by Ellery Lloyd
It would have been so easy. I got there just as the tide was turning, just as night was beginning to settle. All I would have had to do was walk out onto the sand and keep walking.
It was not a love of life that stopped me. It was not fear.
It was the thought that I had let Grace and Ailsa down again. That justice had not been served.
It was the knowledge, from watching it all unfold on social media, that this whole thing was going to make you bigger than ever.
I tried to destroy you. Instead I turned you and your family into front-page news. Emmy the victim. Dan the hero. I could picture it all. There you would be discussing your ordeal on breakfast television. Holding hands on the sofa. Talking about how much stronger it had made you as a family.
I can remember staring out across the beach and screaming with all the power in my lungs, and the wind was buffeting me and deadening the sound and I could feel sand or maybe rain battering my coat. My face was wet and cold with tears, and I kept screaming until I was just coughing and crying and coughing, my throat raw and aching.
I have never in my life felt rage like that, such all-consuming anger—with myself as well as everyone and everything else now. Such utter despair. And that was before I knew how you would portray me in the book.
As a stalker, a loner, someone “whose true motivations may never be known.” I am quoting your actual words. There is no mention of the envelope I left for you, no attempt made to connect what I did to the suicide of my daughter or the death of my granddaughter. Nothing like that. Instead there is just a load of pious guff about how jealous people are of those in the public eye, how naive you and Dan were, and how the whole experience had taught you some tough lessons, followed by an absolutely stomach-churning passage about how even if it is impossible for anyone to know what was going through my head, you both one day hope to be able to find it in your hearts to somehow forgive me.
I was tempted to buy a copy of the book when I arrived this afternoon, join the queue afterward, ask you both to sign it. It’s not exactly likely you would recognize me—not after all that propofol, Emmy; even if my picture was splashed all over the news for a couple of days, Dan. Not with my new hair, my new clothes, these glasses. The picture they kept using was one from my hospital ID card—an old image, pixelated and washed out, several years old now. “Face of Evil,” was the headline in one of the tabloids. Another one managed to find—somewhere on the internet—an old holiday photograph of me and George and Grace on holiday in Majorca in about 1995, all smiling, all in our beachwear. I am currently carrying a canvas bag with the name of a bookshop on it, wearing a long skirt, a turquoise linen shirt, sandals. I do not look like the woman in either of those photographs. Nor do I exactly stand out in this crowd.
Even so, there is no sense taking pointless risks.
I have already achieved what I set out to achieve today. All through the reading, all through the Q&A, here I was, not more than twenty feet from you. There in the fourth row, in the sunglasses, with the program. Watching you. Listening. Reminding myself of all the pain and damage and hurt you have caused in the world. Reminding myself this is not over.
One of these days we’ll see each other again, Emmy. Our eyes will meet and you will look away and you will not give me a second glance.
I could be the woman sitting next to you on the bus, the woman squeezed up against you on the Tube. I could be the woman who stops to let your shopping cart past at the supermarket. I could be the person who brushes past you on the escalator, who pulls faces at your children across a table on the train, asks if they are allowed sweets. I could be the person pressed apologetically up behind all of you on a crowded Underground platform. I could be the person who offers to help carry your pushchair up a very steep flight of stairs. The person your husband and your children are standing next to at a busy pedestrian crossing. The person who with an accidental nudge of their elbow could send your child’s bike swerving off the pavement into the incoming traffic. The person you don’t even notice in the park. The one waiting for that single moment your attention is diverted from the new baby as you turn your back on the pram, just for a moment, to see to one of the other children.
One of these days.
Acknowledgments
A holiday spent with our baby daughter and close friends by an exceptionally cold swimming pool, with donkeys braying by the bedroom windows, was the birthplace of People Like Her. Thank you, Susan Henderson and Alicia Clarke, for putting up with the plotting and Matt Klose for keeping us all excellently fed.
Thank you to Holly Watt for nagging us to actually write it—and providing a shining example of how to get it right, sharp pointy awards and all, with To the Lions and The Dead Line. Catherine Jarvie, you also did not let up telling us we had to finish it and for that we are so grateful—as we are for your plot pearls of wisdom, your excitement about the book in general, and your close reading with an eagle eye. Kaz Fairs, you proved yet again you are much more than a Beaty face; thank you for your brilliant suggestions and feedback. To Lesley McGuire and Zu Rafalat too, some of our first readers. Zu, we miss you endlessly.
The hard work, kindness, and generosity of many people has been indispensable in bringing this project to fruition.
For their help, advice, friendship, encouragement, and support over the years, Paul would like to thank: Cara Harvey, Dorothea Gibbs, Florence Gibbs, Sarah Jackson, Julia Jordan, Louise Joy, Eric Langley, David McAllister, Bran Nicol and my other fantastic colleagues at Surrey, Claire Sargent, Oli Seares, Jane Vlitos, John Vlitos, and Katy Vlitos.
Collette would like to thank Janette, Douglas and Martyn Lyons, Jacqui Kavanagh and Joel Kitzmiller, Rachel Lauder, Alice Wignall, Clare Ferguson, Amy Little, Kate Apostolov, Mark Smith, Sagar Shah, Eleanor O’Carroll, Tanya Petsa, Beverley Churchill, Jo Lee, and Shelley Landale-Down.
For ensuring we actually had the time to write, thank you to Karen, Linda, Claire, Anwara, Soraya, Stacey, and Mel.
Sam McGuire and Amelie Crabb, keep writing your amazing stories—we can’t wait to buy your books one day.
We would both like to thank our agents, Emma Finn (thank you, Susan Armstrong, for sending us in her direction—we can’t imagine a pair of hands more capable, a sounding board more wise, and we feel extremely lucky) and Hillary Jacobson (whose cheerleading for the book was exceptional). Luke Speed and Jake Smith-Bosanquet and the brilliant C&W rights team, Laurie MacDonald for getting us excited about seeing Emmy and Dan on screen one day, Dr. Rebecca Martin for her medical knowledge, Alicia Clarke for her wonderful photographs, and Trevor Dolby for his time and encouragement.
Also, of course, our wonderful editors, Sam Humphreys and Sarah Stein, everyone at Mantle (Samantha, Alice, and Rosie especially) and at HarperCollins (Alicia, thank you!), and our amazingly supportive and encouraging early reviewers on NetGalley.
Very special thanks go to our daughter, Buffy.
About the Author
ELLERY LLOYD is the pseudonym for husband-and-wife writing team Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos. Collette is a journalist and editor, the former content director of Elle (UK), features editor of Stylist, and editorial director at Soho House. She has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Sunday Times, among others. Paul is the author of two previous novels, Welcome to the Working Week and Every Day Is Like Sunday. He is the program director for English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of Surrey. They live in London with their baby daughter.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PEOPLE LIKE HER. Copyright © 2021 by Ellery Lloyd Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payme
nt of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover photographs © Vladimir Godnik/Getty Images (woman); © Nathanael Arias R./Behance (cracked phone)
Published in a slightly different form in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Macmillan.
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-299741-8
Version 11252020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-299739-5
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