Chapter 76 Anna
Chapter 76
Anna
Where to begin? Do I give her the edited highlights, or allow her to see who I really am?
I recall how I began infiltrating her world soon after I turned seventeen. I’d moved to London to work as a trainee reporter for Zap News Agency. Although, describing what we produced as ‘news’ is an exaggeration. We paid the public and showbusiness insiders for gossip about celebrities, or we created stories of our own, based on little else but our imaginations. Then we sold them to tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines. Our words filled pages for an increasingly understaffed print media. Their editors didn’t care who our sources were – and often there weren’t any. It was morally questionable but perfectly legal unless a celebrity sued, but that was once in a blue moon as libel was difficult to prove and hiring lawyers was expensive.
I tell Margot how I quoted unnamed sources (often me) to invent stories about her. I’d write about how she was desperate to quit the Party Hard Posse and start a solo career, or that she had a furious argument with a bandmate. I’d claim she was spotted worse for wear at a charity function or refused to tip a waitress despite a hefty spend. Ever so slowly, I chipped away at the public’s perception of her. The world is all too willing to believe a woman can’t be successful without being a bitch.
Margot sits back in her chair. She is fixated on my every word.
‘I was also dating one of my colleagues who was Zap’s IT man,’ I recall. ‘Gareth knew much more than I did about social media back then. He was also besotted with me, so he was easy to exploit. I never told him what I knew about you, but I alluded to our paths having crossed in the past. Together, we launched the Facebook campaign group opposing your band’s Glastonbury appearance. “Don’t Stop the BOP”, remember?’
I can see she does. It would be hard to forget. BOP was an acronym for ‘Bottles of Piss’. When the band reached the first chorus of ‘All Nite, All Nite’, it was the cue for hundreds of bottles to be hurled at them by well-armed music lovers who hated manufactured pop.
‘That was your idea?’ she asks in disbelief.
‘Yes, and to be honest, it was even more successful than I hoped. And later that afternoon, I sold the screengrabs to almost every tabloid in the country.’
Margot falls silent. I don’t know what’s surprising her the most: how matter-of-factly I’m telling her this, how far back my campaign began, or how badly she’s misjudged me.
I continue. ‘Later, after you were dropped and you launched your solo career, Gareth found a hack that enabled us to give your YouTube music video hundreds of thumbs-down reactions. Apparently that meant the site’s algorithms wouldn’t actively promote it. We also left negative reviews on iTunes and posted an audio clip on Twitter where we changed the pitch of your singing voice so it was out of tune, then claimed it was a leaked demo. Oh, and sometimes I’d send one of our photographers to wait outside your flat and take pictures of you putting the bins out or carrying bags of shopping, then chose the worst image and write captions suggesting you’d let yourself go or that friends were worried you were suffering from depression.’
‘Well you got the latter right, I suppose,’ Margot sighs. ‘Go on.’
‘Are you sure?’
I ask for her sake as much as mine, because I know what’s coming next.
‘I’m sure.’
I look to our mugs of cold tea. ‘Do you have anything stronger?’
She removes a bottle of white wine from the fridge and two glasses from the cupboard. She pours me a generous measure and a fruit juice for herself.
‘Meds,’ she tells me. ‘Another two weeks before I can drink again.’
‘Where was I?’ I ask rhetorically. ‘Well at this point your career should have been over. But then you were given a second chance with Strictly Come Dancing . And somehow, you turned it around. You weren’t the greatest dancer when you started, but you were the hardest worker. People love an underdog and the tabloids sensed the shift in public perception. They no longer wanted to buy my negative stories.
‘Then fate intervened. A call came into the news agency from a cab driver who had footage of you and Nicu all over each other in the back of his taxi. I met him at Waterloo station to see what he’d recorded when he’d turned his dashcam around. I knew it was going to be explosive.
‘We deployed a team to follow you and Nicu over the next few days and caught you entering a flat and staying there for hours at a time. I sold the words and images to the Sun on Sunday for just over ￡100,000. I volunteered to break the news to Ioana in person and get her reaction. And as you well know, she was furious. I was able to persuade her she could cash in if she played on her scorned-woman status. She agreed to me acting as her manager, and for months I brokered deals between her and the media.’
‘You managed her?’ Margot says, scowling.
‘As much as you can manage someone like her. But then you legitimised your affair by announcing your plans to marry Nicu. You even sold the coverage to Yeah! magazine. But once again, I found a way this could work in my favour. Once I’d discovered the event details, a photographer and I were going to turn up with Ioana and her kids to gatecrash the wedding. Your day would be ruined and we’d make thousands off the back of it. Only, on the eve of the wedding, everything changed.’
‘Because Ioana killed herself,’ Margot says. ‘The ultimate revenge.’
I hesitate. I could just leave it there, allow her to believe what the rest of the world also thinks, and move on.
But then I hear a voice in my head. It takes me by surprise, as all that occupant has done until this moment is listen.
Tell her , they say calmly. Show her who you really are .
‘I know you were there at the flat the night Ioana died,’ I tell Margot. ‘I was there to run through the plan for your wedding one last time when you passed me on the street outside.’
Margot is adamant: ‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘I know that. Because I did.’
Her forehead crinkles as she cocks her head to one side. She thinks she has misheard, because I’ve said it as casually as if I’m recalling what I ate for breakfast. But as my words sink in, she glares at me, wide-eyed, mouth open.
‘I asked Ioana what you were doing there and she said you’d turned up to apologise for what you’d done to her and Nicu. She’d told you she was going to make your and Nicu’s lives miserable. But she was lying to you.’
I recall how Ioana admitted she’d had enough of working with me. She was too exhausted to play the bitter ex any longer. And she wanted to return to Romania and start afresh with the money she’d made from selling stories about Margot.
‘But after you gatecrash the wedding tomorrow,’ I said to her.
‘Are you not listening?’ she replied. ‘I’m done. As of tonight.’
‘But everything is planned,’ I protested. ‘We have the photographer, the videographer, The Sun is holding its front page and a double-page spread inside for this. They are paying us a lot of money. Look, once we get tomorrow out of the way, you can go home and forget all about Nicu and Margot.’
‘You are as bad as that witch,’ she snapped, then made her way to the balcony. ‘All you want is to take things away from me. Well, no more.’
I tell Margot how I moved towards Ioana.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You’re forgetting who first told you about Nicu’s cheating. If it wasn’t for me and my contacts, you’d be none the wiser.’
I might as well have pulled a pin from a hand grenade.
‘This is all your fucking fault!’ she screamed. ‘You ruined everything. If you hadn’t sold it to your fucking newspapers, then he’d have dumped that bitch and would’ve come back to me. But you pushed them together. And it’s because of you they’re getting married. You have destroyed my life. You are no better than her, you parasite.’
I glare at Margot. ‘It wasn’t planned, it just happened,’ I tell her. ‘I’d never felt a rage like it. It burned hot inside me. All I could see was that you and Nicu were going to get away with something else. Your marriage was going to redeem you, then you’d bounce back even stronger. Before me or Ioana realised what was happening, I lurched forward, and with all my force, I pushed her so hard that she stumbled towards a coffee table and fell backwards over the balcony.’
Now, as I reflect, I don’t remember how much time passed before I regained control over myself from Warren on the balcony and peered over the glass balustrade. Once I adjusted my vision to the darkness, I caught a glimpse of her impaled on the railings below. Zain, Jenny and Warren’s deaths had been different to hers. They were all part of the plan. Ioana’s wasn’t. Yes, I had used her, but then so had Warren. Killing her was his means of escaping me. I don’t tell Margot about him or any of the others who I’ve carried. I don’t need anyone telling me how crazy I am.
‘I had to erase any trace I’d been in that apartment,’ I tell her. ‘I briefly considered trying to set you up for her death, as you’d been there only minutes before me. But I didn’t have time to think it through. It’d be far easier if the police decided it was suicide. I found her laptop, which was still switched on, slipped on a pair of rubber gloves I found by the sink and typed.’
Margot speaks. ‘ You made me do this Nicu. You and that bitch .’
I’m not surprised she remembers it. I also took a photo of the screen and balcony and, later, posted it on all my anonymous social media accounts. It quickly went viral.
I left Ioana’s computer open on the coffee table and locked her children’s bedroom door to prevent them from going on to the balcony. Finally, I made my way down the fire escape, ensuring there were no CCTV cameras recording me.
Margot dabs at the corners of her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper.
‘You got everything you wanted,’ she says. ‘The world believing Nicu and I had driven a young mum to her death, and the media turning on us again. It torpedoed any chance I had of public forgiveness.’
‘It was a thousand times better than the stunt we had planned,’ I admit. ‘I’ll always be grateful to Ioana for that.’
‘I need a minute,’ Margot says before rising to her feet and disappearing along the corridor and into the bathroom.
I top up my glass of wine and drink it all in one long gulp.