Chapter 54
Holly then
It’s a hopeful, sunny day in London, and Exmouth market is bustling with people on their lunch break. Long queues form in front of the food stalls selling doughnuts, paella, gourmet burgers and tacos. Holly’s mouth goes dry as she spots Frankie’s thin frame in front of a stall aptly named, ‘The Veggie Guy’.
‘Holly, you made it! You’re just in time. This guy over here makes the best salads in London.’
Frankie slaps a dollop of hummus over each pile of vegetables, grabs some plastic forks and leads them to a nearby park. As she follows her, Holly can’t help but admire her confidence. She would never ask a stranger for lunch in the park – it feels so intimate. In fact, she almost didn’t come, but she was curious about why someone as obviously successful as Frankie would want to spend time with her. She was also encouraged by the prospect of making a new friend.
The park is packed with a jarring contrast of people in business attire and shirtless builders. At 1 p.m., everyone needs a break in the sun. They find a small patch of grass with some shade and settle down, Frankie chattering excitedly all the while.
‘What I love about you is that you have taken charge of your illness, you know? You haven’t sat back and let a bunch of medical specialists tell you what to do. You have done the research and made a decision based on what is best for your body.’
Holly looks away, afraid Frankie will catch the panic in her eyes.
‘It hasn’t always been this easy,’ she says. ‘My family doesn’t understand my new lifestyle at all.’
Frankie laughs too loudly then, and Holly notices her fists are clenched.
‘Oh, tell me about it! I knew you would be the only one to understand this! Remember that doctor boyfriend I told you about?’
‘Of course!’
‘Well, life with him took an unexpected turn the moment I told him about my choice not to undergo chemotherapy. We hadn’t been going out for very long, but he turned intense really quickly. I won’t lie, I enjoyed the attention, but when I got sick the attention felt smothering. He was obsessed with looking after me, and with changing my mind about not having medical treatment.’
She’s acting more amused than outraged, the way most girls do when a man has hurt them deeply. Better to rewrite the pain into a fun story to share with friends instead of acknowledging the cruelty that lurks beneath the words.
‘I couldn’t take it anymore so I broke up with him. Around the same time, I moved back home with my parents so they could look after me. But he couldn’t take no for an answer – he started small, with constant phone calls and texts. Then he began to drive to my parents’ place at all hours of the day. I thought maybe he’d get it out of his system but he’s still at it. Just last week, he proposed to me! And I feel horrible because, a few months ago, I would have said yes. That level of attention from a man is so hard to come by; I felt like I had met my soulmate.’
Holly notices the cold sores clustering around Frankie’s lips, the torn skin at her cuticles and the new bones that jut out her arms. She didn’t just call Holly to talk about the benefits of a natural diet. She needed to talk about this. She edges closer and puts her arm around Frankie.
‘You’re not worried, are you?’
Frankie turns slowly towards her, still holding a determined smile on her face.
‘Holly,’ she says softly. ‘Have you ever loved someone who you think could kill you?’
Chapter 55
Holly
The apartment is all packed up, but Zanna has managed to stall the movers for just one more week. Holly finishes scrubbing her body raw in the shower, turns off the water and wraps her head in a towel. She stands for a moment, breathing in the rose-scented steam. It feels good to be back.
They knock as she’s slipping on the borrowed black shift dress that still carries the scent of Zanna’s signature Chanel No.5. She runs to the door and flings it open. It feels so freeing to no longer be petrified of what’s outside.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Zanna frowns. ‘After this is posted and goes into the world, there’s no turning back. I cannot guarantee or control anything from here.’
‘I’m sure.’ Holly edges closer and hugs her. Everything is going to get better soon. No matter what storm this video brings, she feels buoyant with the certainty that life is about to return to normal. She will remain in London and begin a new life. She hasn’t spoken to her father yet and doesn’t plan to – there is no need to be that Holly again.
Verushka adjusts the camera and sits in the chairs they have set up for their interview.
‘I’m ready when you are!’ Choosing Verushka to interview her was the easiest decision she has had to make in months. Nobody is stronger, tougher or more committed to telling the truth. No one deserves a second chance more than she does. Out of the context of the retreat, Verushka is calm, businesslike and every inch the sharp reporter. Holly, on the other hand, has chosen not to wear a smidgen of make-up. The world wants to see her broken. They want to see her insides. So she’s going to offer herself up, raw and humbled. She takes a seat, and the camera starts to roll.
‘Hi, everyone, I am Verushka Pillay, an independent investigative journalist. Here with me is Holly Evans who, for the first time since the attack that set off a series of events that brought her name into disrepute, will be telling her side of the story. Holly, what would you like to say to your followers, the media and the world?’
‘Hi, Verushka. I want to start off by saying that I am not here to excuse or defend anything. All I come here with today is an apology. I invited thousands of you into my life to share my wellness journey. I represented myself as authentic while editing out the uncomfortable realities that didn’t fit into the image I created. By doing this, I neglected to acknowledge the power I had to influence other people in their nutritional and medical decisions.’
Her eyes fill with tears. The worst is yet to come. She can do it. She has to do it.
‘Would you like to share what uncomfortable reality you were editing out specifically?’ Here it comes, the wave of shame. After this, nothing will ever be the same. Holly closes her heart and jumps.
‘I can confirm that I never had cancer. I underwent surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumour. From the moment of that operation onward, everything was a lie.’
Verushka looks at her encouragingly. Keep going, keep breathing.
‘Through the misrepresentation of my medical history, I earned thousands of pounds in brand endorsements, as well as the financial benefit of a crowd fund set up to help me pay for alternative treatments. It was never, ever about the money, though, although I see now that my financial gain is completely shocking. For this reason, I intend to pay back every cent to my sponsors.’
With a wave of nausea, she thinks of all the stupid purchases she frittered her riches away on: a new car she never drove, designer cruelty-free clothing and accessories, spa days in the country and unwanted gifts for her mother. Money is fluid like that: the faster it comes, the quicker it goes away. She grits her teeth and says, ‘In addition to this, I will be donating a third of all my future income to Children With Cancer UK.’
She holds the gaze of the camera openly, earnestly. They need to see she means it this time.
‘Holly, if you were well so soon after beginning your career on Instagram, why did you keep lying?’
‘How do I say it . . . I think if you want to believe something is true and you lie often enough, the lie becomes real in your own mind. The lie took over. I was mentally ill and have been seeking professional help for this. I recently took some time to attend a highly beneficial retreat, which has helped me examine and take responsibility for my actions.’
‘Such as the times that you posted pictures of yourself exhibiting clear symptoms of cancer, such as hair loss and bruising?’
Breathe in, breathe out. Let them see it all.
‘Yes. I fabricated it all. I shaved my hair
off, I harmed myself and I cannot tell you the remorse I feel as a result.’
‘Do you realise you were faking a serious illness that shatters the lives of millions of people every year? That there are people with mothers, fathers, partners and children that sought comfort in your lies?’ She has to hand it to Verushka – she’s good.
‘I do now, and all I can say is that I am so deeply sorry for the lives I have affected through my work. Every motivation I had for doing this was selfish but it was never meant to hurt anybody else. I thrived on the attention and the care I received from my friends and the online community. Unfortunately, I took it too far.’
Zanna stands behind the camera, nodding in encouragement. She’s getting through it. She’s almost there.
‘Was your diet a lie too?’ Verushka asks.
‘No, I believe wholeheartedly in the vegan diet and stand by all the research I did into nutrition. I never felt healthier or more alive than when I was following my diet plan.’
Then, the clincher, the moment she would rather not remember.
‘What about the recent story where a woman died following your plan?’
Holly holds down sobs and the urge to be sick. ‘I can’t speak for individual cases, but I can say that I have started investigating these claims and am doing everything I can to take responsibility for them. There is nobody to blame for the impact of what I have done but myself. I am filled with the deepest regret and take responsibility for any hurt I have caused. In fact, I have already been in email contact with Frankie’s family.’
Holly notices Verushka and Zanna looking at each other with wide, worried eyes. This was not part of the script. She smiles at them encouragingly. It’s OK. She knows what she’s doing now.
She looks into the camera without fear of what it is capturing. Her skin is pink and swollen with fresh tears. Her hair, no longer blonde, is showing its dark roots. There is no more shield against the world – no fancy clothes or make-up to hide who she really is. If her old self could see her now, she would look away in revulsion at the ruined woman she has become. Yet Holly feels remarkably, blissfully reborn.
Chapter 56
Tyler
Tyler finds a corner table at the Ivy Café with good light. The sun hasn’t set yet, and the room glows gold as he cracks his fork into the steaming top of his shepherd’s pie. It’s not as good as his mum’s was, but it will do. He takes a quick picture, filters it and shares it on Instagram. As his phone flashes with validation, he hums.
Tyler of all people should know that when you share your life on the Internet, the people that follow you manifest as real human beings. They creep out the screen and into your space. Isn’t that what he did with Holly?
Tonight, he’s the one being followed. After posting the picture of his dinner, a bunch of banker lads jostle over to him and invite him to sit at their table. ‘Top lad, this!’ they say. They love his new diet, and they think his girlfriend was a belter. ‘Time to find you a new girl, son!’ they joke, while passing him another drink. The whole experience is uncouth and awkward and he can’t will it away quickly enough. But this is his destiny now, to be strangely public, to be deeply lonely yet strangely loved.
It’s early, but it feels like he has lived through a long, ragged evening. He turns into a back street to walk to the station, one lined with expensive houses that masked the looming council estate nearby. Poverty always made him feel uncomfortable. The footsteps behind him come as a surprise, as does a raspy voice calling his name. Probably another fan, eager to take a picture with him or ask that their nan’s mac&cheese recipe be included in his book. This is what fame does, he thinks, stripping the innocence out of human interactions, leaving you to constantly feel like prey.
There, luminous in the shadows he sees her. She looks as worn as the picture of her that used to live on his fridge. Stripped of her old face, golden hair and usual pastel workout gear, she looks weathered and dangerous. He feels a rush of self-pity. No, it’s not fair. It shouldn’t happen here. He didn’t plan it like this. He didn’t dream it into being. It’s too abrupt and unexpected.
He feels for the keys in his pocket. Jutting one at the right angle into her spleen should be enough.
He grinds his teeth as she moves closer.
Chapter 57
Holly
Tyler was right about social media being a weapon. While he so fervently believes that Instagram hurt Frankie, he has no awareness of how he’s using it against himself. Holly sees his painfully styled shepherd’s pie picture while lying on the bed in her soon to be gone apartment. Such a rookie – the angles are all wrong. She moves quickly, running a brush through her hair and slipping on a hoodie and a coat against the cold. Wait, one more thing. She rifles through the boxes in her kitchen and picks up her sharpest, favourite knife. She has the power to protect herself this time. There is no way Tyler is going to hurt her twice.
Her heart races as she rushes to make it to the Ivy Café in time. She was going to seek him out in a few weeks, when the dust of her confession would have settled in the media, but she keeps being haunted by images of Frankie and that day in the park. After their candid conversation, she didn’t hear from her again. Why didn’t she think to call her? Why didn’t she make the time to find out if her natural remedies were working or if her fears about her relationship were true? Maybe then, she could have been saved.
In her new, clear frame of mind, Holly understands why. If she had faced Frankie’s illness, if she had confronted the toll the cancer was taking on her body, she would have had to take responsibility for her role in it and reveal her lies. Back then, it was easier to just forget about Frankie, including her disturbing relationship with her doctor boyfriend.
She runs into the tube station, and is amazed that under the bright lights nobody notices her. People are still making their way home from work, heads nestled in novels and tablets. Four stops later and she is standing outside Marylebone station. Her breath quickens as she paces down the street, hands in her pockets. She stands outside the Ivy Café, looking in on the opulent world she once occupied so comfortably. Now she is nothing more than a beggar watching as the rich men feast. The knife juts uncomfortably from her inside coat pocket. It doesn’t feel right walking through the city with a weapon, but she won’t make the same mistake twice. Her intentions are good, but who knows how Tyler will react when he sees her.
As Holly hoped, he is still inside, laughing with a pack of well-dressed men who look like bankers, with the same suits, all styled and scrubbed until every inch of them glows. It makes Holly wonder what stench they’re trying to cover, what dirt they are really hiding.
She stands around the corner, aimlessly scrolling on her phone until he leaves, calmly deleting the latest batch of hateful comments. What do they matter when her life is about to turn around soon? The wind picks up, its biting force pushing against her. Only when her body is shivering and her fingers are numb does she spot his broad silhouette loping out the door.
Adrenaline pulses through her veins as all the speeches she has practised in her mind converge. She’s sorry. She’s angry. She still doesn’t understand. Her mouth is dry and her throat feels swollen. All the hours of wondering and waiting to confront him ache in these two syllables, in the moment when she shouts out his real name, ‘Tyler.’
Chapter 58
Tyler
She runs faster than Tyler expects. Suddenly she is on him, clutching his arm. Her touch lights up the buzz like an inferno. Her desperation thins the air. He always wanted to leave her with nothing, but it is repulsive to see it up close.
Her chaotic, searching eyes try to hold his own. But he won’t look at her; he won’t. She is the reason he is walking home alone tonight. She is the source of his guilt, his despair, his rage.
‘Please, please don’t run,’ she says softly, holding up both her hands in surrender. ‘I’m not going to do anything to you. I just want to say two simple things. I’m sorry about Frankie. I really
am. It goes beyond sorry, I am heartbroken. I was mentally unwell for so long and I didn’t understand that I was affecting real people. My desire to be liked became an illness in itself.’
The rush of remorse is too late. What good are words when he still can’t get to sleep at night without imagining Frankie holding him? When he still buys bottles of her perfume just to remember how she smelt? How he would rewrite history if he could, including stamping out this pathetic, shivering creature far earlier.
She edges closer still, and he lets her. The sharp edges of his keys bring him a faint comfort.
‘I remember Frankie,’ she says. ‘I even met her once.’
He fights the urge to scream, to tear her apart with his bare hands. This is new; she never told him. Why didn’t she tell him? Like a lover who has found out his partner’s cheating, he needs to hear every sordid detail.
‘It was at an event for cancer sufferers. It was her first one. I was the keynote speaker, so of course she thought I was the real deal. We exchanged email addresses and soon became friends . . .’
‘You kept in contact?’ he chokes.
‘Yes, I sent her recipes and introduced her to Dr Ray over email.’ Dr Ray, that slimy charlatan, the final nail in the coffin.
‘Tyler, you have to believe me when I say that she never told me how bad it was. If only I had known, I hope I would have done things differently.’
The buzz whines and screams as he imagines every email appearing in Frankie’s inbox, every word wrenching her further and further away from him. His eyes flicker to Holly, who continues to speak with a faraway, sublime expression on her face. A scarred but healing face, he notices; one she does not deserve.
‘What you did was wrong,’ she purrs. ‘But I forgive you. I need to forgive you for my own freedom and hope that one day you can do the same for me. I had to find you in person to tell you.’
Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online Page 25
