What She Left: Enhanced Edition (38 page)

How could I have been so foolish? Stupid, stupid, stupid me.

‘Tosser,’ I shouted, and when I hadn’t typed for a few minutes the screensaver appeared: a picture of Luke with sunglasses on taken from a low-down angle. It infuriated me, that it was him there. Delete.

Eventually I gave up even reading the texts from him. I slid my finger across the screen so the red delete tab appeared, then they were gone.

So that was it, was it? Eighteen months. A Greek restaurant in Dean Street. A friend of a friend of his. One misjudged line by a man I’d never met and probably wouldn’t ever again.

I wasn’t going to ring him and I wasn’t going to text him and I wasn’t going to cry and I wasn’t going to let
IT
sneak back in.

I managed the first two.

I make myself type and the dry irony buffets me. I’d deleted every picture of him from my phone and here I am, putting him back into my laptop. I make myself carry on, although my hands are dead weights – fat, pale, blotchy lumps of meat.

Clichés. All clichés.

The twenty-five-year-old hates herself, but hates Luke Addison more.

Eventually the noise of the traffic stops and I don’t ring him and I don’t text him.

I thump the keys with my gross hands and the whirling, jagged sentiments in my head become type on the page. The room spins. I’m not drunk but I have that in reserve.

Keep writing, Alice … don’t stop.

Need to focus on the good stuff. Christmas – and then there’s the February reunion in the Hampton, too. Is this
how unhappiness is, how the second half of your twenties are going to be? Clutching at milestones to get you through.

A text from Ben. ‘Waaaaaas up? When we hooking up?’

When I was a kid, I used to visualize romantic crises: I figured I couldn’t be a woman without having experienced them. I composed poems about them, loaded with airy, theoretical claptrap. But this is the reality – not having the faintest idea whether hate trumps love and, beyond that, the messy, practical details, not knowing whether to leave my phone on or turn it off, and what I’ll say if a colleague asks after Luke at work, and what to do about our Globe tickets for next Thursday.

Luke Addison is a liar
.

That’s my word for this entry. Liar. Or bastard. Or Prague. Or unfaithful. Or naive. Plenty of choice.

This will be my last diary entry for a while.

I wish he was dead. I wish
I
was dead.

Meg still hasn’t called back.

‘In your neck of woods first week of Feb x,’ I reply to Ben, the self-satisfied feeling of getting one over Luke promptly overtaken by a hesitant guilt.

Outside, quiet – or the near quiet you briefly get in a city in the night. ‘Hello, old friends,’ I find myself saying to the night and the near quiet and the gritty exhaustion behind my eyes, because I can’t face writing it.

I’ll write one last line here:
I’ll make Luke regret this if it kills me
.

Larry,

It didn’t come to me in a dream or a burst of frenzied late-night concentration. It wasn’t accompanied by a thunderclap of lightning or the renderings of a celestial choir. There was no grand romantic canvas, merely a woodland walk with the dog. An understated backdrop for such a potentially grand epiphany. A murder.

You see, I know what happened to Alice. It was one of those unanticipated, yet electrifying leaps. I expect it had shades of how you felt when stumbling (I do you a disservice, sir, yours was no stumble, instead the product of years of thorough, systematic work) upon Gutenberg’s Theorem. A flash of – and forgive me for using the term in connection with myself – inspiration. It was the nearest I’ve come to a Eureka moment.

It can’t be
, I told myself. It simply
couldn’t
. But what is the job of us scientists, Larry, if not to think the unthinkable? Even if only for argument’s sake, I postulated:
What if?

Thing is, once you’ve had a seminal thought, the doors of the imagination open. Everything is filtered through that prism. Like dominoes falling. How, after the human genome was mapped, a raft of opportunity became attainable – even deciphering our predisposition to illness. Too late for me, that little marvel of discovery, but what monumental steps our descendants might take.

Everyone’s an amateur sleuth these days, but the police have been approaching it from the wrong angle. It’s analogous to when one hunts a room for a specific item: one’s eyes can’t
not
be part closed to everything else. The logical,
plausible way in which they set about the task – constructing theories then setting about proving or disproving them – was contingent on one of those theories actually being correct. Science frees us to look – indeed, it dictates we must look – at situations from obtuse angles.

Discussing the merits of my work, the mechanics of ‘project Alice’, this person had made a mistake; one injudicious utterance and, hallelujah, it was like a mist lifting. ‘We can make Alice whoever we want her to be,’ they’d carelessly said. ‘We can invent a person and reinvent ourselves in the process.’

Larry, I was keen to rush off a short missive to you straight away, but there’s work to be done. I’ve been shot down previously over an inadequately prepared hypothesis. There’s evidence to be collected, arguments to be marshalled. I need to make it bombproof. I am convinced, however. As with all the most seemingly obtuse and impenetrable problems, the solution is blindingly obvious.

Fliss and I are heading out this evening: a well-received
Tempest
at the Mayflower. I’ve always been rather drawn to that most enigmatic of protagonists, Prospero – god-like, childlike, master of his universe, ex-communicated, crippled by love and a lack of it, flawed yet capable of forgiveness. But don’t worry, my old friend, I won’t be swayed by his display of benevolence. Justice must prevail.

Mahler’s Fifth, a cup of Earl Grey, the draft of my resignation letter (one I’ve begun on so many occasions before) in front of me. It’s not a bad life, this. Notes for the structure of my book, the Alice book, scattered pell-mell across my desk. After this afternoon’s woodland walk, I rather suspect it may have an unexpected ending.

To Ben Finch:

You’re right we’re something passing stopped … you there? Fancy meeting me at our fave spot???

To Megan Parker:

Soz for being a rubbish friend. Love you missus x

To Luke Addison:

That didn’t go how I intended – I’m such a fuck-up. No wonder you hate me ☹

To Elizabeth Salmon:

How could you? How could you?

To Luke Addison:

Not waving but drowning

I read on Twitter this morning that I’m insane.

It made me laugh out loud. Seriously. You have to laugh otherwise you’d cry. Otherwise this stuff would drag you under.

After we lost Alice, her family were first in the media’s spotlight. Then it was any man she’d ever as much as spoken to – depending on the publication, they were either ‘exes’, ‘romantic liaisons’, ‘love interests’ or ‘conquests’. Then friends joined the list of legitimate targets and I was top of the pile. I was a sitting duck.

There was a spell when I couldn’t leave the flat – a tight, chummy huddle of journalists camped outside, bringing each other Starbucks and greeting me whenever I opened the door with a shutter-clicking hail of ‘Megan, Megan, how are you feeling today, Megan?’

A dead adult never ignites quite the coverage a case involving a child does, but one editor went as far as claiming our story had a ‘tragic Shakespearian quality – two almost-sisters, torn apart by death’.

Funny how they’re such experts on me. I never realized I had ‘the classic, suburban upbringing’, that I was ‘a typical Libran’, that my sadness was proving ‘an unbearable millstone’.

Grief counsellors have been wheeled out, articles illustrated with colourful drawings and infographics.
Coping with loss. What to expect when your best friend dies. Celebrities who’ve lost their besties
.

I tried cooperating – forced myself to look into their cameras, responded to their questions because, like wasps in a jar, I feared
antagonizing them. When that backfired, I refused to engage, but it made no difference: they’d decided on their angle anyway.

Having rinsed me, one website ran a photo of my mum and dad on ‘a break from supporting’ me, the snide subtext, as evidenced by the ‘Parker parents enjoy a beach stroll in Devon’ caption, presumably being that they weren’t allowed a weekend away for their anniversary. It was far from the sole such case. Stuff about parenthood, friendship, how our city centres have become Friday- and Saturday-night no-go zones – they’re all fair game, if Alice is the ‘hook’. Spotting a bandwagon, one broadsheet jumped aboard with a feature headlined ‘Salmon story highlights Leveson’s impotence’. Apparently I raise some interesting questions.

I forget what I have – and haven’t – said. I’m utterly worn out by it, yet still they circle jackal-like for another bite of the corpse, another twist, an encore, a sequel.

There’s been interpretation, extrapolation and exaggeration (Alice would have said that reminded her of the
Just a Minute
catchphrase); leaps of logic and faith; two and two added together in a credible way to make five. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

I read somewhere that I quit my job not because of my wish to return to full-time education, but because I was left incapable of working. Fellow employees – unnamed – had witnessed me become ‘a shadow of my former self’ and ‘in danger of buckling under the blunt force of bereavement’. There have been a lot of unnamed sources.

Only this week, one blog broke the ‘news’, sandwiched between stuff about Jay-Z and Jim Davidson, that Alice and I ‘regularly’ smoked weed. Well, hello. Since when has three or four times in the last ten years constituted regularly? The justification? Half a line from a mutual friend. (Don’t worry, Nik, I don’t hold it against you; you were a lamb to the slaughter.)

Among the pop-up ads for fifty per cent off shoes, the personal injury claims, the guarantees to lose seven pounds in seven days,
I’ve been given the wrong surname, the incorrect age and had my home town transplanted to Cambridgeshire. For what it’s worth, my dad wasn’t a manager in a furniture store; it was an upholstery firm. It was a semi-detached house I grew up in. The holiday I had with Alice’s family when I was eleven was in Greece not Turkey. Even the nice stuff they say is tainted. It wasn’t a ‘picture-postcard’ childhood we had; it was a typical, normal one and it’s disingenuous to recast it.

I’ve been called a religious fanatic, a party girl, a PR dogsbody, a run-of-the-mill twenty-something. What’s happening to me has parallels to what’s happened to Alice. I should count my blessings, though. I’m here to read it.

A few sites – presumably because they feel the angle would strike a chord with their readers – have called on the public to leave me alone. ‘How much more should this woman have to take?’ they asked.

I can see why the never-ending nature of news intermittently wore Alice out. ‘It never sleeps,’ she told me once. ‘Like me!’

For every individual who decrees me nice, there’s another who protests the opposite – who pitches in when I’m debated in chat rooms like the double-dip recession or the cleanliness of table cloths on TripAdvisor; suggestions of ‘brave’ countered by ‘broken’, ‘loyal’ parried by ‘false’, ‘normal’ by ‘weird’.

I’ve come to see why celebs and politicians employ spin doctors. It’s never been my bag, that brand of PR, the sneaky and furtive dealings that pushed names into – and kept names out of – the media, the back-room trades for which Max Clifford was so famed, before the media beast he’d tamed turned on him. Serves him right: that’s what you get if you swim with sharks.

They must have had enough of me by now? Surely they’ll soon move on, locust-like, to their next victim? Haven’t they had their pound of flesh? Please leave me alone now.

Naively, I thought it would be helpful to blog, but it’s merely fanned the flames, so this is definitely my last post. Besides, here’s what
they
ought
to be focusing on. How Indiana Cooke is capitalizing on a calamity. ‘A unique perspective on the Alice Salmon case,’ the advance publicity for his book is promising. ‘An explosive insider’s account of the case that’s got the country talking.’

Smelling a bestseller, the publishers announced it could be on the shelves as early as next summer or even spring. They should be ashamed. Him, too, and his self-satisfied, self-deprecating creepiness: sucking his glasses and informing interviewers there’ll be another chapter in this whole sorry saga.

PR teaches you to stick to the script, but sometimes you have to speak from the heart. ‘Spit it out,’ Alice used to say and I will, I will.

I’m sorry if my grief isn’t enough for you, if it isn’t the right kind of grief – but please leave me alone now. No one knows how much I’ve lost.

Comments have been disabled on this blog post.

Harding, Young & Sharp

3 Bow’s Yard

London EC1Y 7BZ

Mr Cooke,

The task has fallen to me to write to you on behalf of my family.

For the record, I wish to state that we in no way sanction, approve or applaud the contents of your book. That’s one word you won’t get to use on the cover: authorized.

My mother’s wittering about one description of it she spotted: ‘hybrid of page-turner and social science’.

‘Grave-robbing, more like,’ she says. Peculiar way to spend a life, she reckons, digging up the dead.

You bastard, Cooke. I’m enclosing a print-off of an email Alice drafted, but apparently never sent, on 10 December 2004. Bet you won’t include this in your so-called ‘all-inclusive’ book. Yes, you carp on about truth – well, publish this, then your claims might have less of a hollow ring.

I caught the tail end of a Radio 4 show recently on which you were pontificating about ‘righting wrongs’ and your ultimate faith in the law. Well the law hasn’t delivered us answers yet so perhaps it is an ass, after all.

I’ve discharged my filial duty by informing you of our position on the book. What my parents didn’t request I inform you – but I will – is that Mum hasn’t gone near a drink for some weeks now and has vowed to never do so again. We’re incredibly proud of her.

Listen to me, I’m doing what I vowed not to – entering a dialogue, conversing, elaborating. It’s true what they say, you do draw people in. But don’t let your famous ego run away with you. Mum says you mean less to her than one single mote of dust. Her words.

As for my father and me, we know a dirty old man when we see one; we actually feel pity for you. Contain any temptations to self-aggrandizement or any inflated sense of grandeur, professor – hearing of your assignation with Mum was actually a relatively minor blow, given the tragedy we’ve experienced.

I began this fully intending to compose a legal missive, but it appears to be transmogrifying. Alice used to say I was a stuffed-shirt solicitor. ‘Take a risk every now and then, Robster,’ she’d say. ‘It’ll do you good.’ So I will. I have a confession: I left you a voicemail on 24 May, which I shouldn’t have. For that, I apologize.

Regardless of that, do keep uppermost in your mind our warning about leaving this family alone because I won’t elaborate here on what my father has vowed to do should you ignore that request.

Even if you do attempt to bother them, they’ll be gone. They’re having a fresh start, moving, changing their contact details, wiping the slate clean. You won’t find them, professor, and Mum says you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. She says you, like the rest of the world, can go hang. She says Alice – the
real
Alice – will live on longer in her heart than she will in any book. And you can put that somewhere else, she says, somewhere the sun don’t shine.

Incidentally, none of us have the slightest intention of reading your book.

Yours,

Robert Salmon

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: US

Attachment: Lemmings.jpg

 

Hey Mr L,

 

Been thinking about us – been thinking about v little else, in fact, for the past two months and I’ve come to a conclusion. I’m not
going to lie, I’ve gone round in circles and I’ll never not hate what you did, but I don’t hate you. I can’t. I love you. I love you and the rest is detail. I need more time before we talk, but it’s important you know now. That’s all.

 

You made a huge, selfish mistake, but I’m no paragon (look it up!) of virtue and I’m not prepared to let my pride derail our future. Don’t panic, I’m not getting all heavy – let’s take a chill pill before we even reconsider moving in together – but that’s what we could have together here – a
future
.

 

Remember the day we went up on the Eye? I want more days like that. That was the best. Up in the sky, flying; London,
our
London, spread out beneath us. I pretended to be gazing at the river and Parliament and the South Bank, but it was you I was fixated by, you, and I was consumed by a sugar rush of awareness:
Some girls spend a lifetime waiting for this
.

 

I’ve been in a trance these past two months – going to work and the gym and seeing the girls – it’s not as if I haven’t been busy, but it’s been black and white, vanilla, nothing’s sparkled or sung or stood out. I feel very alive when I’m with you and when I remember that my decision seemed phenomenally simple. Here’s the thing, Mr L, I want us to be together, not because I’m afraid of the alternative – I’d cope, I’d be just fine, we both would, but who wants to cope? Who wants to be just fine? Bollocks to that old bollocks. I deserve more than that. We both do.

 

I’ll have to go in a mo; the boss is chasing me for a story. I’ll ring this man who apparently came home from work last night to find double yellow lines painted across the entrance to his drive and I’ll document the words he uses: ones, I expect, like ‘shocked’ and ‘fuming’ and ‘bureaucracy gone mad’. And you call me a high-flyer! Have just tapped your number up on my phone keypad – I might have deleted it from the contacts list, but it’s etched onto my
brain – and nearly called you. It’s so hard
not
to. I can hear how you’d sound when you pick up: the tone of your voice, your cadence (look that up too!). But I need more time and space to get my head round what’s happened – let’s not skate around it, what
you’ve done
– and you need to respect that. Can you do that for me please? Our two months will be up next week and there would be a certain appeal to us meeting then, a symmetry, but you mustn’t push me, Luke. Besides, part of me likes the notion of saving talking to you – having it to look forward to. I’ll keep it in my head all weekend when I’m trailing round the Hampton (it’s going to be a messy one!); it’ll be my secret, our secret. Does that make me sound bat-shit crazy? Well, aren’t we all a little bit? Especially when we’re in love. Because have I mentioned that? I LOVE YOU.

 

Ax

 

PS: This is all assuming you want to carry on dating me, of course, because you might have met someone far smarter and far prettier in the last eight weeks. There again, you’d need more than eight weeks to find someone who’d put up with your incessant carping on about films and shirt ironing OCD!

 

PPS: If you ever pull a stunt like this again I’ll cut your knackers off!

 

PPPS: I love you.