How dare she? After all he’s been through. After all he’s lost. Forgiveness won’t magic Frankie into being once more. The whining pauses, as if catching its breath.
‘You disgust me,’ he growls, grabbing her arm.
‘Wait,’ she says calmly. ‘There’s something else I want to say, a secret I know, about you and Frankie.’
Tyler freezes. There is something about the tone of her voice that puts him on edge. Then he sees it, her mobile phone held up, brazen and threatening as a gun.
‘Wait, are you filming this?’
‘Do you have a problem with that? You’re the heartbroken fiancée after all. Surely you want the public and your new army of adoring fans to know the truth?’
He shouldn’t trust her, he should rip the phone straight out of her hands, but the temptation is too great. Isn’t this what he always wanted? To see her confess to her fans and to show them all what a fraud she really is?
Holly holds the mobile between them. Tyler notices her hand is shaking.
‘Frankie and I met for lunch one day. She looked awful, so pale and stressed. She told me she was worried about her ex-boyfriend, a doctor. Apparently she was angry that he wouldn’t support her decision not to undergo traditional treatment.’
The buzz rings in his ears, but it is not the buzz anymore. It’s the darkness that used to take him over.
‘That’s not the way it was,’ he says, his voice sounding weak, pathetic.
‘That’s not all,’ she continues. ‘She said that she broke up with you, but afterwards she started getting surprise visits from you, didn’t she? You turned up at her parents’ house uninvited and pushed her around. You made up a whole fantasy about you two still being together, fighting her cancer together and even getting engaged! In reality she just wanted you to get the fuck away from her, am I right?’
Nobody, especially not Holly, could know the beautiful, fragile love they held between them. The love she shattered. How dare she act like the expert on what they shared?
‘No, no, no!’ he shouts.
‘It’s quite pathetic when you think about it. Someone acting so principled when underneath it all they are a scumbag who cannot take no for an answer. Is that what the Wells way is all about? Forcing yourself and your opinions on others?’
She thrusts the mobile in his face, still filming his every move, defiant. He’ll show Holly, he’ll show them all.
‘She wanted to be with me! She just didn’t understand what was best for her. I had to show her!’
‘So you stalked her and she still wouldn’t listen, right? You went to her house one day and showed her who was boss. Oh, don’t even try to argue with me – I have already spoken to Frankie’s family.’
The buzz snarls in his breath, pulsing through his veins.
‘The bitch asked for it, just like you did.’ Tyler laughs, the words flowing out of him, unstoppable. ‘You think you’re so clever, that you can control your health with your little nutrition plans, but you couldn’t stop me getting into your apartment, and getting under your skin.’
‘Like when you cut me with a scalpel?’
‘What else? Someone needed to teach you a lesson.’
A smile creeps onto Holly’s face. In Tyler’s arrogance and haste, he has given her a full, recorded confession.
He kneels over her and grabs her throat. In a few seconds, this will all be over. He’ll have her mobile and will have silenced her for good. Nothing, not prison, nor being unable to ever practise medicine again, stands in his way. His life was broken the moment Holly came into their lives. His fingers lace around her neck one by one. Under the streetlight, he watches her face redden and swell. The mobile falls to the ground and her hands go limp. Tyler shifts more weight onto her fragile neck. Until, he feels a note of discordance, a strength, a powerful push from beneath him.
Chapter 59
Holly
She walks out of the alley alone, head held high, the wind blasting her new skin. A private knowledge of London takes over as her feet move her along the quiet back streets all the way home. Her coat is buttoned all the way up, Tyler’s blood stiffening her clothing underneath it. It smells like lead, with a lingering tang of bergamot and sandalwood.
She thought she was sorry when she rehearsed their exchange in her head. She thought she was remorseful when she walked towards him in the alley. The words she said to him and to her friends on the retreat – so heartfelt – could have easily belonged to her. Yet when his eyes changed and he raised his hand, a sleeping beast woke in her soul, a fury that would no longer be still. She was no longer sorry; she was angry.
Holly may have lied, but Tyler had terrorised Frankie, filling the last months of her life with fear. Holly knows too well what that terror feels like. How many hours did she spend as a child, cowering in the corner while her father raged? Living in fear that he was on his way home, ready to punish her for some unnamed crime she hadn’t committed? The constant watching makes you crazy, the fear unravelling your grip on self-control.
Tyler deserved the worst punishment of all, so she’d reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her greatest weapon – her mobile.
In the dimly lit alleyway, she provoked him. She played on his pride. Nobody can resist the pull of an audience, of setting the record straight. He got lost in his sad, imagined past. His face filled the video clip, violent with rage. His whole confession and attempt to kill her caught on camera. Three. Two. One. Action.
All she needs to do now is edit the clip and share it to her Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Then the whole world will see his confession and know that she wasn’t going crazy. The torment she went through was real, and she wasn’t to blame for any of it. There is only one snag – nobody can know what happened next.
A message flashes on her mobile from Zanna. ‘Girl, your confession video is killing it! I was cynical at first, but I think this is the beginning of your big comeback.’
Holly smiles. Of course it is, because everything is just a show. When she was loved, she was a character to idealise. When she went wild, she was the jester. People lived vicariously through her, safely experiencing by proxy every-thing they felt was wrong. Why were they so insulted by her fame, by the power of her platform? They were the ones who built it.
The truth doesn’t get views, and reality doesn’t earn compassion. The story can always be a little bit worse. Mental illness draws the crowds. It’s always the most extreme highs and lows that get the most attention. Be sick. Go wild. Shave your head on camera. Be sexy, but not slutty. Don’t get too dark, and don’t go too crazy, or you will wear your label for good. Don’t ask for help, because everyone is just here for the entertainment.
Nobody likes a wild woman, but there was a wildness in her that needed to be freed, a passionate rage that needed to act itself out against his face, his chest. His chest. He fought back, but her months spent boxing made her stronger. He had his fists, but she had a knife. She pounded her anger out in the unblinking silence of one of London’s wealthiest streets.
Now her finger hovers over the video clip. Everything she needs to prove her innocence over the past few months is here. However, it will incriminate her in the future, and it will confirm that she was the last person to see Tyler alive. Nobody has to know what happened outside the frame of her heartfelt YouTube confession. Nobody would understand how necessary it was.
Holly is now calm, sated and ready to comply. She could delete the video clip, erase his confession and continue to apologise. You were right, I was wrong. She could bow her head and accept the punishment for the things she has done. How her audience will enjoy it!
The show must go on. She’ll become the broken face of the fake digital age. Her fallen empire will be rebuilt, as the curiosity of her followers keeps them hooked to see how she recovers, to talk about what she does next. She’ll become a darling once again as everyone discovers, with outrage, the truth about Tyler. She’ll start a new, authentic nutrition plan that t
akes the best of her and Tyler’s philosophies and promote honesty on Instagram with her own emotional, scarred, make-up-free videos. Perfection is old; righteousness, boring. Mental health should never be sacrificed for an eating plan. She knows that now.
She walks inside her apartment – how she’ll miss this place! Her shirt crackles and sheds brown flecks of dried blood as she hides it in the laundry basket. She removes her favourite knife from her coat pocket. Runs hot water in the basin and cleans it tenderly, her thoughts lost in the clouds of pink water blooming around it. She slides it next to the other cooking utensils in a box that will soon be lost in storage. She stands naked on the shower floor for a moment, the central heating caressing her. She reaches for a loofah and scrapes his legacy off her. The first blast of water washes him away, and any residual guilt with it. It stings her scratches clean. She whispers to herself, ‘I am better. I am stronger. I am clean.’
Her attack didn’t destroy her life, it reset it. The old, timid, people-pleasing Holly was broken to be remade into a tougher model. One who was now no longer afraid to fight back.
Her phone lights up with a string of comments, likes and shares. A familiar thrill awakes, stretching within her bones. It can all be hers still; everybody can love her once again. She selects the video of Tyler, heart pounding. Delete it and nobody will ever know that he was responsible for her torment, for Frankie’s. Upload it and she may be implicated in his death.
She makes her decision.
Acknowledgements
Many wonderful people have played a role in bringing this book to life and made the journey to publication exciting and memorable.
Thank you to Jenny Bent of The Bent Agency for seeing the potential in those initial chapters and providing the faith and direction I needed to make Shame on You shine. Thank you Sarah Manning for driving the editing process and championing this novel in the UK. Your passion, drive and positivity are unparalleled.
Katherine Armstrong and Bonnier Zaffre were excited about this story from the start and understood the vision for Shame on You. Katherine, thank you for your enthusiasm for the book and for your thoughtful, eagle-eyed edits. My utmost thanks goes to every member of the Bonnier Zaffre team that played a role in publishing and marketing Shame on You.
Any book takes a village, a network of loved ones that encourage one to keep going. I am so grateful to my writing group – Blaize and Catherine – for their enduring support and inspiration on my journey to publication. You are my first readers and confidantes. Thank you to my dearest friends – Emma, Liesl, Luana, Cat, Debbie, Anna, Claudia, and Thembi – for sharing the highs and lows of this writer’s life and always believing in me. Thank you to Pamela and Kerryn for being such insightful beta-readers and to Liesl B for your considered insights on how it feels to survive cancer.
Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to love language, and Dad for giving me a love for stories from before I could speak. Both of you never doubted that I was destined to write and encouraged me to keep going. My super soul sister Rosie, it is thanks to our shared love for healthy cooking and holistic living that the seed for Shame on You was planted. Thank you for your love and inspiration.
Finally, thank you to my great love – my husband Rhys. This story is infused with your voice as sentences and plotlines sprang to life over dinner and walks around our neighbourhood. You held me when I didn’t think I could do it. You held us so I could have the opportunity to chase my dreams. There are no words to express my gratitude.
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
TWENTY7 BOOKS
80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
www.zaffrebooks.co.uk
Copyright © Amy Heydenrych, 2017
Cover design by Emma Rogers
Cover image © Shutterstock.com
The moral right of Amy Heydenrych to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–78577–095–1
This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
Twenty7 Books is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre, a Bonnier Publishing company
www.bonnierzaffre.co.uk
www.bonnierpublishing.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online Page 26
