Kiss Me First Read online

  For all my certainty, my hands were shaking as I pressed the button to confirm it.

  In our first session, Diana, the police psychologist, said: ‘But did you not think: how can this possibly work? Even in the most practical terms – how were you going to dispose of the body?’ I told her that such details were not in my remit, and that my job only started after the act had taken place. This was true, but naturally one of the first questions I asked that day on the Heath was how the woman’s body would not be found and identified. Adrian explained that there were ways of committing suicide that meant it could be months, if not years, before the body was discovered, and, when it was, no one would think to identify the body as this woman because she wouldn’t have been reported missing. ‘There are over five thousand cases of unidentified bodies each year in this country alone,’ he said. ‘This would simply be one of them.’

  Of course, I asked Adrian other questions that day on the Heath – lots of them. He acknowledged that the project sounded audacious and untenable.

  ‘But that’s the beauty of it,’ he had said. ‘Remember Occam’s Razor? Even if people did think that something was slightly amiss, they wouldn’t assume that she had killed herself and asked someone else to impersonate her, would they? They’d think of a more obvious explanation.’

  The idea, in a nutshell, was this. The woman – Tess – would inform her family and friends that she intended to move abroad to start a new life in some distant, inaccessible place. She would hand over to me all the information I would need to convincingly impersonate her online, from passwords to biographical information. Then, on the day of her ‘flight’, she would disappear somewhere and dispose of herself in a discreet manner, handing the reins of her life over to me. From then on I would assume her identity, answering emails, operating her Facebook page and so forth, leaving her loved ones none the wiser that she was no longer alive. In this way, I would help to facilitate her wish: to kill herself without causing pain to her friends and family; to slip away from the world unnoticed.

  ‘Naturally, your immediate concern will be whether she is of sound mind,’ said Adrian. ‘Well, I’ve known Tess for a while now and I can assure you she knows exactly what she’s doing. Is she a colourful character? Yes. Crazy? Absolutely not.’

  After that reassurance, my thoughts turned to practical matters. As long as I had the relevant information to hand, I thought, the logistics of imitating this woman online seemed fairly straightforward: answering the odd email, a few status updates a week. Adrian told me the woman was quite old, in her late thirties: hopefully that meant she wouldn’t even write in text speak.

  Rather, my worries were about the premise and the conclusion of the operation. Was this ‘new life abroad’ a plausible move for Tess in the first place? And, vitally, how long would the project last? After all, I couldn’t impersonate this woman indefinitely.

  Adrian reassured me on both counts. Tess was ideally suited to the project, he said, in both her situation and character. And my involvement would last only for a year or so, during which time I would gradually distance Tess from her correspondents, reducing contact until her absence was barely noticed. ‘Think of it as acting like a dimmer switch on her life,’ he said.

  Of course, I didn’t know then that it was the middle bit – those emails and status updates – where the problems lay. And that I would never really reach the end.

  Now the decision had been made, I was eager to get started. I sat at my desk and waited for Tess to instigate contact, for what turned out to be a very long two and a half days.

  I didn’t know how she would approach me. Facebook or email were most likely, I thought, but as I had given Adrian my mobile number there was also the possibility she might call. I opened the necessary tabs on my laptop, laid my charged phone beside it, and tried to get on with other things. I finished off a testing report and surfed the web aimlessly, following random links, but the virtual traffic that passed in front of me felt as distant and uninteresting as the sounds of cars thundering into Rotherhithe Tunnel outside the window.

  Despite attempts at normality the waiting made me incredibly anxious, and I can admit now that by the end of the second day I became slightly irrational. The thought began to form that maybe it was all a trap, and that any moment the police would be hammering at my door.

  I know now, of course – I knew then – that my reason had been decimated by the prolonged state of heightened tension. But once the idea entered my head, I stopped even surfing random sites and just sat at my desk focusing on nothing, listening to the sounds outside. Every time blue lights filled the window – which is common in Rotherhithe – my insides lurched. At one point, a group of children started to play football against the side of the restaurant, and each thud of the ball made me jump as if it was the first time I had heard it.

  By the following morning, having slept for only a few fitful hours, I was feeling even more unsettled and frayed. I decided that I could bear it no longer, and had just begun to compose a message to Adrian, resigning from the project, when I glanced down at the bottom of the screen and there it was: a [1] in my email inbox.

  I immediately snapped back into focus. The email was from an account called [email protected]. I assumed then that Tess had set up a new, anonymous account specifically for the project, but it turned out she had used the address for years. The phrase didn’t have any specific meaning; it was just a quote from a film that was on in the background when she was setting up her Gmail account in 2005.

  That was the sort of thing I had to deal with, with Tess. One’s natural presumption is that people do things for a reason, that there’s consideration and meaning behind their actions, but with her, more often than not there wasn’t. It didn’t make my job easy.

  The subject line was blank, and so too was the body of the email. There were four attachments – three documents and a JPEG.

  First, I opened the photograph.

  Naturally, I had formed an idea of Tess from the information Adrian had provided. Not that he had told me very much: she was thirty-eight, lived in Bethnal Green in east London and was currently working in an art gallery. Because of what she wanted to do, I was expecting a middle-aged woman with dead eyes and a face drained by despair.

  But the woman in the picture was not like that at all. For a start, she looked young. Or, rather, you didn’t think about her age when you looked at her, because she was so attractive. She wasn’t beautiful like Princess Buttercup, but she was – ‘sexy’, I suppose.

  The photo was almost full length, and showed her standing in a kitchen. Although there was no one else in view, she appeared to be at a party: the counter she was leaning against was covered with an assortment of bottles and scattered wedges of lime, and an empty blue plastic bag that was still holding the shape of its former contents.

  Tess was wearing what looked like a giant white T-shirt, except she was wearing it on its own as a dress, with a gold belt. It had slipped off one shoulder, and you could see a little bump along her collarbone, like a button, like girls have in magazines. She was very tanned – she was, I would discover, half Chilean, and even in winter her skin was the colour of strong tea. Her bare legs were thin and un-muscled, like she’d barely used them. Schoolgirl’s legs, mum would have called them; although mine were never like that, even when I was at school.

  Her hair was almost black, thick and shoulder-length with a fringe. Her eyes were dark brown and unusually far apart. She was looking at the camera but her head was turned slightly so you could see her long, flat nose and distinct jawline. She was smiling, but it wasn’t a normal photograph smile, rather as if she had just done something naughty and no one knew except her and the photographer.

  Did I really think that at the time? Or am I saying that because I discovered later that she had just done something naughty? The occasion was her friend Tina’s housewarming party in August 2007, and the photograph was taken a moment after she had come back from the l
avatory where she had taken cocaine with the man behind the camera, Danny.

  And maybe she didn’t strike me as ‘sexy’ the first time I saw her, and I’m saying that because I know she was considered so by other people.

  I am trying my hardest to be objective and accurate about the chain of events and my perceptions of them, to not muddy them with all the knowledge I accumulated afterwards, but it is difficult. Perhaps it’s safest to just say that at the time, my first impression of Tess was that she didn’t look like someone who wanted to die.

  After scrutinizing the photo, I downloaded the documents. I’ve still got them on my computer. The first was a letter, titled Read First. This is it verbatim:

  Hi Leila,

  Fuck me. I honestly cant put into words how I feel that you’ve agreed to help me. It’s like you’ve agreed to save my life. I know that sounds crazy in the circumstances, but its true. Im sure Im going to thank you a million times throughout all of this, so Ill start now. THANK YOU!

  I guess the frst thing is to work out how we’re going to do this. Its all new to me – obviously – but I’m thinking maybe the best thing is for me to send u an initial load of information, everything i can think of right now, and then you can ask me questions and fill in the gaps about all the things ill doubtless overlook. Is that OK?’

  Do u have a rogh idea of how long ur going to need? Obviously u got to feel like ur totally ready, but just so u know, Im really keen for it all to happen ASAP. I dont know how much Adrian told u but I’ve waited for this for sooooo long. I mean, are you able to start immediately?

  Another thing – adrian and me were thinking that it might be best if u and I dont actually meet in person, and just did all the preparations thru email. It miht keep things cleaner and make it easier if your less emotionally involved.

  So im sitting here thinking – why r u doing this for me? Well, I know why, Adrian says youre a special person. I hope its OK for u. A warning: Im a complete fucking nutcase. Sorry.

  OK. So what I thought Id do first of all is send u this kind of autobiography thing that a shrink made me write once. Its a few years old so just imagine that things are worse now but itll give u a general picture. Then we can take it from there.

  I cant believe that this is finally happening. I havent been this happy in fucking years. THANK YOU!!

  Tess xxxx

  Ps Its funny I saw my mum yestrdy and she was being a cow as usual and I thought, why am I going to all this trouble to stop you being hurt? Why dont I just top myself like a normal person instead of doing this elaborate sceme? But I just couldnt. I guess I dont hate her that much.

  The next document was her CV. It gave her full name and address and date of birth, and an extremely varied list of jobs with no discernible connections, from managing a band called Grievous Mary to her current occupation, working part-time as an invigilator in an art gallery in South London (I Googled the job and it seemed to involve little more than sitting on a chair). She had not had what you’d call a steady career path, to put it mildly.

  Lastly, I opened the ‘autobiography’ that she had written for a psychiatrist. I will run this one through the spell check first; it’s quite long and Tess’s ‘unique’ writing style can be wearing.

  OK, so – childhood. Nothing to see there. It was OK. I was a happy kid, nice big country pile, all right parents. I remember mum being a bit uptight, not wanting us to hug her if she was dressed up or to touch her antiques in case we mucked them up, but she did what was required of her. She wasn’t toxic then. I know this goes against everything you lot believe, but I don’t think early childhood counts for so much. Adolescence, that’s the formative time – when you realize your parents don’t control the world and you start to see things as they really are, and they start to see you as you really are, not an extension of them. Or maybe I just had a defective gene that was dormant until I was a teenager. I don’t know. Anyway, all I can say is that I felt I was a pretty normal, happy child. If anything, it was my brother Nicholas who was the troublesome one. He was three years older, and he used to bully this boy Sean, who lived on our street, making him eat woodlice, that sort of thing. Getting into fights, stealing money from mum’s purse to go on the slot machines in the Three Tuns. And look at him now, a master of the universe with his neat little wife and game shoots.

  So it was all progressing as normal and I don’t know what happened exactly, or when, but I know that by fifteen I was a shadow of my former self. I know that’s a cliché but I can’t think of a better way of putting it. The first time I remember really feeling it was the evening of my friend Simone’s birthday – everyone was going to this pub that would serve us and there was this boy going who fancied me, he was one of the cool lot at school. But instead of being there I was in my bedroom, door locked, lying in bed. I told my parents I had flu, but really it was this profound sense of hopelessness. It’s hard to explain. It was like I was unaware I had been walking around all that time with a noose around my neck, and then suddenly a trapdoor had opened under me and I was hanging.

  And then, a few days later, my mood suddenly lifted. Like I had been given an adrenalin injection straight into my heart. I didn’t just feel better, I felt absolutely brilliant. The world was mine for the taking. I thought of that boy – I can’t remember his name now – and decided to jump on my bike and go round to his house without phoning or anything. His mum answered the door and said they were having dinner, and I insisted she got him, and when she did and he came to the door, looking all bemused, I didn’t say anything but just snogged him, right there and then, in front of his mum. I was irresistible and brilliant and everyone responded to me, and wanted to be near me. And then I’d feel the trapdoor start to open under my feet and I would crawl home, lock the world out of the room and fall into the pit.

  That was the pattern for a few years, on and off. I knew that teenagers were meant to be moody, so I presumed that’s what it was, and my parents presumed so too, I think. But my brother hadn’t gone through all of this. He slammed doors and grunted and was a little shit but he could always be pulled out of his moodiness by a bribe or watching The A-Team.

  When I was about seventeen, I started to know that something was really wrong with me, that this wasn’t normal. I started to put myself into dodgy situations, staying out all night and shagging anyone who asked. Once I gave a blowjob to my friend Kelly’s father, when I was staying over at hers. I was brushing my teeth and he passed by the bathroom, and paused to look at me, and I took him by the hand and led him in. Another time my friends and I were at the pub in Edgware, and at eleven they had to go home – we were meant to be revising for our A-levels – and I phoned dad and made some excuse about staying with one of them, but instead I got a cab into Soho and asked someone on the street where the best place to go was, and ended up in this underground club, drinking whatever was given to me and talking to these crazy old guys wearing fedoras and cravats. One of them started stroking my tits and we went in the corner of the club, which was dark but not that dark, if you know what I mean, and we shagged there, standing up. I stayed out until the tubes started running again at 6am and then went straight to school and slept on a bench for two hours until the bell rang.

  I didn’t give a fuck about schoolwork. I failed two of my A-levels but managed to get an A in art, and got a place at Camberwell to do a foundation course, which, as you can imagine, was the perfect – and worst – place for me. At art school being crazy wasn’t just tolerated, it was encouraged. On my first day there I shaved all my hair off in the middle of the cafe and everyone instantly knew my name. I put on this club night called Topless where, yes, you’ve guessed it, everyone had to go topless. God, I was such a twat. I sang in a crap band, and then managed an even crapper band, Godless Mary. Boys really liked me. I was the last to leave every party. During the manic periods – I knew when they were coming on because my cheeks would feel thick and tingly – I really threw myself into my work, was wildly productive, not le
aving the studio for days, not sleeping, producing ten paintings in a night sometimes, listening to the whole of the Ring Cycle at full blast, chain-smoking so much that, by the morning, I could barely croak ‘hello’ when the cleaner came in.

  Then, when things went dark, it was like my head had been filled with concrete. All I could do was sleep and when I wasn’t asleep, I’d lie in bed thinking the most terrible things, concocting violent fantasies of death for myself and people I knew who had slighted me in some way.

  Sometimes, there’d be this crossover between the high and the low, I’d be manic and irritable at the same time. I’d phone people and yell at them, and, later, when the Internet started, write long emails to friends who I thought had let me down somehow, or to shops who had sold out of the teacups I’d seen in a magazine and desperately wanted.

  The only thing that would ease things slightly would be a hot bath, so I’d have these baths that would last half a day, using up all the hot water for the house I was sharing and then getting out when the water cooled to boil more in kettles and saucepans.

  My housemates got tired of me pretty quickly and there were arguments and finally they asked me to leave. So I moved in with the boyfriend I was with at the time, Jonny, and within about a week we had a huge row about god knows what, and I threw all his stuff out the window and wrote CUNT across his car in nail varnish. Yes, I am a fucking cliché. I didn’t remember it the next day – Jonny had to remind me.

  Sometimes I would crave peace so strongly I would jump on a train and go to some shitty depressing seaside place and book into a B and B, the kind with porcelain cats and frilly loo seat covers, just to be myself, and then spend all night awake under the clammy nylon sheets and have to run out in the early hours of the morning because I didn’t have any money to pay for it.

  Fuck, I want to kill myself just writing all this down. That’s a joke, ha ha. Well, not really.