Emilia’s eyes strain under the weight of her tiredness, but she can’t go to sleep. Her body won’t let her – even though it’s 1 a.m.
She glances back at the television which is still playing the news on an endless loop. Every so often, the report repeats, and chills run down Emilia’s arms all over again as she listens to the stoic voice of the reporter.
‘Police are investigating the case of two missing persons. Hayley James, twenty-three, and her boyfriend Luca Franco, twenty-five, have been named in an online confession to murder on an internet forum. The Confession Room, which describes itself as “a place for anonymous atonement”, contains thousands of confessions to wrong-doing, and on the 4th November a confession was posted to murder with Hayley James and Luca Franco named as the victims. They were last seen by their friends at lunch in Clapham Common on that same day.
Hayley, a nurse who lives with her parents in south London, was due to return home on the 6th November after a shift at St George’s hospital; however, her parents received a phone call from her employer stating that she had not turned up for work. In a statement, Hayley’s family have said: “It is very unusual for Hayley to not turn up to work. We thought she’d just stayed at Luca’s, but she loves her job and is a highly responsible and thoughtful person. It’s entirely out of character that she would skip a shift without informing the hospital or telling anybody why.” Luca Franco lives by himself in Clapham, but has not been seen since the lunch and his phone is no longer connected. If you have any information regarding either Hayley James or Luca Franco, or any information in connection to the Confession Room and tracing the authors of the posts, the police have asked that you contact them using reference 22MIS007134 …’
Their photographs flash up on the screen. Hayley James, young and vibrant, her dark blonde hair tinged pink at its ends, her leg popped coquettishly, her eyes lined and heavy. And then Luca Franco, his olive skin and beaming smile. Their faces like a light being switched on in a dark room, turning Emilia’s stomach. She had found the right people on Instagram. And now their faces are on the news.
She glances at her phone. She called Ciaran back as soon as she finished watching the report for the first time but he didn’t answer. Since then she has been waiting for it to light up with his name, hoping that he’ll know something, be able to tell her anything. But there has been nothing.
Instead, she has spent the last few hours, without eating or removing herself from her chair, scouring the internet.
She began with Luca’s Instagram profile. She scrolled back through his photos: with friends at a festival; at the gym; holding a young baby. She checked the comments of that one – it was his niece. Click after click, photo after photo, until finally. There they were, together, her cradled with her head in his lap, her hands raised up to her mouth as she laughed, him gazing down at her. The caption beneath: ‘my girl’ and a heart.
Emilia tapped the photo: Hayley was tagged.
She clicked on her name and was transported, as if through a portal, into the world of Hayley James. She hadn’t paid attention before, she had been too rushed, too desperate to find out what was going on. But Hayley’s feed is curated, the colours all uniform, the filter faded and pink, as if you are looking at her photos through rose-coloured lenses. Straightaway, Emilia noticed a very obvious difference between Hayley’s profile and Luca’s. On Luca’s page, she had clicked through multiple pictures before finding one of him with Hayley. But on her page: he was everywhere. In almost every photo, he was there, smiling at the camera, Hayley’s hand gripping his arm, or head resting on his shoulder. Every so often there was a selfie, Hayley staring wide-eyed with lips parted at the camera, and even less often there was a photograph of her with a small group of friends. But Luca was her world. Anyone could see it.
What did someone want with them? And why both of them?
Emilia had scoured their profiles, searching for anything that could have led to someone wanting to target them. Searching for clues. But all she saw was two young people, working through life together, having a relationship similar to millions of other people in their early twenties. They were unremarkable.
Next Emilia had turned to social media. It hadn’t taken long for people who frequented the Confession Room to put the pieces together and hold up the completed puzzle for the whole world to see. There was already a hashtag on Twitter – #The ConfessionRoom, and even more horrifying, #TheConfessionRoomMurders – the mentions growing exponentially. She had watched as it grew from posts in the tens, to the thousands, to entire threads discussing the forum.
And it’s still there, on her second screen. The number of active forum users growing all the time. Is this what the person who posted the confession wanted? Attention by any means? Even infamy?
Emilia refreshes Twitter but her mouth drops open slowly – the mentions have grown by thousands in a number of seconds.
Have you seen the video?!!!!
OMG THAT FUCKING VIDEO!
That video that’s just been posted on #TheConfessionRoom is so wrong. What the hell?!
So they’re definitely dead? I thought it was a joke until now.
Emilia navigates quickly to the forum, her fingers trembling, her mouth dry.
The page loads and her stomach twists.
There it is: a link to a video at the top of the page. No accompanying words or confession. Just the link.
She moves the mouse slowly towards the link, her heart hammering, her pulse buzzing in her ears. She shouldn’t look at it, she knows she shouldn’t. But there’s no way she can’t.
She clicks quickly and the page redirects. A black screen loads, the circular symbol whirring as it buffers quickly.
Emilia’s chest squeezes, as if her heart is shrinking, as she reads the title of the video.
THE CONFESSION ROOM: HAYLEY JAMES AND LUCA FRANCO
This is real. It’s actually happening.
Somebody committed murder. Filmed it. Confessed to it … and then uploaded it to the internet for the world to watch.
Emilia hesitates for a moment – then presses the play button, holding her breath.
The video shows a room filmed from above, a camera hanging in one of its corners. CCTV. But the view is zoomed in, close to a young woman’s face. Hayley. She is chained to a chair by her torso. Her breaths are ragged, her shoulders heaving up and down as she tries desperately to snatch some oxygen into her lungs.
Then –
‘You’re running out of time, Hayley!’
Emilia frowns. The voice is low and hoarse. Who is that? Is that Luca’s voice? Or the killer’s?
‘I can’t!’ Hayley whimpers from between her fingers, the nails painted red, the polish chipped. She looks up, her gaze intent, as if she is looking directly at somebody. ‘I can’t do it!’
‘Just do it! For fuck’s sake! We don’t know what will happen when the timer runs out!’
Hayley manically shakes her head faster and faster, her high-pitched wails turning into guttural sobs.
‘Hayley! Just say what you’ve done –’
‘I’ve been cheating on you!’
The video falls silent for a moment, the only sound the almost undetectable white noise of the camera.
‘What?’ the other voice says.
I’ve been cheating on you.
It’s Luca.
‘I-I’m sorry.’
‘Tell me what happened. How long?’
‘I can’t –’
‘You have to, remember? You’re meant to confess!’
‘I … I … It’s been going on for almost a year. And it isn’t because I don’t love you,’ she cries, her eyes now wide and pleading. ‘It’s because I know that I love you in a way that you will never love me. And I just wanted to know what it felt like to have that power over someone: for them to be so in love with me and for me to feel nothing.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? I do love you.’
‘Maybe you think you do. But you don’t. Not the way you’re meant to love someone. I think you loved me in the beginning, but you’ve changed. Those people you spend time with, they’ve changed you! What you do isn’t love. It’s control. And I’m sorry … I’m so, so sorry.’ Her eyes move from his face to somewhere above her and she gasps. ‘I’m almost out of time! What’s going to happen? Please! Somebody help me!’
The footage cuts suddenly to black.
Emilia waits, her breath caught in her mouth, shallow and stale. Is it over? She nudges the mouse – there’s still a minute of footage left.
After a few moments, Emilia’s stomach drops again as the room returns. Hayley’s face, full of fear, has also returned, but it isn’t the steady view of the fixed CCTV footage. The camera is shaking, moving around, as if filmed on a hand-held.
‘Please, don’t do this,’ Luca says, his gravelly voice choking him.
‘Please,’ Hayley whispers, her gaze looking upwards. ‘Please don’t –’
Emilia gasps in horror as the barrel of a gun appears to one side of the camera. Then, a gunshot sounds, heavy with finality.
And Hayley’s head flops forward; her eyes wide open, but still.