In Paige’s Flat
When my phone rings at 6:05 a.m. it doesn’t matter, because I’m already up. In the dream before I woke, an hour or so ago, I cut long flower stems. Then the stems were my fingers, pinging off under the scissor blades. I look down at the large, pink flowers in the sink. They are covered in blood. But I look down at my hands and they are intact again, dry, pristine. It’s not my blood.
The device on my bedside table peals and I take some medication to soothe me. I’ve been spending the past fifty minutes picking at spots on my skin as I stare at the emails in my inbox. There’s been no follow up, no second email yet. I read the simple words over and over again, as if they will reveal a clue. Rearrange themselves, conveniently spelling out who this sender is, jeering at me behind a screen. Eating at my beauty sleep.
I stare at the combination of numbers before the @ sign. Are they code? A message? Zanna’s birthday? No. The birthday of anyone else I remember? No. But I don’t have any other friends whose birthdays I’d know off by heart.
I convulse so violently when my phone buzzes in my hand that I wake Shane, who grumbles as he stirs and pulls a pillow over his head. He doesn’t rise graciously, Shane. He’s often nursing a hangover.
Fucking hell. Tom is calling, and I answer, breath knocked out of me with fear, heart flopping like a fish in a bucket, desperate. My agent sounds matter of fact.
“Morning, darling. It’s a leak.”
I don’t understand initially. I picture water dripping through a ceiling in my bleary sleep funk. In the short time I take to respond, Tom has already grown tired of waiting for the penny to drop.
“In the press. They know about the documentary.”
I sit up, covers dropping from me. Ears ringing as my stomach drops away from my ribcage.
“Oh.”
Shane grumbles, making me aware of his annoyance. Tom goes on.
“Yep. Sheryl is fuming but ultimately they’re used to it. Apparently it came out on Prattle.”
“I see.”
“Well, darling, it’s not really a problem. I wanted to let you know before Sheryl gets hold of you. I’m sure you had nothing to do with it.”
“No! Of course not.”
“Exactly. Just a reminder, no posting and if any press contact you tell them you aren’t in a position to talk about the doc yet, or direct them to me, babes.”
He rings off. I google Zanna’s name and it’s true. The MailOnline reports: Infamous influencer murder case to be re-examined in true crime doc. The Guardian writes: Zanna Zagalo documentary to shine light on women’s safety in the influencer age.
I reach for my laptop and navigate to Prattle. As I wake the machine up with the touch of a button, there is the evidence I spent last night googling bikini pictures of celebrities for personal comparison. We all have our toxic habits.
Prattle is there, ready to select as soon as I type a “P” into the search bar. My internet history knows me too well and puts me to shame. Prattle is a forum site where users discuss influencers — mainly what they don’t like about them. They debate the surgery they’ve had, how they really made their money. They ask why mirrors aren’t clean, fume when clothes aren’t properly ironed. They pick apart shallow, soulless, utterly watchable lives. It’s a gossip forum of fans-cum-detectives, eagle-eyed sleuths, many of whom are motivated by holding influencers to account where the law is failing to catch up. Highlighting undeclared ads or diet drink promotions.
Zanna both feared and hated the discussion board and so, of course, she checked it regularly. “Saddos”, “fucking losers”, “jealous bitches, get a life” she’d say, reading her own feedback. Then she’d read what had been written about her rival influencers aloud to me with glee. Now Prattlers discuss both of us. Zanna never lived long enough to see them come to write about me.
Today, the most popular thread on the whole site is about the documentary. It started late last night, last updated ten seconds ago. It must be abuzz, and the thought awakes dormant, queasy butterflies in me.
The comments are varied.
So happy we are coming back to this case. Zanna was my favourite influencer.
Good people are keen to see the documentary, I suppose.
I really like Paige. I think she’s really down to earth and sweet to keep up the blog in her best friend’s name.
My eyes lap up positive comments about me like a camel at a puddle in the desert. I can’t help it, I’m desperate, parched for praise. Sadly, they’re not all positive. I suppose you can’t win them all, can’t make everyone like you. God knows that’s something you learn fast as an influencer.
It never sat right with me how Paige still runs her Instagram with her name. That’s weird, right? Talk about riding coat-tails.
There are a lot of theories that Paige was more involved.
Definitely freaky to steal her dead friend’s job. I know someone who works for the documentary company and they think there is definitely something dodgy about Paige. Said they’ve had some interesting calls from people claiming to have information no one knows about her.
Sheryl? Had she told someone about my nervous behaviour? Surely, that’s not enough to imply I killed my best friend. And calls? My head spins. My email correspondent, or someone else? My ribcage is constricting, pushing down on my bowels. Of course, there’s no way to know if any of this is true. Any of these anonymous posters could be liars. But any of them could be someone I know. Someone I should worry about. I click the comments under this one, and more than twenty people agree.
Snakey.
Shady.
I unfollowed a while ago. The girl has been dead five years — time to stop using her name to make money.
People like this, they are the reason the money’s drying up. Now Zanna’s dead, they think, why am I following an account with her name? Who is this try-hard? She’s not Zanna. They don’t know. They don’t know I built Zanna. They don’t know what I went through working with Zanna. I created Zanna’s voice. I was half of Zanna. Maybe more than half.
I slam the laptop lid down, woozy. I breathe deeply. I check my emails and already a number of brands have reached out, interested in me thanks to the doc. I’m lightheaded with relief — no more emails from my new mystery pen pal.
*
Sheryl moans about the leak during filming the next day. She humphs her way around the studio and eyes me narrowly, as if it’ll prompt a spontaneous confession from me, or someone. No dice, Sheryl. But she keeps it up, so much so that I’m entirely depleted later, after answering question after question about Zanna.
Exhausted, finally home, I’m lying on the sofa with the TV on, solely for the noise, while I numbly scroll Instagram, check MailOnline, my WhatsApps, and back again, almost unthinking, on autopilot. When Shane comes back, he’s wearing his black motorcycle leathers and I drink in his rugged face as he pulls his helmet off with one hand and puts it on the shining kitchen island, alongside some supermarket gin and tonics (slimline for the personal trainer, of course) he pulls from a bag with a crumpled bunch of pink flowers. He cracks one tin open and takes a sip, before he turns to me, sighs and smiles a small smile.
When he kisses my lips, falling down on the sofa beside me with his boots and motorcycling suit, his mouth is cold and the scratch of his facial hair on my chin is rough. He tastes like the refreshing, tannic-bitter drink. The plastic wrapping around the spray of roses and baby’s breath crackles beneath my hand as I take it from him and smell them with a performative flourish, hoping my eyelashes are as abundant and soft as the petals while he looks at me from under dark eyebrows. The fact he pays attention to my favourites always swells my heart. Not that he can identify them on sight. Shane’s idea of differentiating between flowers is “big pink ones” and “small white ones”. He knows not to buy me peonies. Peonies are bad flowers for a number of reasons.
1. They attract ants.
2. They look like eyeballs, then cabbage, then tissue paper.
3. They were Zanna’s favourites.
4. They make me think of dead bodies and bloody eyes.
I reach a hand up and run a finger over one of those thick dark eyebrows, down his cheek, along the chiselled jaw. I know love warps the mind but I’ve never seen anyone so handsome. It’s never gone away, that utter admiration, total besottedness, from the moment I met him. There are people who don’t believe a love like this exists, which makes my heart ache because they should look at me and Shane. The perfect love story.
Of course, I’m guilty, as my eyes swivel to check the price of the flowers. He doesn’t know about the issue with the finances. Shane always figures it’s all going to work out, he always has. He’s impulsive, hardly a forward thinker. He’s all passion, no forethought. He never even asks about how the rent is paid. He doesn’t know about the email either. It’s awful lying to Shane. It’s not like us. We have a very unique kind of bond, based on total trust of one another. Nothing can break that trust. And yet I undermine it, when I know all too well how badly Shane responds when his trust is broken. It’s risky. All lies are risky, especially those told to the ones who love you.
He pulls away from me, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV, before crossing his arms.
Shane is emotional, sometimes cagey. Since I told him about the documentary, though, it’s been more pronounced.
“You know I think it’s a terrible idea,” he said. I did. But, of course, Shane doesn’t know about the money. How much we need it. He huffed and puffed and worried and sulked, but ultimately it was my decision to make. But still, he’s holding a grudge. He’ll come back around to me. He has to. He always does.
“These flowers need water.”
I heave myself off the sofa. I can’t stand the flowers in my hands like that, suffocating in the air. Slowly, silently dying. Unable to scream.
*
I feel much like those flowers, the next day, as strangers ambush me outside of my flat. I had figured it would come, sooner or later, and the leak had done it. Taken me right back to the time after the murder when public interest was firmly latched onto me, Zanna, and the case, like a leech. Now one little leak has burst the dam and released the deluge of obsessed loons, only slightly more insane than the most prolific Prattle posters, the true crime fanatics. How they have the nerve to call themselves true crime, I don’t know. I studied journalism myself, I know a little about objectivity and facts. These podcasters, YouTubers and bloggers, they have their reasons for following murders like others follow The Great British Bake Off, drawn to the daker side of life, sceptical and suspicious. I can’t understand why they do it, but it’s hurt Shane and me over the years. They crawled from the woodwork when Zanna died; like the bacteria that feasts on rotting flesh, they covered every inch of her. Her history, her life, our blog. Hunting ludicrously for “clues” in captions posted before she died. They’re consumed with the idea that I murdered Zanna in cold blood. They have no evidence, of course. But that doesn’t matter. That’s not what these people do.
They were using Zanna’s tragedy to spin a yarn, wrapping me up in it, carelessly and callously. You’d think libel laws would scupper their speculation, but alas. They did it for likes, for views, for subscribers. True crime nuts are carving out a living like any other content creator. No one clicks on a YouTube video entitled “Easily Explained Murder”.
I knew these three lingering outside the flat were trouble. Their anorak vibes. One younger woman with reddish purple hair wears too-tight, too-light skinny jeans, plimsolls, and a faux leather jacket. An older woman with greying hair wears a khaki jacket and a paisley scarf wrapped around her neck. A skinny, short man with wispy facial hair leans against the wall. The way they look around, they don’t belong here. There is a distinct sense of Megabus about them. They see me coming, murmur, and shuffle into action. I brace myself. True crime nutters, for sure. Not well dressed enough to be any followers of mine.
I put a hand between my face and the phone camera, its steady light in my eyes, while the other scrabbles for something in my bag. The three have been waiting here God knows how long.
“Can you not film me, please?” I ask, although it’s feeble.
“Why,” the shorter, younger girl crows. “I thought you love filming your life?”
The older woman steps between me and my taxi, which is there to take me to the studio.
“Excuse me,” I say. I want it to sound dignified, but it’s strangled.
“We just want to ask some questions,” she says. She has lines on her face, the skin dull, grey. She has wet eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. I feel bitter hatred towards her.
“I don’t have to talk to you,” I say, trying to move past her. Incredibly she steps in my way, small and pigeon-like though she is. The man steps towards me and the short, stocky woman pushes the camera closer into my face.
“You can’t escape the truth,” the younger woman says, in a high, hysterical voice. “You did it for the blog, you did it for the money. You killed Zanna, and the police failed in their duty.”
I barrel through the small, greying woman, who shrieks and grabs the strap of my Stella McCartney handbag. “Fuck off,” the words come from my chest, barking and gruff. I wrench the strap from her hand and use it to swing the hard leather body of the bag into her face. She makes a strange noise, shock on an inbreath, guttural, like an animal. I grab the handle of the taxi like an outstretched hand in the dark, pull and tumble inside.
As I slam the door shut, the woman screams, “You’ve got a lot to answer for, with the wrong man rotting in jail.”
“You alright, love?” the studio driver asks.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s okay,” I murmur.
“Looks like bad stuff,” he opines.
I close my eyes and breathe. It was inevitable, as soon as the documentary leaked. With shaking hands, I check my inbox, as if I know what will be there. I blink away tears so I can read it, another email:
You were jealous of her, Pooh Bear. She was beautiful, young, and popular. You wanted to be her. And when you couldn’t be . . . you killed her. I know it was you.
I shut my eyes and tears wet my cheeks. I imagine Zanna is here to wrap me up in her arms, like she did at the start, and whisper that it will all be okay.