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

by Amy Heydenrych

  It didn’t make sense. Tyler felt he had been the model, caring boyfriend. Did Frankie and her family want him to do even more than he was doing now? It just wasn’t possible. No, it was something else, something outside of him.

  A darker fear scratched at his nerves. Maybe she had found someone else? That would explain her sudden lack of care in his presence, the contempt that snarled at the corners of her words, the awkward gait of her mother as she answered the door. Luckily for them, Tyler was no quitter. He would do anything to feel illuminated with love the way he used to. Sickness can be healed, and love can be spirited back into life.

  He crunched through the fresh snow lining the pavement, a little less confident than he had hoped to be. Frankie had told him not to come over, so he was about to surprise her. On the one hand, he was desperate to see her, to bury his face in her hair. On the other, he hoped he’d catch her in the act of betrayal that was gradually tugging her away. Even the fleeting glance of another man kissing her would be better than this slow torture.

  He wouldn’t mention the cancer this time, not today. Every time he tried, she coiled further into herself. Instead, he’d bought a new book that he thought she’d like, something to remind her of where they started, and to pass the time as she healed. It must have broken her heart to have to quit the job she loved so much, and he wanted her to see that he understood. He was desperate for her to know that he felt her pain as acutely as if it was his own.

  He stood outside her front door for a few moments, fresh snow peppering his hair. There was no turning back. He pressed the doorbell hard and heard it echo inside. Footsteps then, louder and louder until the door creaked open and they were standing facing each other.

  She’d grown thinner, puffy and gaunt all at once. Her eyes, still flashing so brightly, appeared too big for her pallid face. She leaned wearily against the door.

  ‘Tyler . . .’

  The speech he had practised so many times in his mind lodged in his swollen throat.

  ‘Babe, I needed to see you.’

  ‘That is not your choice to make! How many times have I told you that I need space right now? I don’t have the energy to repeat the same conversation over and over again.’ She sighed out the word ‘energy’ with an anger that, frankly, made her look ugly.

  He felt a rage rising in return, unstoppable. The broken figure in front of him had asked for this, every excruciating moment of it. If she hadn’t been so obsessed with her hippy-dippy bullshit and her pie-in-the-sky role model, she may have stood a fighting chance. He felt so fucking helpless, banished from comforting her, his educated suggestions thrown back in his face.

  ‘And what conversation would that be? That you don’t seem to think I’m a good enough doctor to help you?’

  Frankie began to edge away from him, glancing behind her frantically. She was getting nervous, but he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘How many fucking years have I trained in medicine, Frankie, huh? How many late nights have I stayed up to study and pour over decades of research? For God’s sake, everyone else thinks I’m a hero! Why believe me, though, when you can find some random stranger on Instagram who looks good in a bikini, and follow what she says?’

  Her voice, once husky, came out like shattered glass. ‘Tyler, please, I’m so tired. Mum, come here a second please? MUM!’

  ‘Not tired enough to stop with your green juices, colonics and fucking fairy dust that you think will cure you.’

  ‘This is why I said I didn’t want you here,’ she whispered. It reminded him of his father – Tyler, you’re not helping.

  ‘Oh, really now? Admit it, Frankie, I’m the only one who gives a shit about you! At least I say what everyone else is thinking! Your family is too fucking timid to stand up to you, but I’m not.’

  She made herself smaller and smaller. He didn’t want to, but she made him; she wasn’t looking him in the eye so he was forced to do it. He grabbed her face in one shaking hand.

  ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you! It’s because you don’t respect my opinion, right? You think I went to the best schools and university for nothing? You think it was easy watching my mum die, and now you? God, do you know how many people I have worked on that don’t get the chance to survive? Yet you’ve thrown yours away!’

  She whispered something inaudible.

  ‘What was that? Sorry is your throat a bit sore now? You’re going to have to speak up, sweetheart.’

  Her eyes were on fire. He’d never seen such hatred in them before. It was her fault; she hated him so much in that moment that she was spoiling for a fight.

  ‘I said,’ she spoke slowly, spitefully, ‘because it is my fucking body and I have every right to decide what I do with it. No doctor, no partner, no lover has a say in the decisions I make over my body, and my life. That is something my family and the people who really love me understand.’

  With that, time changed. He disconnected, retreated deep into his body, coiled in the red-hot rage that burned through his veins. He grabbed at her, but she lost balance and fell to the ground.

  ‘Mum! Dad!’ she cried urgently.

  Shouting then, crying, firm hands pushing him onto the street and slamming the door. They didn’t understand. He was just trying to help her, to change the ending to the story.

  ‘Don’t you come back, you hear me?’ Frankie’s father shouted into the cold.

  He never looked back as he ran down the stark, white streets of London, muttering, ‘it’s her fault, it’s her fault’ like a madman, like a monster, like a man in love.

  That was the last day he saw her. Frankie’s condition declined over the following months and she let go. He often tries to imagine what those last days had been like. Did her family honour her wishes? Did they know the passage she wanted read at her funeral? Or that she wanted her ashes scattered across the Himalayas?

  It’s a funny feeling when someone you knew so intimately goes on and moves through their life without you. You feel tethered to them, yet as they move forward your reference grows further away. Soon it becomes little more than a mirage, a dream. He writes letters to her in his mind all of the time. Sometimes they say sorry. Most of the time they plead. ‘Why, why did you force me to speak to you like that? Why did you make me break the beautiful castle we built?’

  While he has to live with his mistake, he has a chance to make things right. The way their story ended was not his fault. Frankie may not be here to punish Holly for how she ruined a relationship and took a life, but he sure is. Hurting Frankie was an accident, but hurting Holly is something he will do with intention.

  Chapter 52

  Holly

  It’s the words that taunt her. Day in, day out, the frantic rhythm of imagined conversations. The things she will say when she sees him. Whether she is asleep, meditating or cooking in the retreat kitchen, it beats behind her eyes like a drum, a script waiting to be acted into life.

  The tone changes depending on her mood. This morning, she lies tangled in cool bed sheets and reaches for her phone under her pillow. After looking through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, she turns the camera on herself and examines her reflection. Zooming in and out, looking for flaws. The sun and fresh air have been miraculous, but not miraculous enough. Her skin is plumper and the scars look less angry, but they are still painfully visible. She blinks back tears – this might be as good as it gets. The anger and the regret are too heavy. She can’t carry them anymore.

  Today the script in her head has morphed from one of rage to one of apology. Holly feels Tyler’s hurt, his loss, acutely. She needs him to know that he did something wrong, but she did too. None of this was ever meant to go so far, and they are both victims in their own way. Maybe it will all end if she’s the one to say sorry first.

  ‘Hey, Holly.’ Tara hovers outside her room. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  In the fever of her imaginings, she almost forgot that today is the day she leaves the retreat. Ayo was meant to be the one to d
rive her to the station, but she had to leave the day before to attend to some undisclosed business. In her soft, elegant fashion, Ayo never mentioned the nature of her trip, but everyone knew that it had to do with the event, the shaming, that brought her here in the first place.

  This is the funny thing about online shaming. It all happens on the Internet, so people think, oh it’s just little sparks, they won’t hurt you. But those sparks build into a raging wildfire that leaps off the screen and into your own life. It becomes tangible, bringing practical, visible consequences with it. Like police statements, an empty bank balance, a need to go and identify criminals in a line-up, weight gain, weight loss, night terrors, the clenching of your muscles till they become smaller and smaller in the hope that then nobody will see you. Whoever first said, ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ never had an Internet connection. Holly is both sad and relieved Ayo isn’t here. Without seeing in Ayo’s eyes how far she has come and how much she has healed, it may hurt less to leave.

  Holly walks through the house one last time, struck by how a place that was so unfamiliar a few weeks ago now feels like home. How strange to have entered this house when she was so filled with self-hatred and to leave now as a different person, a person she actually likes. She finds Alan and Verushka sitting outside in a small patch of morning sunlight, sipping coffee and having an animated discussion about the state of the global economy.

  ‘Well, I’m off!’ she says brightly.

  ‘Oh my goodness, let’s hug quickly so I don’t burst into tears!’ Verushka says. ‘This feels like the end of an era!’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Holly smiles. ‘You’ll be seeing me again in a few days for your special assignment in London. Zanna will give you a call to talk through all the details.’ To think she is about to see Zanna again! Tonight, she plans on cooking her a three-course surprise dinner to say thank you for everything she has done.

  Holly and Tara arrive at the station early. Not ready to leave the comfort of her retreat friendships yet, Holly buys them a cup of steaming hot chocolate each and suggests they watch the trains go by. She imagines Ayo quietly slipping on one with her small suitcase, a meditation book on her lap, headed for an unknown destination. She realises that she has, selfishly, never pictured Ayo’s life before the retreat. She’s always been this soft, magical goddess who spoke in a calming lullaby and floated along the halls of the cottage. She belonged there. If pressed, she’d guess that Ayo was a nursery school teacher, or a massage therapist. She has the open quality of a healer.

  ‘Tara, do you know Ayo’s story?’

  ‘Hasn’t she told you? Ayo was in politics back in Nigeria. She sat in Parliament and was an outspoken feminist.’

  ‘That seems a long way away from here. Did she have to leave Nigeria because she was shamed?’

  Tara is quiet for a long time, so quiet Holly is not sure whether she offended her, or if she simply didn’t hear her.

  ‘Oh well, Ayo told me the story once and it was quite vague. I’d only been at the retreat for a week and was struggling to sleep. I just felt so disgusting, you know? Whenever I closed my eyes I could see myself the way others saw me – this grainy footage of a desperate young starlet trying to be sexy.’

  ‘You’re not vile, Tara. It’s easy for people to judge others; it helps them forget that they too are human.’ Sometimes Holly is surprised by her own eloquence, by the assured voice of this new person she has become.

  ‘I know that now, but at the time I felt stained with shame. I was sitting in my room on the first night I came here, trying to stifle my sobs. Ayo must have heard me, because after about half an hour she came into my room all wrapped up in that kimono that she loves, with two cups of hot masala chai. That’s when she told me.’

  She looks around, as if she is somehow still around to hear her.

  ‘As I said before, Ayo was a highly respected female politician with a strong stance on several contentious government issues. You could say she was a fighter, always on the side of the everyday guy and girl on the street. This meant she was anti-corruption, pro-choice, pro-female empowerment, etc. This made her a favourite with the global community and the people, but not so popular with the ruling elite.’

  Holly tries to imagine Ayo restrained in a pencil skirt with her dreadlocks piled on her head. It shouldn’t be so hard to imagine strength nestled within her softness but she struggles to form a clear image. Tara goes on.

  ‘The political struggle on her home soil became too much, and she became too much for Nigeria’s politicians. So they shipped her off to New York to fulfil the coveted but faraway role of Nigerian ambassador. This was the beginning of a beautiful time in her life filled with inspiration, rooftop parties and long walks in Central Park. Over there, well, she felt free to be her true self and she fell in love. She met the most compelling, intelligent woman, an expat from London, and they made a life together. They sounded like a total power couple and were a regular fixture at all the hot New York social events. The powers that be must have got wind of it, because they terminated her assignment and sent her to a less high-profile country, Germany I think.’

  ‘What happened to her girlfriend?’

  ‘Well, this is where things fell apart. They stayed together, and the girlfriend even started a company back in London to be closer to her. But obviously they were doing long distance and would send each other messages to spice things up – pictures, texts, whatnot. The thing is, unbeknown to Ayo, her phone was tapped the whole time.’

  Holly feels tearful at the thought of her warm, wise mentor being targeted by others and her innermost desires being exposed.

  ‘Who tapped the phone?’

  Tara says, ‘Ayo’s not sure, because the first she heard of it was when it was published on the front page of a national newspaper. Deep, intimate, messages between her and her lover broadcast for all to see. Taking part in any sort of homosexual act is still a criminal offence in Nigeria, but because it didn’t happen in the country itself, they couldn’t do anything to her. All they could do was ridicule and shame her until she quit her job and vowed never to come back. This retreat is now her passion, because she understands the impact that public shaming can have on a person’s life.’

  ‘Is she still in touch with her girlfriend?’

  ‘Sadly, they split up, but they keep in touch. Apparently she’s a hotshot publicist to the stars now. She lives in London, so I think they still stand a chance one day, when the humiliation has subsided. Ayo has a picture of her somewhere – really edgy-looking woman, with an asymmetrical black bob.’

  Holly drops her journal to the ground; her mouth goes dry.

  ‘Tara. What’s her name?’

  ‘It’s something a bit exotic, maybe Lana? No, that’s not it. Anna? Wait, too plain.’

  ‘Zanna?’ she stutters.

  ‘Yes! That’s it! Her name is Zanna.’

  Holly is overcome by a love so big it threatens to choke her. Of course, Zanna had been in love with Ayo. How radiant they must have been as a couple – Zanna as light and nervy as air, and Ayo, grounded as the earth. Each of them were so skilled, so capable. They must have felt at one point that they had it made. A public humiliation intense enough to break them, no wonder both of them built careers that ensured, in their own way, that others would be spared the eternal impact of shame. Holly’s plan for Tyler is cemented in her mind. She owes it to both of them to do the right thing.

  Chapter 53

  Tyler

  It would be easier if, when someone leaves, they were spirited away, leaving no trace of their existence. Yet humans are messy creatures that accumulate things over time. They leave debris in their wake.

  After the strange men carried Tyler’s mother out of their enchanted house, there was cleaning to be done. Tyler was no longer useless or of little help. His father marched him through the house as they picked up and threw away remnants of her sickness: strange congealed potions, rough brown pills
, and fortifying protein shakes. Things which were meant to help but were now rendered without a purpose. Her spirit was gone, so things just became things, no matter how closely they lay against her skin. Tyler bundled the sheets that still smelt of her into his small arms, and sobbed into what was left of her scent.

  Frankie left her own debris in her wake. When Tyler returned to his apartment, remnants of his and Frankie’s time together haunted him. A ticket stub from a band they had seen together. An almost-empty jar of moisturiser. A pink cardigan she hadn’t really cared for. He grew obsessed with returning these lost items, but no matter how many times he knocked on her family’s door, nobody answered, even though the smoke trailing out the chimney hinted at a fire burning inside.

  Today, he distracts himself to keep his mounting feeling of despair at bay. While he may be helpless, at least his picture got more than 1,500 likes today. In his Inbox, a message from Holly:

  ‘Hey Tyler, I just want to say I know you are the one who did this to me. I know everything.’

  A few minutes later, a new message.

  ‘I’m not angry anymore, and I’m not scared either.’

  Silly little girl. Does she really think she can play with fire? He could say so many things, but he holds off his reply. Let her wonder. Let her remember who has the power here. Yes, he is the one who is about to start working on his own recipe book, where his message will hopefully reach women like Frankie and stop them from falling for con artists like Holly again. He can’t wait to experiment with cooking – slicing and carving prime cuts of meat with his favourite knife. He always did make an unbelievable, garlicky lamb shank roasted in red wine and thyme. What sweet justice that would be! He hums a light little tune through his gritted teeth. People are finally paying attention to what he has to say, they are buzzing around him like flies at a buffet. Even Holly cannot resist edging nearer.