It wasn’t blackmail in the end.
Blackmail is such a wicked word.
Jiannis just put up some old photos of her he had. He’d liked taking photos of her, a bunch to celebrate each upgrade, even the upgrades that were . . . intimate.
OH WOW, IS THAT YOUR EX? SHE IS HOOOOOTTTT!
Jesus, what a slut.
Get a load of that!
She only heard about it three or four days after he started posting. She’d blocked him, lost his number, his email address. It took a friend of a friend texting her with, “Don’t know if you know, but your ex is doing something shitty on Facebook. You should check it out.” for Harmony to discover the truth.
She called him that evening. “What the fuck are you fucking doing?!”
“Oh, so you can call me, can you? I’ve been worried about you. I’ve been sick with worry.”
“What the fuck are you doing with my pictures?”
“I’m just posting some photos, remembering the good times. You want to meet up sometime?”
“No, I do not want to meet up. Take those fucking pictures down right now!”
“Uh, no, it’s my Facebook page.”
“It’s my body.”
“Given how much time I spent working on it, I’d say it’s our body.”
“I’m going to report you.”
“Babe, there’s no need to be like that. I miss you, OK? I’m in pain, and I miss you – I’ve been so low without you, you don’t understand how low I’ve been. I was angry with you at first but I’m not now. I understand that I did things that you think hurt you. There are things about me you don’t know. There’s been real trouble in my life. Meet me and I’ll explain it all.”
“I just want those pictures gone.”
“Forget the pictures, OK? Forget the fucking pictures. Come over tonight.”
“No.”
“Listen, I forgive you, OK? You don’t have to be frightened. I forgive you for everything. I love you.”
“Please. Please. Just . . . just get rid of them.”
“Babe, babe, you’re not listening to me. You’re not listening to me. Babe . . . ”
She hung up, and for the first time in a while cried, and it made her ugly and weak.
She reported him to Facebook.
Facebook sent an automatically generated response saying they’d look into it. She couldn’t reach anyone human to talk about it.
Oh WOW, I didn’t know they let you post pictures like this . . .
Mate, you should sell this stuff, seriously, this is gold.
I’d do that ass, yes I would.
Jazzy came to her, when the boys started avoiding her gaze.
“Sweetheart, Harmony, seriously. Girl to girl, heart to heart – everyone’s seen them and you need to get him to take those fucking photos down.”
Harmony needed a drink, and her £28 in hand at the end of the month vanished.
She met Jiannis for a cup of coffee. She insisted on it being a public place.
“Jesus, Harmony, I don’t know why you’re so stiff about this!”
They met on the South Bank, at the concert hall, while below children galloped through purple light and blue spinning splotches of colour, and the river reflected shards of sodium, neon and LED red off spinning black waters.
She was shaking when she arrived, and Jazzy came along, sitting one floor up, back turned to them, pretending to read a book, left hand locked around her mobile phone.
Jiannis pulled his chair too close to hers, grabbed her hand between his and whispered, “Babe, I love you. You know I love you; you can feel it. I know you can.”
“I just want it to stop.”
“I’m nothing without you. I’m going to die without you. Come home. You need to come home. I’ll look after you. I’ll buy whatever you want.”
“No. I want you to take the photos down. I’ve spoken to a lawyer.”
“I only posted them because I’m proud of you, of who you were, of how beautiful you used to be. I’m just proud.”
“You’re not,” she snapped. “You controlled my body and my world. You’re not proud. I want them gone.”
He leaned back, releasing her hand, flinging it back into her lap, lips curling. There were tears in his eyes, and she realised with a moment of sheer, mind-boggled bewilderment, that he meant it. That he knew himself to the be the victim. That he knew she was wrong. That even if tomorrow he met the next most beautiful woman in the world and married her and was happy for ever after, he would still look back on this moment, this second in time, and know that everything he said was true and absolute, unchanging as the mountain high.
He didn’t shout, except once, when he threatened to kill himself and roared that she was an unfeeling bitch.
Then people turned to stare, and Jazzy left her seat on the floor above to come to the balcony’s edge, peering down, face white and teeth bared. That seemed to make Jiannis feel better, as the shame of staring, accusing eyes on Harmony’s face made her burn – how profoundly crimson her skin blazed as her body adjusted to a life without Control My Blush – and, sitting back down again, he snapped, “Looking after you was very expensive. I spent a lot of time and money on you.”
Harmony had wondered if this would come up. Technically it was true, but as much as he had spent on her, she had felt compelled to spend in excess of what she had, pulled into a lifestyle that she couldn’t afford, and wasn’t even sure, looking back, she had enjoyed. Perhaps she had. Perhaps wanting to find it magical had made it so.
“I can . . . I can pay you back,” she stammered, and it was a lie, but it was the only thing left. The only way to take control. “I can . . . ”
“I don’t need money.” Not even looking at her, a dismissal, powerful again, made powerful by her offer.
“Towards the rent, or something, like . . . two hundred pounds?”
“Babe, that’s less than a week.”
“Five hundred?”
“You can’t buy me back.”
“I just want us to be . . . for things to be fair between us. Settled. I want to . . . close things off.”
In the end, she promised him £700. He didn’t need the money; that wasn’t the point.
Most of her credit cards were maxed out, but there was one which extended her overdraft without her even needing to talk to the bank. She just needed to click on a box on her online banking, and that was that.
Jazzy exploded. “YOU GAVE HIM MONEY? Now he thinks he can fucking control you! He can control you! You think the photos are going to go away? You think this makes it better? HE OWNS YOU NOW!”
At first, she thought Jazzy was wrong.
The photos vanished from Facebook, and stayed vanished for three weeks, and she didn’t pursue her complaint with the company.
Then they began to return, along with missed calls from an unknown number.
She texted him:
Take down the photos and stop calling me.
He replied:
I don’t know what you mean.
She got a lawyer to send him a letter. That cost £240.
A moderator finally saw the images of her naked flesh paraded online and removed them. Didn’t shut down the account – that would have been a bit much – but sent Jiannis a warning over inappropriate content.
Jazzy said, “You just have to ignore him. That’s all that’s left. I’ve got a friend in the police; she says that if they haven’t broken the law, that’s all you can do. It’s all you can do.”
And in the end, it was.
By then it was too late.