her freaking salad. Her hands are shaking. She feels Tara move over and put her arm around her shoulders.
‘Today we have an exclusive interview with Tyler Wells, the surviving ex-boyfriend of a woman who tragically died after following the nutritional advice of fallen social media health icon, Holly Evans.’
Tyler Wells. There is a familiar musicality to the name, a feeling that she repeated it to herself sometime in the past, but why?
The story begins with the presenter introducing the person being interviewed. The camera pans on to his face. Holly’s breath catches in her throat. Her muscles clench and her throat swells. She pants and wheezes, eyes squeezed shut. When she opens them, she’s looking into his eyes again. They’re green and clear, wet as moss. The type of eyes you want to believe, the type of eyes you follow out the door so you can look in to them again.
‘Holly?’ Ayo presses pause. No, this is worse. His face is frozen in time, his eyes still running the length of her scar, following her across the room.
‘It’s . . . oh my God, no . . . it’s him.’
‘Who, Holly?’ Everybody is so close to her, she’s suffocating. Why the hell did she agree to have these strangers here with her? ‘Holly.’ Ayo touches her arm. ‘You’re going to need to tell us what you mean.’
‘He never told me his name was Tyler, he called himself Jack.’
A flash of memory, the lavender scent of freshly laundered sheets crisp against her skin. Tingling fingers and toes, watering eyes as the drugs wore off, leaving her cold and confused. The shame, the shame, as persistent and present as her pulse. Dr Warner’s sad eyes describing the surgical procedure and how she lashed out at him and at his assistant, Dr Tyler Wells.
‘Who, Holly?’
‘The man who cut me! The man who did this!’ She starts tugging her face, over and over, until one of the people in the room holds her arms back. It’s one thing too many. Alan inches forward and pushes a brown paper bag in front of her face.
‘Just breathe into this, Holly. It helps, I promise. You need to take deep breaths. You’re safe here.’
Verushka, silent until now, says softly, ‘Should we really be forcing her to do this, Ayo? She doesn’t look ready.’
Something about Verushka’s tone seems too patronising for Holly to bear. She pushes away the bag and grabs the remote. She won’t let some slimy journalist say what she should and shouldn’t do. If they were both in London, she’s sure she would have spilled Holly’s story in a second.
‘I’ve come this far,’ she says through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s hear what else he has to say.’
The interview set-up looks positively cosy, all soft cream linen and perfectly brewed cups of tea. She knows the interior – Claridge’s. She took her mum there once, for a tense conciliatory tea the first time she came to visit her in London. Holly had just signed a deal with a smoothie company and felt as if she had finally regained control of her life. Not that her mum appreciated any of it, as she kept on asking if they could stop off at the Pizza Express on the way home because they served ‘real helpings’.
Victoria, the journalist, purses her lips and tugs at her twinset as Tyler talks dotingly about his fiancée, Frankie. So that was her name. It has a familiar ring to it. It sounds like the type of person Holly may have wanted to be friends with, or be like. Something lights up in her memory, golden and alive, but then the moment is gone. All that is left is jealousy. Oh, to be innocent and untouchable. Oh, to be so smart. Oh, to be dead.
At one point, Victoria asks, ‘What do you think attracted Frankie to Holly?’
‘Well, she was the full package, wasn’t she? With her long hair, clear skin and beautiful body, it’s easy to see why women aspired to be like her. On top of that, she just seemed so damn nice. Everything she said was rooted in ideas that were wholesome and good. She took women back to a place where natural living was better. After so many fad diets, she was a breath of fresh air, a return to the source.’
Holly wants to punch the screen. The same smooth voice that gasped on ‘discovering’ that she was a famous blogger now speaks glibly about her, revealing how much he knew about her all along. What spark did she really feel that night? How similar attraction and fear can feel. How easily they can be confused.
His gestures are the same as the night she met him, that boyish curiosity, that constant motion. His fingers flick against the saucer of his teacup. His hands pick the salt shaker up and put it down again. Every now and again the camera catches his foot twitching beneath the table. It’s as if he is interested and engaged on the surface, but inside he is rushing to be somewhere else. He holds a devil beneath his skin and it’s pushing its way out. Not that Victoria notices. She can’t seem to stray from his face. She’s falling for him hook, line and sinker, just like Holly did.
At one point they zoom in on a photograph of Frankie, with her full name underneath it. Holly can’t feel anything anymore. She doesn’t need to search her contacts list to know that Frankie’s phone number is there. She remembers her auburn hair, the way it bounced when she laughed, the way it fell in a curtain when she uttered a terrible secret.
Tyler is not the innocent victim he has made himself out to be. Holly knows this in her bones. At the very end of the interview, her instincts are confirmed. When Victoria asks about Frankie’s funeral, something about his reaction is not right. After a twenty-minute special of revealing all about their relationship, he shuts down. Holly knows how it feels, to want to close everyone down. After all, she knows a lot about lying. The filming cuts suddenly, as if even more of his response has been edited out. This fills her with hope and a new sense of purpose. Whatever Tyler claims to have felt, there is a darker side to his story. Holly’s heart beats a little faster – it’s a side to the story he doesn’t realise she knows.
He looked so smug, sitting there in
his sharp suit with a perfect sob story. What would his perfect, unlined face look like if he realised she held the power now, that he had given it to her? Holly is so sick of other people – especially men – being the ones to punish her, the ones to decide what is right and what is wrong. So what if he wants to kill her? She’s not going to cower this time. She’s going to fight back.
Chapter 46
Tyler
Everybody loves Tyler and it’s as boring as hell.
His Instagram following has multiplied tenfold, twentyfold, thirtyfold in the past twenty-four hours. It’s embarrassing really – all he has on it are some blurry pictures of Frankie on their first and only weekend away in Bath and some shots of a rare sunny day in London, the general banality of someone who doesn’t think that anybody else is watching them.
He’s done radio interviews, television interviews and is scheduled to record a podcast once his shift at the hospital is done. The podcaster, a high-haired, Vans-wearing lad in his early twenties, seemed perplexed when Tyler emphasised that yes, he is a real doctor, a genuine surgeon with patients that take precedence over whatever this is. He doesn’t have the time to float around all day and talk about being Tyler Wells. That’s what this influencer business seems to be about – talking your face off about everything you’re doing but not really doing much of it.
Tyler should be happy. Not only did he receive an outpouring of love and support after he told his story about Frankie, but the world wants to hear it over and over again. They want to see it from every angle until it feels like their own. They feel heartbroken for him and incensed that someone like Holly dared to exist. Someone like Holly who is still out there, who still exists.
During an interview with a local news station, they asked him to talk a bit more about his approach to food. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but sub-consciously he must have known it was. Why else would he have flattened his public-school accent, letting all the air out? Why else would he take on the jarring, musical East End intonation of the nurses that take three different buses to get to the hospital? In his new voice, he leaned back and said, ‘Well, it’s about balance, innit? I’ll eat my leafy green veggies and grains with the best of them, but there’s nothing wrong with an ice-cold beer and a burger once or twice a week. Our body needs fats to survive, so as a medical professional I am very comfortable with adding slices of bacon to my diet, or some chocolate. Hell, even a glass of good, red wine has medical benefits. It’s all a bit classist, yeah? Diets like Holly’s imply that the Average Joe’s way of eating isn’t good enough anymore. It introduces an elitism to food that, in my opinion, is motivated by greed. Not everyone would agree with my thinking, but it’s just the Wells way.’ He laughed then, and chewed on a brownie for the camera. ‘Why should our conversations about food always be about restrictions? The problem with so-called health experts like Holly is that they feed off the guilt of others. Well, it’s time to let that guilt go.’
Now, there is an email in his inbox from a publisher, asking if they can meet to discuss a potential book on his and Frankie’s story, and would he be interested in a spin-off cookbook about the Wells way? This attention doesn’t feel earned – all he did was draw attention to Holly’s bullshit. Should he really get a fucking medal for stating the obvious? Then again, why shouldn’t he?
He walks into the operating theatre, washes his hands and cracks his knuckles before turning to the anaesthetised patient below him. It’s a neck operation, a tricky removal of a benign tumour, which will require him to carefully slice through muscle and nerve. This level of critical work has a tendency to calm him. Not today. As much as the fine finger work consumes him, his mind still wanders, reflexively thinking of ways he can play to his growing crowd.
Seeing your days through the eyes of someone else helps define them a bit better. He remembers feeling this way when he first started seeing Frankie, the excitement of framing his day for her alone. Nothing seems fruitless. All the disappointments, frustrations and lost moments fall into an effortless narrative. You want to be what people think you are. The operation feels like white noise, something to do with his hands while he thinks about the Instagram photos he’ll take later and what he’ll say about them. He’s really on to something here with this eating plan. Think of the people he could free from twisted, food-obsessed beliefs. What the world needs right now is a common-sense approach to diet, one that he is qualified to deliver.
Tyler leaves the hospital on a high. He’s headed for Haché on Fulham Road to satisfy his craving for the Steak Catalan burger, a big hunk of meat topped with chorizo and chilli jam. Cooked red meat, sugar and fat – it’s the beautiful antithesis of Holly’s obsessive diet. Slowly, slowly, he will eliminate the space she occupied in the world.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. It could be another agent, another interview. Tyler’s heart sinks when he sees the number. It’s Frankie’s father, calling for the fourth freaking time today. How many times does a person need to call before they realise that they are being ignored intentionally? Don’t people have any sense of self-respect?
He puts his headphones on and puts his iTunes on shuffle. Tonight deserves a soundtrack. The opening chords of Bloc Party beat in time with his heart. Nothing could be more fitting. This was the album of his and Frankie’s first month together. It was the pulse of the underground indie club they used to go to in a time before Holly. They were rough enough around the edges to fit in, to kiss messily on the dance floor and grab underneath each other’s clothes in the stairwell. He’d do anything to go back to those times, to pace through the streets of London, Bloc Party on repeat, with no understanding of life and of her.
Her cancer became a part of him too, that’s what she never understood. She pushed him away as it took over her body, but it had already slipped through her skin and wormed its way into his. It turned over his own cells, poisoning him and morphing him into something different, something darker. Its roots still tug at his heart and tighten around his thoughts. Now, he is older, burdened and bitter, a rushing, hunched figure pulling his coat tighter and tighter across his chest.
The music was meant to enhance his good mood, but instead it lets in a gust of cold air. And along with it, the buzz coats his bones. The interview, the fifteen minutes of fame, the diet, it’s not going to be enough. He can try and be happy with it. He can even try to go along with it, pathetically playing to the press and thousands of nameless fans. But even now he can feel the buzz whirring and churning, forming a solid shape, a need. It’s a need that smells like blood. This is so curious – Tyler encounters blood every day of his job. Now, the terms of engagement have changed. He wants blood to crust and darken underneath his fingernails and seep into his expensive clothes. Not just any blood, Holly’s blood. He chases life every day, desperately clasping on to it. Imagine, oh imagine, the sweet release of letting a life that shouldn’t be here slip through his hands.
God, he hates himself. Look at the fucking mess he’s become. He used to have a plan in life. He was so solid, so sure. He was going to put in his time at the hospital until he became Chief of Surgery, marry Frankie and put their kids through one of those posh creative schools. She could have quit her job and stayed home at with the kids and floated over to the hospital during his lunch break, carrying coronation chicken sandwiches from that little place only they knew. Hidden in the wrapping he’d find some of that old school liquorice that she knew he liked. He had it all going for him.
This is all Holly’s fault. Everything would have been so perfect if she hadn’t set Frankie’s mechanism of self-destruction into motion. Ha, set it into motion. That’s a funny one. As if she simply touched one domino and the rest fell down. She incessantly came between them with all her perfect pictures, wholesome recipes and inspiring words. Holly’s responsible for driving him and Frankie apart. If it weren’t for her, this beast within him would still be sleeping, undisturbed.
He’s almost at Haché now. As per usual there�
�s a queue snaking around the corner, a mixture of wide-eyed tourists and bored locals. God, he wishes he could just walk into the restaurant all alone, order his burger and eat in peace. That’s all he wants, just one day where the stupid, slow and annoying are kept locked away. That would leave nobody, allow him to walk the streets freely, unhindered by the weakness of others. Sadly, this is not the case today, so he scrolls through the latest news on his phone.
Despite the bombshell about Frankie’s death, the news reports seem to be pulling away from Holly’s story. Tyler hopes that this is in revulsion, but it probably doesn’t run that deep. Column space is limited and there are only so many words you can write to describe someone as a fake. Then you have to chase a more interesting story, like this one today about a little girl who has disappeared while on holiday in Marbella. You have to move on. To be honest, there’s far more mention of his name today than Holly’s, and the news is all good. Headlines swoon, ‘Finally, the fresh face of nutrition we’ve been waiting for’, ‘Doctor says: go on, eat the burger’ and, to his embarrassment, ‘Hunky surgeon with a hot diet to match’. Soon, every last trace of Holly will be gone. Nobody will be hurt again, he will help heal his followers’ relationship with food and everybody will move on.
‘Good afternoon, sir. Table for one?’ an annoyingly short waiter interrupts his reverie.
‘Yes, please. And don’t bother with the menu. I know what I want. One Steak Catalan burger please, medium rare, extra chorizo.’
Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online Page 22
