There's no such thing as a perfect life. Only a perfect lie. We all know someone like Becca. She has the job everyone wants, a designer wardrobe, a hot-shot lawyer boyfriend, holidays to exotic locations. And she flaunts her perfect life all over social media. It drove her colleague Lizzie mad, but she couldn't stop looking.
They were never really friends - and yet Lizzie knew everything about her. Or did she? When chance, and a terrible mistake, pulls Lizzie back into Becca's orbit years after they lost touch, she'll realise that you can't always believe what you see online... and that finding out the truth might be the worst thing you can do.
Extract:
Transcript of 999 call Sunday, 10 December, 11.23 p.m.
Female Caller: She’s got a knife. Please hurry.
Operator: The police are on their way. Can you get out of the house?
Female Caller: No. Operator: Is there somewhere you can hide, somewhere with a door that locks?
Female Caller: I’m in the bathroom . . . Downstairs. Please hurry. I can hear her coming.
Operator: Stay on the line with me. [0:31:44 – unclear – indistinct crying]
Female Caller: [whispered] I think she’s outside the door . . . I can hear her. Oh god, please, hurry up.
Operator: The police will be there any minute. Stay on the line with me. Can you tell me what’s happening? Who is it that’s got the knife? [0:44:16 – unclear – series of bangs – followed by a crash]
Female Caller: No! Operator: Hello? Are you there?
[0:53:33 – screams]
Female Caller: No! Get off me . . . She’s going to kill me! [1:05:33 – unclear – sounds of a struggle]
Operator: Hello? Are you there? Hello?
Female Caller: Hello?
Operator: Are you OK? What happened? The police are pulling up outside now.
Female Caller: She’s dead. I think she might be dead. Oh god. Oh god . . . please . . . oh my god. She’s not moving. There’s blood. A lot of blood.
Operator: Is she breathing?
Female Caller: I don’t know. [2:04:16 – whimpering – panting]
Operator: Can you check for a pulse? Female Caller: I . . . oh god . . . I don’t know. Please can you send an ambulance?
Operator: It’s on its way. You need to stay calm. Can you do that for me?
Female Caller: Yes. Yes, I think so . . . Oh my god. Operator: What’s your name? Can you give me your name?
Female Caller: She came at me . . . with a knife. She just came out of nowhere. I think she’s dead . . . I think I’ve killed her
Partial transcript of police interview with Miss Elizabeth Crawley, subsequent to filing of Missing Persons Report PC Kandiah – Sunday, 10 December
Have you ever had one of those Facebook friends – more of an acquaintance really, like a colleague or an old school friend – who you accept a friendship request from and then wish to god you bloody hadn’t? We all have, right? You don’t want to unfriend them just in case they realise, even though they’ve got like seven hundred friends so the chances are they’d never know. But if you’re honest, you’re also a little bit intrigued by their life and sometimes, maybe after a couple of glasses of wine, when you’re tired of trawling through Netfl ix to fi nd something to watch, you fi nd yourself randomly Facebook-stalking them. Admit it, you’ve done it.
Next thing you know, you’re falling down a rabbit hole and feeling like a bit of a voyeur. It’s funny, isn’t it? The whole time you’re scouring their feed, you’re waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and shout Ha! Caught you! Even though you haven’t done anything wrong. I mean, they wouldn’t put it all out there unless they wanted you to read it.
You want an example of Becca’s social media posts? OK. She was one of those people who hashtagged every post with something like #gratitude or #blessed or #yolo. Oh, and also, #bestboyfriendever. That was her favourite. You know the kind of
person I’m talking about.
You’re smiling. You know someone just
like it.
She was forever posting selfies of herself at the gym, you know
the kind, complaining about having eaten too many pies and
needing to work off the extra pounds, while at the same time
showing off her abs. Or posting a thousand photos of herself on
holiday in Ibiza – and every shot was taken from a lounger, framing
the setting sun through her thigh gap. Or she’d take pictures
of herself with a full face of make-up, hair blow-dried, and
hashtag it #wokeuplikethis because yeah, sure you did, don’t we
all? I know I do. Not.
Listen, I swear, you can ask anyone, almost every other post
was about her boyfriend, James. About how amazing he was, how
he’d arranged yet another romantic getaway to New York or the
Cotswolds or Paris, how he was hashtag best boyfriend ever. Or
she’d take a picture of him asleep, head under the pillows, stick a
black and white filter on it and tag it #hotboyfriend and
#luckiestgirlalive.
I guess, for want of another word, it came across as smug. I
can see you laughing. You totally get it. And let’s face it, there’s
something kind of suspicious about someone who’s always posting
gushing updates about their other half. Think about it. All
those celebrities who make huge public declarations of love, they
all end up divorcing three weeks later.
A couple of people at work unfriended her, or at least unfollowed
her because they found her so annoying. Not me though.
Were we jealous of her? No. Honestly. I can tell you don’t
believe me but it’s true. I mean she was pretty, yes, sure, but we
weren’t jealous. I think some people were a bit put out that she’d
got the job of assistant to the CEO. There were others who’d
been there longer and who thought they deserved it more, but that’s just how this industry is. And, besides, I work in the finance
department, so it didn’t bother me in the same way as it did
those who were trying to make the jump from assistants to
agents.
If you met her by the water cooler and tried to make polite
conversation, she’d just look at you like you were a lesser being
and then walk off, like you weren’t worthy of her time or something.
She was only really friendly to people she thought could
help her get where she wanted to be. Where was that? At the top
of the ladder, of course. She was . . . ambitious. And don’t get me
wrong, there’s nothing bad about that. I’m all for women climbing
the ladder and shattering the glass ceiling. It’s past time, isn’t
it? What’s that quote? There’s a special place in hell for women who
don’t support other women? Something like that. Well, I agree. And
the rest of us women in the office, we stuck together, we had
each other’s backs – you have to in this industry – you have no
idea . . . but Becca, she definitely didn’t get the memo on that
one.
God, I sound like a bitch. And I’m not. I really am not. I hate
talking ill of people. Especially people who are . . . Look, I don’t
want to make it sound like I hated her. I didn’t hate her. I didn’t
know her. I don’t know her. That’s my point.
Oh wait, I remembered something else. For Claire’s birthday a
few years ago Flora made her a chocolate cake. She put it in the
fridge at work. Well, when the time came to bring it out someone
had helped themselves to a massive slice. I mean, these things
happen at work all the time. People are always nicking bread or
helping themselves to your cream cheese, even if you stick a
Post-it note on it. I know some people who spit in their food and
warn people that that’s what they’ve done to ward them off. Like
holy water with vampires.
But this . . . this felt deliberate. Whoever it was hadn’t used a knife and cut a slice of cake. They’d gouged it with what looked
like their hands. A huge chunk of cake. It was completely ruined.
Who does that? We had no idea. But as I’m comforting Flora in
the kitchen, in walks Becca with a plate covered in chocolate
crumbs. She saw us, froze, and then she just smiled and stuck
her plate in the sink. We knew. She knew we knew. But what are
you going to do? Of course, we didn’t confront her about it. She
would only have denied it.
It was things like that. She lied a lot too. God, I feel awful, and
I don’t even know if this is helpful in any way. Is it? Shouldn’t
you be out there, looking for her or something? How is this helping
find her? You want a picture of her, I get that, but I’m not the
best person. I haven’t seen her in years. And I never really knew
her to begin with. That’s my point. I keep telling you. No one
knew her. Not the real her.
How did she lie? OK. Here’s an example: she’d always namedrop
famous people she knew. Or that she said she knew. She
told people she once dated Prince Harry after meeting him at
Boujis, that nightclub in Kensington. Oh, and that her father
invented LED lights. Ridiculous things. Unbelievable things. I
mean . . . come on, if you’re going to lie, at least make the lies
believable. It’s almost like she was playing a game, like she
wanted us to call her out on it. But no one ever did.
Even some of the guys found her too much. A little too . . .
into herself, I guess you could say. She was always really well
dressed, that’s another thing. She had great taste but she’d wear
clothes to the office that were more suitable for a night out.
Always really high heels too. Manolo Blahniks and Louboutin.
We used to wonder how she got the money because she wasn’t
earning much more than us and we were all pretty broke. We
were shopping at ASOS and she was turning up to work in Stella
McCartney and Chloé. She told people her family were dead – her parents and her siblings had all burned to death in a fi re
– god knows if that’s even true – and that she’d inherited a lot of
money. An LED light fortune.
But now we know the truth. Everything she told us about
herself was a lie.
So if you ask me why I think she’s gone missing, I’d have to
tell you that I don’t know.
I’m just giving you some background about who she was. Is.
I have already reviewed this book, look back for the review.
Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens
