Forever is Now

DAY ONE

Sunday July 21st, 2024

A delaide James : So, Ms. Taylor-Braddon, I must admit, I was astonished when your agent got in touch. In fact, I choked on my breakfast. Avocado and smoked salmon on toast. A fancy Japanese herbal tea. I’d spent ages making it, setting out on the plate just right, using the tea strainer that my mother always said was only for when we had guests—because I was celebrating that morning. Celebrating a recent article I’d written. I’d just won a major award, but your email eclipsed that. And you know what? I can’t even remember tasting my breakfast. All I recall is the way my shoulders suddenly tingled, how tight my forehead felt, and how I just couldn’t make my fingers move fast enough to type back. I was so sure you’d change your mind.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : I haven’t.

Adelaide James : No, you haven’t. Which makes me really curious as to what you can possibly say to change my mind—as I assume that is your goal?

Summer Taylor-Braddon : What is it they say? Fight fire with fire.

Adelaide James : And I am the fire. [ She laughs ] Well, I’m sure we’ll get more into this all later on. I have a rough outline here of how you’d like to tackle the recording of all this... and I must say, it does seem pretty thorough. I believe one might even say that objectivity is your goal? And I can see we’ll both, apparently, have time to put our own views across. So, shall we get started?

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Yes. [ She clears her throat ] Yes, I think we should.

Adelaide James : Then go right ahead, Ms. Taylor-Braddon. Change my mind.

[Silence for five seconds]

Summer Taylor-Braddon : I still find it astonishing that everyone wants to know about what happened. The whole world, watching our lives like we are a soap opera. Everyone feels invested, like they have a personal right to know what’s happened.

Of course, you have put me through hell—but you know what hurts the most? The idea that I never loved Ruari, as if it’s up to someone else, someone like you, to decide whether my love is real.

I have gone through hell.

So has he.

And Mia. All those reporters, outside the hotel, the hospital, my house, his father’s house, Mia’s house.

So, I’m going to talk about a particular moment first, before we’ll then go through everything chronologically.

I was in the Grand Aux Hotel, just sitting in our room. The one me and Mum had booked, as soon as we’d had the news confirmed. That Ruari had been found.

I hadn’t yet seen him, and I felt sick, so sick to my stomach. There was a tapestry on the wall. Medieval, suits of armor, horses, that sort of thing. Dark, rich colours, and the horses had weird faces, and all I could stare at were those faces.

Annmarie, one of the British consulates who’d been helping us navigate the whole mess, was in the room too. Sitting at the side, by the coffee-making facilities. I was on the edge of the bed. My mother too. She reached over to squeeze my knee. A reassuring touch. And we just waited. And waited. Ruari was... out there. Not just in the vague sense of the phrase, like I’d told myself so many times as I cried myself into a shallow state of sleeplessness where nightmares plagued me. But he was really and truly out there. Alive. Here.

There were fifteen minutes until he was due to arrive at the hotel. Fifteen minutes until I’d see the love of my life again, but all I could think about was that tapestry. The horses’ eyes were too far forward on their faces. Like they’d never actually be able to see properly if anyone was sneaking up on them. Their field of vision was so limited.

Annmarie and my mother were talking. There were police stationed outside my hotel room, because of some of the threats we’d received, and I could hear their voices too. Most of them were speaking in French and I didn’t really understand. Couldn’t pick out more words than remarquable! and il ne s’en souvient pas , because those were the words that just kept being repeated, but it was reassuring to have them there. The police, that is. I felt... protected.

I’d received more death threats that morning. According to Annmarie, so had Ruari. She let that slip, when my mother was asking some questions. I can’t even remember what.

You’d led people to think it was just all a publicity stunt. A sick game to get the world riled up. A sick game to boost my book sales.

Adelaide James : You—

Summer Taylor-Braddon : No—don’t try and interrupt. You’ll get your chance later. Let me speak.

My voice will be heard.

Everyone wanted to be here for it. The first meeting. The reunion. Me and my love, united after years apart, when my beloved had been assumed dead.

My mother squeezed my knee so hard while we waited. Later I found bruises had formed like cobweb kisses across my skin. I stared at those bruises in the days that followed. Watched them turn from yellow to black to purple, then fade to ghosts until there was nothing left. Like my whole life.

“This will all be over soon,” Mum murmured to me, in her reassuring way.

Of course, she was trying to soothe my anxiety. She’s always known how unbearable I find anticipation. How nervous I get. And of course how nervous I’d be for this of all things.

But the papers got her words. People like you, Adelaide, got her words, even though they were a murmur. She was barely audible.

Vultures like you—

Adelaide James : I really—

Summer Taylor-Braddon : No, do not interrupt. I am telling my story and this is my story. My perspective.

Vultures like you got all our words, only you also made up your own, too, and pretended they’d fallen from my mouth, my mother’s mouth. One paper, not yours—though it may as well have been—had the headline of ‘TAYLOR-brADDON AND MOTHER OVERHEARD PLOTTING MURDER.’

Our room had been bugged. The world was listening in on our conversation—all of it. Annmarie’s instructions, my mother’s private, comforting words meant only for me, and of course, the reunion when it happened some thirteen minutes later, when Ruari finally arrived here.

[In the background of the audio, car horns can be heard ]

Summer Taylor-Braddon : What should’ve been the most blessed and private moment of my life, being reunited with my husband, was blasted over the media. Every word was analyzed, sentences torn apart and put back together, but badly, so the meaning was changed, because that’s your specialty.

Every paper had a different interpretation. ‘ SUMMER TAYLOR-brADDON JUST CAN’T LET HER FIRST LOVE GO—EVEN THOUGH HE DOESN’T KNOW WHO SHE IS’ and ‘THE WEEPING MINX VOWS TO MAKE RUARI brADDON REMEMBER HER, WHATEVER IT TAKES.’

It wasn’t just those headlines that were bad, or indeed the words you’d chosen previously, when the whole nightmare started. Later on, once people like you found out about Mia, you wrote a part for her in the narrative too, painted her as the victim because I could only be the monster, right? ‘TAYLOR-brADDON ADMITS SHE’S GOING TO KILL MIA WILSON.’

Everyone believed at least one of these lies. Everyone .

My inboxes and every platform were filled with a deluge of hate.

WE KNOW YOU PLANNED IT ALL!

WHAT KIND OF SICK PERSON ARE YOU?

HOME WRECKER.

There were people I’d gone to school with, even one of my really close friends, poisoned against me. Because of you, they all acted as if they knew exactly what went on in that hotel room, between me and Ruari. They’d listened to the illegal —and please note the stress on that word—audio of our conversation, and assumed they knew everything. That’s what really annoys me because so much of communication is body language. As a writer, you should know this too. It’s how we hold our bodies, it’s the expressions on our faces, and it’s gestures. But all you had, all the world now had, were the words.

[She laughs ] I was actually worried that this project we’re doing was audio-only, at first. But at least I can control this narrative—and no, before you suggest it, I don’t mean that I’ll lie. I just mean I’m in control of my words getting out. You’ll have no chance to edit this, because we’re doing each session in one take.

Adelaide James : Are you permitting me to speak yet?

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Your time will come. Be patient. Right now, this is my space. And when I try and recall our conversation in that hotel, mine and Ruari’s, I can’t actually remember what we said. What we meant or might’ve meant. I have never wanted to listen to that damn recording, of course. But that whole time, it’s... everything leading up to the reunion is almost crystal clear, and so is everything after that meeting too. But the meeting itself? Well, all I remember now are the papers’ headlines. So I guess you should be proud of yourself.

Adelaide James : I lost my job because of you.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : I lost my life. I think I win, on this. [ She clears her throat ] I hate you all, you know? Journalists, reporters, press, all the media. You are the predators who enjoy tearing pieces off the nearly dead. And me? I am the most talked about woman in the UK today. And that just seems ridiculous.

But me and Ruari, we’re the most talked about couple.

I never wanted fame—I think few novelists do—and though I plan my novels, I do not plot my life. Something on this scale could not have been planned. Ruari and I were victims. Both of us.

He did not lie. I did not lie.

Although I have profited from interviews and sponsorships in recent years, we never did this to make money. All we wanted was each other, safe.

So, I’m starting at the beginning—and I do really suggest, Adelaide, that you sit back a bit. You look awfully tense and that can’t be good on your back. There—isn’t that better?

[Silence for five seconds]

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Ruari and I met in 2010. We were fourteen. He’d just transferred to Okehampton College. He’d been at Budehaven Community School, before that, and it was mid-May when he transferred. We were in year 10, so no exams that year for us, but it gave us only a couple months before the summer holidays. I’d like to say that we became friends right away, only we didn’t.

He was average looking, then. Neither skinny nor overweight. Neither tall nor short. Mousy brown hair. Blue eyes. He hadn’t yet grown into his face or lost the baby fat that he’d have until his early twenties when he really started to shine.

He was just a quiet, studious boy. I didn’t really take any notice of him, barely talked to him, apart from that project in biology. Growing seeds. Can’t remember the type now, but we had to water them. Measure them twice a day. Had several sets of them too. Some were over fed, some near drowned, some locked in the dark.

I don’t really remember much about it.

But anyway, I’m going further back than when I met Ruari.

So, who am I? Well, I’m the youngest daughter of Margaret Taylor. My mum’s my best friend. Always there for me. She’s sick now, she’s got kidney failure. But she’s still here for me. Always.

And she got me legal representation and everything—because she used to be a lawyer. She stopped when she had me and my sister. That’s Matilda. She’s the model, the one who the papers have been printing those risqué photos of, ever since my story came to light, as if Matilda’s job somehow discredits my experiences.

Adelaide James : The public deserves to know the truth.

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Matilda’s ten years older than me, and she moved out when I was seven-and-a-half. No, I was nearly eight years old, I think. It had been the three of us, growing up. A house near Fatherford Lane in Okehampton. So then it was just me and Mum. I want to say ‘rattling’ around in that house, but there was never any rattling because that implies empty space and hard surfaces. It was a small house, but it was perfect for us. Always warm, inviting, cozy. We had this super soft carpet—a light pink color, and it was so wonderful to walk barefoot on it.

Mum worked two part-time jobs once I was old enough and at school. Not law. Cleaning. Mum always said she hated it, but she did what she needed to do to put food on the table. And from about when I was eight or nine, we’d get some money from Mattie too. She’d send some back when she had really well-paying jobs. We weren’t like super poor, but we weren’t always comfortable.

Sugar sandwiches, in my lunch box until the school realized, said it wasn’t nutritious. They suggested cheese or tuna, and Mum was in tears then. Do they think I’d be giving you sugar if I had a choice?

But after that, I did have cheese.

Mum stopped eating some meals though. I didn’t know this until later. Still feel bad now though.

[ Neither Summer nor Adelaide speak for five seconds, but traffic can be heard nearby ]

Summer Taylor-Braddon : It’s what mothers do right? Sacrifice. [She clears her throat ] But yeah, even though there’s my sister, it often was just me and Mum, all through my teenage years. And my friends all loved Mum. Hana and Julia, they were my besties. And when we got into Sixth Form, our friendship group kind of merged with the boys—Ruari and his two friends. Dante and Ashley. We became a six. We hung out in the park together in free lessons or after school. We were at my house a lot, too. Didn’t really go to their homes much. Mainly it was Mum. Mum loved them all. Loved having a full house, she said.

She’d always wanted more kids. Of course, she was entirely devoted to Dad. When he got killed—he was a soldier, Afghanistan—I was three. But she never dated again. So no more kids. But she sort of ‘adopted’ my friends. And Ruari.

And she was concerned about him. She really listened to him, asked what she could do to help. She’d sit with him at our kitchen table. You see, he was having a tough time at home. That was why he really liked coming to my house. He gradually opened up about this, when it was the whole group of us and Mum, but also when it was just me and Mum and him.

He’d sit there, breathing deeply, his hand trembling. “I just... I don’t know why she does it,” he told me.

You see, he was talking about his mum, and his blue eyes darkened to this steel grey—the hue they went when he was really troubled by something. I only met Portia a couple of times, before she died. An overdose. She’d struggled with addiction for years, and Ruari, as her only child, had struggled too. I’d noticed, of course I had, that he’d been coming to school later and later, many mornings turning up with huge bags under his eyes. His clothes were getting more thread-bare and several times he only had a quarter of a sandwich in his lunchbox from home. He’d eat it really quickly too, sort of looking around at everyone, as if daring anyone to make a comment about it.

He didn’t have money for school trips. There weren’t even that many, in Sixth Form, but there socials. These nights that our Sixth Form committee would put on, but he didn’t go on a lot of them.

When our friendship group was hanging out, we always tried to do things that didn’t cost anything, because none of us really ever talked to him about it—until I did.

We were seventeen. At the end of year 12. Ruari and I both had a free lesson before Assembly, whereas Hana and Dante were in Chemistry, Ashley in Psychology—or it might’ve been Media Studies—and Julia had dance. Our group tended to hang out in the little computer room in the Sixth-Form block, and I was sitting at a table, the computer keyboard pushed back so there was room for my bag and folder. I was going through my notes from English Lit, and he came in. He stopped a few spaces away from me, sat heavily in the chair, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and I tried not to look at him.

But of course I glanced up. “All right?” I asked.

“Yep,” he replied, his voice curt, and he just stared at the computer in front of him. The machine was off. The screen black, reflecting his face. I could only see that all distorted though, because of the angle, and when I looked up at him, I was struck by his strong profile.

In the last year or so, he’d filled out a bit. He was now the same height as me, but his face seemed stronger. Harder lines around it, making up its edges, even though he also still had baby fat. His jaw was strong, his nose finally seemed to be the right size for his face and no longer on the large size, and he was clearly in need of a shave. I’d not really paid a lot of attention to Ruari’s shaving routine. He always was fresh-faced, soft skin, only now he wasn’t. Like he’d not shaven in a day or two. Which was fine—more than fine, really, because it made this part of me want to reach out and touch him.

Only I couldn’t because that would’ve been so, so weird. He was my friend.

But I noticed how attractive he looked. Maybe not in the conventional way. But still, it was a way that really spoke to me.

His glasses had steamed up, upon coming in here, even though it was pretty warm outside, but he took them off now, and that was when I saw it. The faint shadow of a bruise around his eye socket.

Yeah. I said something like, “Oh my God.” And it didn’t seem enough, you know? I was standing up, heading over to him before I’d even realized I was doing it. “Are you okay? What’s happened?” I couldn’t believe I’d not seen it before, to be honest, because it didn’t really look new.

But my mind flashed back to last week—when he’d been off. Measles, he’d told us all. He’d only just come back the day before, in fact. I’d not really seen him much that day though—Mondays were my busiest of days—but sitting there, in the computer room, I felt... I don’t know. Overwhelmed with it all.

He looked up at me—I was still hovering over him—and he slumped farther back in his seat, then slowly put his glasses back on. His Adam’s apple bobbed a bit as he visibly swallowed. “I’m just so tired, Summer.” His voice even sounded tired, like huge weights were sitting on the words, dragging them down.

I sat next to him, very aware that my breathing was fast. I leant forward, propping my elbows on the computer desk, and looked carefully at him. He met my eyes slowly, and then it all just poured out.

He told me about his mother’s new boyfriend. A man named Al. Al had come over several times before and Ruari didn’t like him. Al was too quick with his fists.

“At first it was just Mum,” he told me, “just her being hit. When I wasn’t there. But...” He shook his head. “Last week.” His breaths shook—like, so loudly. “I thought I could help her, but she... she sided with him. Kicked me out.”

My eyes widened. “Kicked you out?”

He looked down at his hands. He had a hangnail on one finger, and I watched as he appeared to steel himself before he tore it off. He flinched as he did it though, and it made me feel sick, imagining it all. The pain.

“Where are you staying?” I asked. I was worried my tone had come out too harsh, but he just looked at me with soft eyes and shook his head. And it was that thought—of Ruari sleeping in a back garden somewhere, or a doorway or a gutter—that really made me feel so, so sick. I reached out, placed my hand over his. His skin was cold. “We’ve got a spare room,” I said, even though Mum was always telling me not to call it a spare room. It was Matilda’s, even if recently when she’d visited she’d chosen to stay in hotels in Exeter. Said that was easier for her work.

“No, I can’t,” Ruari said. “I...” His face crumpled.

“No arguments. You’re staying with us.”

So, that’s what happened.

Mum really liked Ruari. I think she knew that me and him were going to get together before we actually did. I mean, we were getting on well, and he did live with us for a bit, until Social Services sorted things out for him. They managed to get hold of his dad—apparently he’d just been released from prison, not that I’d even known back then that he had been inside—but then his mum ended things with Al, and Ruari did go back home.

I was worried at first. So was Mum. I kept messaging him, talking to him, and he did still come over to my house a lot. He said he felt calmer here, and I know he never really wanted to move out. But he also felt incredibly guilty about putting my mum to the trouble—he told me this once.

Anyway, Ruari and I started dating that summer we left Sixth Form, not that we really put a name to it at first, but we’d started seeing each other more. When Hana, Julia, Dante, and Ashley would leave my house, Ruari would find an excuse to stay a bit later. But it was different than when he was living with us, for those two months. Then, I’d been there for him, but I was... I don’t know how to describe it. Well, I was trying to think of him as a brother, even though such a huge part of me often wanted to reach out and hold his hands. I’d want to hug him, hold him, as soon as I saw him.

I just wanted to be there for him. Reassure him.

But when it was that summer, and he began hanging around at my house more than the rest of our friends, I felt the shift in the air. The change. We’d sit on the patio. I’d be painting my toenails or something and he’d just watch me, smiling. When I painted my fingernails, he’d do my left hand for me and he’d take really great care with it too, frowning a little as he did so. I must admit, I loved it when he painted my nails. Loved his touch on me, the soft and careful way he held my hands, yet his grip was also firm, certain, reassuring.

And we’d be sitting so close. So close I could just reach across, rest my head on his shoulder, or kiss him.

I wanted to kiss him. I really did. But I was... well, nervous. What if he thought we were just friends?

And I didn’t want to risk things by making the first move and getting it so, so wrong.

But we’d go to the cinema together. Just the two of us, without telling our friends. It felt special, magical. It was us. And it felt like a date.

We finally had our first kiss on August 9 th 2013. That was... well, I almost don’t want to tell you. It feels too personal, you know? Like, I’m being expected to share so much of me. Leave nothing untold, no stone unturned. Who else in the world is that expected of?

I mean I want to keep some things for me. But I also know that the public really wants to know. And people like you think that I don’t deserve privacy.

It’s the curse of being an author too. People think they’re entitled to every part of my story. [ She laughs.] I just wish they’d understand that my books are fiction, but my life is... well. It’s mine.

Anyway, I wanted to do this project with you to not just make people understand, but to tell you why you’re wrong. To argue with you—and to win. You may smile, Adelaide, but I know what I’m doing. And in doing this, I’ve kind of given up any right to privacy. All the covers are being stripped back.

So, mine and Ruari’s first kiss. Begin early with something romantic—hook everyone.

It was at a bus stop, near the top of Okehampton. Not that romantic, but maybe we can spin it that way.

He was getting on a bus, and I was waiting with him. As the bus trundled into sight, in a long line of traffic, I turned to say goodbye to him. The stop itself wasn’t busy, we were the only ones there. I went to hug him—as I often did—and that’s when it happened.

His lips, soft, brushed mine. I gasped a little, feeling electricity whizz through my body. My knees suddenly felt weak—that old cliche—and then I kissed him back.

To be honest, it was a pretty chaste kiss. Neither of us were that experienced or anything. But it was perfect for us.

[Four seconds of silence]

Summer Taylor-Braddon : Anyway, a few weeks later, our A-level results came in. A Thursday morning. Terrible weather. I’d been supposed to meet Julia and Hana at the dry cleaners’ shop down the bottom of Oke, and we were going to walk up together. But when I got there—absolutely soaked, because I’d walked down the massive hill in the pouring rain, I found Julia and Hana had already left. Hana’s mum worked in the shop. That’s why we’d chosen to meet there. Take the final walk to school together. But it didn’t work out like that.

I’d felt more anxious, walking in there on my own. Felt, I don’t know, strange. But I’d got into my first place university. Kingston. London.

I still don’t know why I actually applied. I mean, I didn’t think I’d get in. I applied more as a ‘may as well’ kind of thing. But I got in.

Ruari wasn’t going to uni though. That was the problem.

And it couldn’t work though, he realized, when I would be away in London. How could it? He asked that, over and over again. And that was when I knew we had our first communication problem. Because being long distance appealed a whole lot more to me, for one reason only: less chance of us sleeping together.

You’ve got to understand, back then, I didn’t know about the ace spectrum. I thought I was just... I don’t know. Scared. Broken. Like there was something wrong with me. I just assumed that sex was this thing that I’d have to do eventually, once he and I had been ‘together’ a little longer. The cost of being in love.

And I knew—or at least I thought I did—that he wanted to be doing it. He told me later that he thought he wanted to, because he thought that was what he should’ve been doing. And he thought that I would want to, too. His friends were constantly asking him whether we’d done it yet. He’d already told me this, and I thought that was his way of testing whether I was ready.

I was not ready, and I felt pathetic that I was eighteen years old and I didn’t want to have sex with him. But I also didn’t want to lose him. But me going off to London, well, it seemed like it would solve the problem—even though I didn’t want to lose him.

You’ve got to understand, he was my first love. My only love. Things just clicked between us, as cliché as that sounds.

But we ended up breaking up just before I went off to London, and I was utterly heartbroken. Duvet days, being the saddo who eats the whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s, day after day. And of course, it was the start of uni, too. Freshers’ Week. I didn’t go out though. Didn’t take part in the activities, the clubbing, the free society taster sessions. I just couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop hiding away.

I felt pathetic, being that upset over a guy. But it was Ruari. It felt different with him. You see, I’d kissed a few boys before. Gone on dates. But they always felt... I don’t know. Performative. Prescriptive. Whereas with Ruari, it was right. Organic. Yes, that’s the word. And we started off as friends. We knew each other before we got together, so we just felt... right.

But we’d both thought, at the end of that summer, that there was no way it could work. So, that was it.

But of course, it wasn’t. Spoilers! But everyone knows.

Anyway, now it’s time to bring a few other people into the studio.

[ Sounds of a door opening, people entering and sitting down, and the door closing]

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