Of course, it may not have been her. The skeleton could have been there for years. It could have been a walker who got disorientated in the heat, a murder victim, another suicide. It could be an illegal immigrant, one of the workers in the greenhouses, somebody who would never be missed.
But it could have been her. A scenario took shape. On checkout day, Tess took the ferry to Bilbao, and from there either hitchhiked or took the train to the commune. There she spent a week, punctuated with her visit to the Alhambra in Granada – Visit the Alhambra before you die! I read on one website – until she decided she was sure of her decision and ready to proceed. That evening, she would have walked to the river and, after disposing of her possessions, waded in. Perhaps she waited until darkness fell.
It would appeal to Tess’s romantic nature, I thought, to disappear like that. I pictured her in the moonlight; she would most probably have taken some alcohol with her – a bottle of tequila, perhaps. I pictured her listening, for one last moment, to the sound of the crickets in the trees.
After two days of deliberation I emailed Marion. I told her about my trip to Spain and what I had discovered, laying out my thoughts about the drowning. I left it up to her to decide if she wanted to investigate further. She hasn’t replied, but then I didn’t really expect her to.
I’m glad, actually. I don’t want to know if they find Tess’s body. Because that would destroy the other possibility: that she’s still alive. Maybe, during that week at the commune, she decided against it. Maybe she thought that now she had shaken off her old identity, life would be bearable. She could reinvent herself, start afresh as a new person, and this time get it right.
Maybe, when she left the commune, she just hitchhiked to another one, and was still there now, sitting around a different camp fire, making something out of feathers and string, discussing the price of bread with some ratty-haired Australian. Maybe she has fallen in love with a man and is now roaming the country with him in his camper van. Or maybe she has left Spain altogether; when she was in Granada, she might have gone into a bar and asked a shady-looking person to make her a false passport, and gone anywhere in the world.
Maybe her new name is Ava Root, and she is my friend on Facebook.
The thought only occurred to me a few days ago. As you know, I presumed Ava Root was Adrian, using an alias so that we could communicate about Project Tess undetected. When everything blew up at Red Pill, I sent a message asking where he was and what was going on, but heard nothing back, and that was the end of our communication.
But last Sunday, I put up on Facebook some photos taken the day before, when I had joined Jonty and some of his friends for a walk in Brockwell Park. The park was thick with colourful autumn leaves, an attractive scene, and one of the pictures showed Jonty’s friend Saskia throwing a handful of leaves at me as we walked. I didn’t mind – the gesture was meant in a friendly way, and in the picture we’re both smiling.
Several of my Facebook friends had ‘liked’ the photo – Jonty and Saskia, and another girl from Jonty’s drama school called Betts. And then, yesterday, I saw there was another ‘like’. From Ava Root.
Of course, it could have come from Adrian. But I suspect that liking a photo of me having leaves thrown over me in a South London park would not be top of his list of priorities.
So, perhaps ‘Ava Root’ was Tess all along. Perhaps she decided against killing herself and, once settled in her new life, couldn’t resist getting in touch. Maybe she was bored, and wanted to play with fire; maybe she just wanted to check I was all right. And when she realized that I thought she was Adrian and was telling her details of how the project was going – how her friends and family were doing, what was happening in her new life in Sointula – well, I can’t blame her for not letting on. She couldn’t have resisted hearing about that.
If Ava Root wasn’t Adrian, it would certainly make sense of his confusing attitude towards me when we met in Westfield, several months into the project. It wasn’t that, after all these attentive messages, he suddenly didn’t care about me and Tess. Rather, he had lost interest long before that; probably as soon as Tess checked out. Proneness to boredom is a key psychopathic trait, I read.
Ava Root’s profile is still completely blank, and I’m still her only friend. I’ve been considering sending her a message, asking her outright whether she is Tess, but instinct tells me that would be a bad idea and I would never hear from her again. I think I’m starting to accept that life isn’t black and white, that there isn’t an answer to every question. Some areas will always remain grey, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing.
I have got some other new Facebook friends, too: I’m now up to ninety-seven. They’re mostly friends of Jonty’s, who I met when they came round to the flat. The latest is a girl called Tia, from his acting school. She’s nice. Two nights ago I joined her and Jonty in a pub by the river, and had quite a pleasant hour drinking elder-flower cordial and hearing about the travails of being a wannabe actor in London. She told me that she has a job temping in offices with an agency which allowed you to work as much or as little as you liked, and take time off at short notice if something else, like an audition, came up.
‘The work’s not thrilling,’ she said, ‘but it gives you freedom to do other stuff, too. It’s mainly just actors who work there, but I’m sure they’ll let you in.’
‘Ah, I’m sure Leila can pass as an actor,’ said Jonty, and winked at me.
Tia messaged me their number, and I’m going in to see them next week. The woman on the phone thought she had misheard me when I said I could type ninety words per minute.
Jonty, meanwhile, has given up on acting. ‘The last thing the world needs is another shit, out-of-work luvvie,’ he said. He’s decided to train to be a London tour guide, working on a boat that goes up and down the river. For my birthday he took me out on it. I was glad of my decision to keep my hair short, because in places the boat went quite fast and the passengers with long hair got it whipped all over the place.
Jonty wasn’t leading the tour himself, because he was still in training, but he kept on adding his own commentary to the official one. ‘Poor old Cannon Street, the dullest bridge on the Thames’; and then, as we passed a theatre on our left, ‘I’ve just realized – if I’m not going to be an actor, I don’t have to go and stand for four hours watching Shakespeare at the Globe. Result!’ At the London Eye: ‘A little kid was sick in our capsule when I went. Longest forty-five minutes of my life.’ On and on he went. He seemed to have had an experience at every landmark we passed: his own, personal tour of London.
The boat went right down to the Houses of Parliament, and we passed the spot where I had stood the day I confronted Connor, just before I went to the police. As I glanced at it, I thought: I could give my own commentary. For a moment I considered telling Jonty about Connor, but decided against it. It’s so complicated to explain. Besides, there are other things to talk about now.
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been finished without the tireless bolstering and wise counsel of my mother, Deborah Moggach. Its publication is thanks to my agent, Antony Topping, and editors Francesca Main, Jennifer Jackson and Bill Thomas.
I am also indebted to Chris Atkins for his love and technical support, Hannah Westland for her editorial input and Tom Moggach, Victoria Hogg, Mark Williams, Laura Yates, and Nicola Barr for their notes. Alex Hough, Alex Walsh-Atkins, and Cameron Addicott gave invaluable advice on medical, legal, and police matters. My friends Sathnam Sanghera, Susannah Price, Alex O’Connell, Flora Bathurst and Vita Gottlieb saw me through years of writing angst. Encouragement from Lucy Kellaway and Craig Taylor meant a great deal; Craig also told me about Sointula. Kevin Conroy Scott was an early advocate of the book, and a grant from Arts Council England was a huge help at a lean time.
I’d further like to thank everyone involved at Picador, Doubleday, Greene & Heaton and beyond, including Paul Baggaley, Geoff Duffield, Emma Bravo, Jodie Mullish, Jame
s Long, Jo Thomson, Alison Rich, Nora Reichard, Nita Pronovost, Adria Iwasutiak, Brad Martin, Kristin Cochrane, Chris Wellbelove, Hellie Ogden, Dean Cooke and Suzanne Brandreth at the Cooke Agency and Sally Wofford-Girand at Union Literary.
Advance praise for Kiss Me First
‘A high-concept novel that really convinces and delivers. I was gripped from the first page, moved throughout, and swallowed the book whole.’
Erin Kelly, author of The Poison Tree
‘Lottie Moggach walks a wonderful line between sympathy and horror. Riveting and thought-provoking, Kiss Me First is the intelligent novel of the social media age I’ve been waiting for.’
Emma Chapman, author of How To Be a Good Wife
‘I tore through Lottie Moggach’s Kiss Me First.
Gripping, quirky, twisty – quite a ride.’
Harriet Lane, author of Alys Always
‘Unputdownable. A brilliant thriller for anyone who’s ever been online.’
India Knight
‘I was fascinated by Kiss Me First – its unique premise got my interest from the start and Lottie Moggach’s confident and compelling writing sustained it. An impressive debut.’
Jessica Ruston, author of The Darker Side of Love
‘Witty, suspenseful, satirical and bold. A Patricia Highsmith for the Facebook age.’
Polly Samson, author of Perfect Lives
‘Lottie Moggach’s very smart Kiss Me First is a moving coming of age story hidden within a harrowing mystery … The story’s suspense will keep you reading, but it’s Leila’s surprisingly emotional journey toward selfhood that will stick with you long after you’ve finished this wonderful first novel.’
Scott Smith, author of A Simple Plan
‘A brave, poignant and humane novel about society’s taboos – and the cost of breaking them. Lottie Moggach has put her finger to the pulse of our times.’
Liz Jensen, author of The Rapture
‘Kiss Me First has deft, expert writing, a startlingly original plot, and two central characters – cerebral, sheltered, obsessive Leila and charismatic, unstable Tess – who leap off the page. This is a dark, disturbing, needle-sharp exploration of how the internet age is transforming our idea of reality and identity.’
Tana French, author of In the Woods
First published 2013 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2013 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-4472-3806-5
Copyright © Lottie Moggach 2013
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