Social media makes everyone that little bit more glamorous.
Tuesday’s real name, Louise Sou Thackerey, was easy to track. The spelling of her middle name seemed like a conventional Sue but the consistency across all her social media – websites included – made it difficult to dispute. I had to settle for taking a personal grudge against it instead – which was easy, considering her relationship with Caleb. I’d already seen from her Twitter bio that she was a freelance media consultant, which seemed to translate to her working on lots of high-end magazines and the occasional short film. Louise was the perfect combination of intimidating – due to her job listing – but suspiciously nice – as I saw from her tweets. She looked to be a big advocate of independent artistry, having shared promotional bits and pieces for umpteen Etsy-style accounts. There was an irony, I thought, to someone in the high-flying end of the media world promoting the importance of buying from their local anything-makers. But everyone looked to lap it up because Louise’s 32,076 followers were often liking, retweeting, and commenting on the things she shared. I couldn’t decide whether it was her work that had got her such a high follower account, or her pretty face.
She occasionally shared pictures of her and her friends looking beautiful somewhere. The friends were always tagged, their handles listed across the bottom of the image, but their location was mentioned too. Louise, like Caleb, had a face that would lend itself well to a promotional campaign, and I wondered whether she dined out, worked out, and coffee-ed out for enjoyment or whether it was part of her monthly income. There was no telling.
The bulk of her pictures were reserved for Instagram. She had a wide-open account but also mentioned her official business account in her personal bio: ‘For business enquiries you can sample my work at @lousoumedia’. The whole account was a mess of photography shoots, online editing, and Louise looking great in a power suit. She was just the right kind of feminine for a two-piece pressed suit to look right on her and, far from butch, the whole thing made her womanliness pop. The trousers were well-tailored to show the curve of her thighs and into her hips; she always had one hand tucked into her front pocket, to strategically flash a small waistline and white T-shirt. Oh, Louise knew what she was doing.
Over on @lousoulifestyle there were just as many pictures of her looking glorious, glamorous – much more put-together than she appeared after rolling around Caleb’s couch for two hours, but there was no photographic evidence of that. There were more pictures of her out with friends, either at the beach or a restaurant or at – somewhere! She led an active social lifestyle, that much was apparent from the early images. Further down, though, beyond the squares of social status, there was Louise’s family. A woman who I assumed was her mother – ‘Where do these good looks come from you ask?’ was the caption – who stood as tall and toned as her daughter and, yes, it was easy to see where Louise had inherited those genes from. Her mother looked as though she’d walked out of a magazine shoot and I wondered whether they’d both made a special effort for the picture, or whether that really was the normal for some people. Louise’s dad – who I found seven pictures later – looked much more approachable with the waistline of a man who’d lived his life well. It was a Father’s Day shot of them both – ‘To the best and only man in my life!’ she’d captioned it – and I saw that it was from earlier in the year. I wondered what Caleb had made of that.
It was easy to find Louise on other social media platforms. Her Facebook profile had boasted more of the same things as her other accounts. Again, it was open to anyone. I couldn’t decide whether this was irresponsible or clever. Admittedly, there were things in my life I wouldn’t exactly want to tweet about, but sharing everything seemed a drastic extreme. It must have been strategic, I decided, by the time I was halfway through her yearly posts on this platform. There was nothing incriminating, embarrassing or dramatic – and a woman with Louise’s beauty and status must have had some of each to share. I wondered whether there was another account locked away, detailing the sexual antics of her and Caleb, and the shortfalls of her romantic endeavours before him.
She’d been a freelance media consultant since leaving her job at Parker NewMan Imaging, which was a behind-the-scenes company dedicated to photoshopping men and their behaviours – at least, that’s how their online presence made it sound. It wasn’t a surprise that Louise had left an environment like that; more surprising, in fact, that she’d worked there at all. But her LinkedIn profile showed glowing recommendations, with her former colleagues endorsing her individual skills and leaving complimentary comments alongside their ratings for her. ‘Watching television while having sex’ wasn’t listed but I would have given her a five-star rating for it; Caleb might not have noticed, but I had.
Louise Sou Thackerey had a perfect online presence in every corner and crevice I looked in. The only mentions I could find of Caleb were friendly ones – catching up for a drink or going out for dinner. It looked as though neither of them had made themselves publicly accountable for their relationship, which I took a great deal of comfort in – it spoke volumes on their thoughts of the set-up, I thought. But no matter how hard I looked or what stone I peered under, there were certain things I couldn’t find. Louise’s age, for example, or any details of the last time she was in a relationship; she’d blanked the question entirely on Facebook leaving a ‘No relationship information’ box to take care of curious lookers.
But the thing that really stumped me, was why she’d let herself into Caleb’s apartment at around lunchtime one Sunday – when he hadn’t been home at all the night before.