What She Left: Enhanced Edition (8 page)

This might be a massive mistake, but sometimes you’ve got to go with your heart. ‘Publish and be damned,’ that’s what Alice used to say.

She was one of the decent journalists, one who tried to make a difference. She didn’t do stories about the Kardashians or Katy Perry’s new dog or print pictures of celebrities with sweat rings under their arms or stumbling out of nightclubs and was as appalled by the phone-hacking stuff as the rest of us. But she could spend weeks going after someone who’d swindled an old lady out of her savings or a dodgy builder who’d done a bunk halfway through an extension, leaving a family in the lurch. So I’m going to take a leaf out of her book. Besides, it’s not as if it can make the situation any worse.

‘Sometimes you get an answer without knowing what the question was,’ Alice said once. ‘You’ve simply got to put it out there.’

I found it in a box of items her mum gave me that she couldn’t bear to sort through. It was mundane stuff – old copies of
Cosmo
, a load of H&M receipts, a printed JustGiving page for a sponsored run Alice was planning, a ‘save the date’ card for a wedding in the autumn, plus some work stuff – but buried among it was a sheet of A4 paper with a Post-it stuck on it which said in Alice’s handwriting:
Received on 21 December 2011
.

I’ve sat here for two hours grappling with whether to make this blog post live.

Publish and be damned.

 

REMEMBER ME LITTLE MISS LOCK UP THE CRIMINALS? MADE YOU FEEL GOOD DID IT? GETTING PEOPLE ARRESTED SO WE CAN ALL SLEEP AT NIGHT. GOING ROUND CALLING MEN MONSTERS. WELL YOU OUGHT TO BE CAREFUL OR
YOU’LL GET YOUR
OWN
MONSTER. HOW’D YOU LIKE THAT? A CHRISTMAS MONSTER? YOU AFRAID OF MONSTERS? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU
STUCK UP BITCH
? YOU AND YOUR CAMPAIGN YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME. YOU DON’T SCARE ME. DO I SCARE YOU? HOW DO YOU SLEEP? TOO MUCH GOOD BEHAVIOUR, TIME FOR BAD. PREFER OLDER WOMEN BUT YOU’LL DO. FROM A
FREEMAN

 

Comment left on the above blog post:

 

You’re as much of a WHORE as your friend. How do YOU sleep at night Megan Parker?

A FREEMAN

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Stay Away

 

Same old Jem, you haven’t changed a bit, have you?
Your
work,
your
birthday,
your
wine – this isn’t about
you
. Don’t treat me like one of your students. Am I supposed to be impressed that you looked us up on the Internet? It’s hardly a revelation that we’re all there, you included. Some things haven’t changed. The undergrads clearly still regard you as detached and conceited. The breakthrough with your phonology research obviously eluded you. Ditto the once-talked-about MBE. Not nice to see your shortcomings in black and white in front of you, is it? Sounds to me as if it’s
your
life not Alice’s that’s in need of some reconstruction. Are you happy? How’s your marriage? Does your lack of children prey on your mind? See, having your existence held under a microscope is not pleasant, is it? I wouldn’t normally dream of asking such questions, but that’s what you’re doing with Alice; you’re the one who’s put us in this situation. We all have parts of ourselves we’d prefer to keep private. Isn’t one post-mortem enough? You quit this now … please … none of your fancy highbrow explanations or justifications but stop.

 

I bet you’ve never had anyone knock on your door asking for a quote about a dead relative, have you? David and I have. Journalists call it the death knock. They used to come for pictures, but nowadays they rip those off the Internet so it’s quotes they’re scavenging for. A few weeks into her first job, Alice was told to death knock the mother of a boy who’d been killed in a
hit-and-run. She refused. Can you imagine – fresh out of college, barely learnt where the kettle is, standing up to an editor? She told him that wasn’t why she went into journalism. It didn’t poison her against her choice of career but she never did do a death knock.

 

So sick of reading rubbish about my daughter. She’s in danger of sinking under the sheer weight of it. We’re well aware of the facts. She had 210 mg of alcohol in her bloodstream. Which bit of the word ‘accident’ do these bloodsuckers not understand?

 

Here’s an irony for you. Alice nearly didn’t go to Southampton at all; she was offered a place at Oxford. Merton. Of course I championed the merits of that location – anywhere but Southampton was fine as far as I was concerned – but she preferred somewhere ‘real’. I’m glad I got away from your city. Academia was a horrible, tribal existence. A small world, too, and I was tainted.

 

She’s not some sort of join-the-dots exercise, Jem, some dusty archaeological artefact for you to brush off and exhibit. She isn’t
yours
. Enough people have raked over her life. Hunt someone else and leave our Alice alone. Don’t do what you always did – run away with an idea, confuse facts with fiction, warp the world to fit
your
reality. No, I most certainly won’t be joining you for a drink – I quit a long time ago and I can’t imagine my husband being exactly enamoured by the prospect of us meeting in a social capacity. He’s a sensitive man, so I haven’t mentioned us emailing; please have the decency to treat this contact in confidence.

 

Was going to make another point, but lost my thread … don’t bother replying – unless that is you’ve worked out how to bring the dead back to life and I’m assuming even an esteemed anthropologist like you hasn’t quite managed that yet.

 

I’ll ask you once more nicely. Whatever you’re doing, stop. I’ll beg if I have to. I miss my baby girl so very much, Jem.

 

Liz