CW: Suicide
To Shiksha: Thank you for your guidance with the plot. This would've been a lesser story without your help.
Look at that skyscraper, see how the sun gleams on its vast silver facades like the whole structure’s winking at us: an invitation to draw in for a closer look.
Float up to the eighteenth floor where, behind mirror-windows the size of tennis courts, lies the canteen of Boyd Frazier Capital.
Keep going: closer to the massive glass screens, drifting towards our reflection, the street far below us, until we come face to face with ourselves.
A word of warning: once we pass through the glass, all’s not quite as it seems.
Ready then?
There. Painless enough. And how nice to be out of the wind that howls ominously at this height, and into the hubbub of lunchtime chatter.
And now – wait for it. Here she comes. The willowy Salma, negotiating the Formica tables arranged like drifting islands on the Atlantic blue floor tiles. See how careful she is to steer a wide berth around the team from Direct Marketing, as ever engaged heads-down in a working lunch, lest they should snag her for a document or contact.
Deftly she circumvents one threat – only to be faced with another! There at a table directly in Salma’s path is Lee from Procurement, gazing up at her from his floppy sandwich. Quite what Lee procures Salma has no idea, but she presses her lips into a smile, contriving to look both hurried and regretful, and whether she’s pulled it off is anyone’s guess but by acknowledging Lee’s existence she makes his day.
On she goes, to the far corner of the canteen where she sets up camp at an empty table, sitting with her back to the wall and opening her laptop to ward off unsolicited approaches. There is but one person she will engage with for the next thirty minutes and it is Faye, best friend in the whole universe (and also, since yesterday, harbinger of doom) and who, God willing, will be along any minute now.
Faye is sweet and direct and honest. Faye makes the blood surge beneath Salma’s skin but today Faye represents a pivotal moment in history, really a matter of life or death. There are critical matters at hand and together the two of them must probe dark corners and determine if they are really, truly going to deal with Poppy the way they alluded to.
So when Faye arrives not quite out of the blue and says, ‘What’s the plan girl?’ Salma experiences a tightening of the skin across her shoulders and a tingle in her abdomen that’s beyond the usual lighting up routine her body goes through in Faye’s presence.
‘Hey,’ Salma offers, not at all ready for The Plan.
‘Are we lunching?’
‘I have to. It’s what lunchtime’s for. Joining me?’
‘No, I already ate,’ Faye says. ‘Apparently it’s what desks are for. Don’t mind me though.’
‘Okay, two secs.’
Salma extricates herself from behind the table and with a cautious glance at her laptop weaves her way to the staff fridge with the sticker reminding her that Fridays the fridge is cleaned out and any items left within will be DISPOSED OF.
She locates her lunchbox among the twenty or so others and returns with it to her table, her laptop, and her Faye. And also, to yesterday evening and the source of the implosion/explosion/meltdown, or any number of suitable descriptors.
* * *
Salma’s battered sofa: old but squashy. Gives a hug like it’s standing in for a romantic partner, which for too long now, it has. Glass of Aussie shiraz which Salma likes because it’s both fruity and at 14%, delivers a proper kick. Laptop open as always.
Faye arrived first, followed by Poppy – she of the pretty name and cataclysmic revelations – five minutes later. It wasn’t unusual for the three of them to get together in the evenings as well as during the day. In fact Salma couldn’t recall an evening in recent weeks when they hadn’t.
Three friends who followed each other everywhere, in the nicest possible way. Or that was the status of their relationship at the start of the evening. By the time they went their separate ways a little before midnight there was a lot of bad blood.
‘You didn’t like what I said,’ Poppy had announced at some point near the beginning of the evening, to no one in particular and therefore to both of them.
Faye, as always, was first to respond.
‘How do you know we didn’t?’ – happy to speak for both of them, Salma for the time being happy to let her.
‘You just didn’t. Neither of you did.’
But Salma knew she had to say something because if she didn’t Poppy would round on her. And Salma was insistent but gentle, the southerly breeze to Faye’s northern gale.
‘It doesn’t matter if we liked it outwardly. How’s that important? Maybe we both just needed to reflect on it.’
‘You normally like what I say. Anyway I don’t care. You thought it was controversial and I’m fine with that. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be said. I’m allowed an opinion you know. And my opinion counts even if you don’t agree with it. Hell even if it turns out to be wrong, it –’
And here Poppy ran out of steam, which was common. She always seemed to have more words than there was space available. Anyway she would’ve gone on to say
One person’s question is another’s brutal attack – or maybe she said it the other way round – and why’s everyone so sensitive about it?
‘You could get reported for that kind of speech,’ Faye had suggested.
‘Who’s gonna report me? One of you? No one else is listening!’
‘Well you don’t know that do you? Anyone could be. In theory.’
‘You’re being ridiculous and anyway: I haven’t said anything wrong!’
Which in fact, Salma reflected, she really hadn’t. But it had gone on nevertheless, arguments detonating like fireworks set off in a warehouse, until Poppy had taken her leave – stormed off really – no doubt well-oiled by that point, leaving Faye and Salma to reflect on the carnage.
‘You were uncharacteristically quiet,’ Salma told her immediately, not entirely sure Poppy was out of earshot yet and not caring because the bottle at her feet was empty.
‘What can you say?’ Faye said. ‘She’s racist and she can deny it all she wants but it’s a fact.’
Salma nearly choked on the dregs of wine in her glass.
‘Really? I mean I don’t know what she actually said wrong, if I’m honest. She didn’t offend me. I don’t think she’s out to cause offence to anyone.’
‘Not tonight she wasn’t.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning: last night she started on about it. She was using racial slurs, you name it.’
Salma blinked.
‘When? Where?! How did I miss this?’
‘She has friends other than us, Salma. Obviously.’
‘So? We all do. What does that mean?’
‘She’s in a nasty little group and they have nothing good to say about anyone other than themselves. She thinks her conversations with them are their-ears-only, but after we left each other last night she carried on elsewhere. I kinda followed and wished I hadn’t.’
Salma was still blinking as she set her glass down with a clang. ‘Followed? You stalked her!’
‘Maybe a little bit. Only because I had my suspicions.’
Salma didn’t need to ask where this not-so-covert conversation had taken place and how Faye and contrived to earwig it. And we, too, shall find out in due course.
‘What are we gonna do?’ Salma stared ahead, suddenly clear-headed. ‘We have to ditch her, right? I don’t think I wanna know what else she was saying.’
‘It was. And I think we should do more than ditch her from our group.’
‘Right – I mean I don’t know what you’re saying. Like, what else can we do?’
And Faye, being Faye, hadn’t even paused. The answer was already formed, packaged up and ready to go:
‘I can’t forgive what I heard. I’ve never felt so much hatred for someone. She has to be dealt with. Permanently.’
Which was the bombshell end to the evening.
* * *
Now Faye is back, in the cold and sober light of day. At any moment Poppy might turn up at this table and catch their every word – their little meeting is hardly sub-rosa. But even in the cold light of day and out from under the influence of Aussie shiraz, Salma isn’t sure she cares. If suddenly you don’t like a person, what does it matter if they know you don’t?
Except: if you’re going to deal with someone permanently it’s best not to warn them in advance.
Salma chews her lip. ‘Let’s talk discreetly.’
Which means moving to a place where no one can listen, away from prying ears. Because even if Poppy doesn’t turn up – which given their present setting she might – to catch them in the midst of their clandestine machinations, anyone else who cares to listen could do so with only a modicum of application.
* * *
‘It’s actually not difficult,’ Faye says, the two of them now safely ensconced in a quiet corner – never mind where for now – where they can speak freely and covertly, and at length.
And she’s right. To get rid of someone or wipe them out or whatever terminology we’re using really isn’t complicated. All those thorny ethics and morals: yes, rocky ground. But the mechanics? A walk in the park.
And so they come up with a plan that really doesn’t take much strategising. There are only so many options available after all, the real question is one of commitment. But the intricacies, if you can call them that and frankly you can’t, they thrash out in minutes.
‘Stop saying hatch,’ is Faye’s only complaint.
‘Why? That’s what we’re doing – what we’ve done.’
‘Because it makes us sound like cartoon villains. If we’re gonna go through with this, if this is something we want to do for the best – not just for us but for society – then we owe it to ourselves not to melodramatise it.’
‘How do you melodramatise it? It can’t be exaggerated.’
‘I don’t know just – don’t say hatch a plan.’
‘Okay, whatever.’ But there’s a clutching sensation in her gut because she doesn’t like criticism.
Their plan for Poppy’s permanent demise has been born, or at least conceived, but most definitely not hatched, and all that remains is for it to be carried out so that Poppy can trouble the world no longer.
And that’s it. Done and dusted. End of Poppy.
* * *
Of course that’s not it. Did you think you’d be left hanging? That the story of Poppy and her used-to-be friends would simply plunge headlong into a wall and – end?
In the sphere in which you think Faye and Salma are operating, there’d be a lot more to it. We can’t just half-witness our star players plotting a murder, and then walk out.
But the fact is: we’re not in the world you think we’re in. Not that it makes the situation any less tragic, as it happens.
Time to draw the veil aside.
* * *
Within three days of Faye and Salma’s nefarious deed, Poppy West was reported missing, which was very strange. News of Poppy’s disappearance spread in the usual fashion, rising like water in the shallow pool of the local village paper, where it grew until it overflowed into the tributaries that led to the county press. From there it surged onwards, and in less than a week had run all the way to the nationals and the TV news.
Why’s that strange? After all, when someone is removed, dealt with in such a permanent fashion, surely the only thing for them to do is disappear. Or else wash limply ashore on some beach or turn up grey and waxy at the bottom of a ditch somewhere.
But Poppy West’s disappearance, as reported in the media , makes for a most unexpected twist to this story. Because, as has been established, all is not as it seems.
What did you think of Faye when you met her? What colour hair and eyes does she have? How tall is she? You don’t know. She might be anything mightn’t she because in truth, we never really met her.
Don’t blame yourself. You took our invitation, ascending the gleaming flanks of a city skyscraper, and through a solid glass window. You came willingly on that flight of near fantasy so why shouldn’t you have taken everything that followed as gospel?
You were warned before we entered that canteen (which was quite real) all would not be as it seemed.
Salma was real. You really did see her making her navigating the tables and avoiding those undesirables whom she had neither the time nor the inclination to engage. You watched her find a spot, open her laptop and then –
– Faye arrived.
She arrived from – and remained on – Salma’s laptop screen.
Salma has never met Faye in person. She doesn’t know the colour of her hair or how tall she is, although, perhaps like us, she has surmised both, and other things besides.
Their conversation took place online. You noticed, perhaps, Salma’s wary glance as she left her laptop alone and unguarded on the table while she darted across to the staff fridge? She’d have left it quite happily in the company of her beloved Faye, but as we’ve established, Faye wasn’t there. Not beyond her digital presence.
And what about being overheard and moving to somewhere private to continue their discussion? Simply this: social media is most assuredly public, and the not-so-beloved Poppy might have barged in (digitally speaking) at any moment. In the interests of confidentiality, Faye and Salma repaired to the secure environment of their DMs.
And those meetings every evening at Salma’s house, on Salma’s comfy old sofa? Like every evening: online. On the same well-known digital platform that hosted all of their meetings. The platform where Poppy had reputedly strayed from the path of the righteous. Perhaps, if Salma had pressed Faye to reveal more of her surveillance, she may have surmised that, desperate, Poppy may have fallen into the wrong hands. Ones that promised her an equanimity so wanting in her relationship with Faye and Salma for they, as Faye might have gone on to suggest, were the alpha couple in the threesome.
And remember when Poppy ran out of steam? When her words expanded beyond the available space? Yes: the dreaded character limit.
Perhaps you’re there now? Perhaps we’ve arrived at the last twist? That Faye and Salma aren’t wanton murderers prepared to slay their friend in cold blood.. It makes sense: their interpretation of removing Poppy, permanently, meant reporting her account to the platform’s administrators so that her username could be barred from ever posting again.
But here is the real tragedy: not a word of prejudice had escaped Poppy’s digital lips. But what was written, was taken out of context, and was enough to set the trap. It was the moment Faye had been waiting for, an opportunity to draw the blade and stab Poppy in the back.
Faye had learned years ago, perhaps in the school playground, that cruelty could be declawed simply by diversion. Redirect its venomous barbs towards another victim and like magic, it is rendered harmless. When the bullied becomes the bully, a most powerful inoculation is administered.
But really, was Faye a victim here? If she was, of what?
The truth is, Faye was attacked by nothing more – and perhaps we should say, nothing less – than the demons in her mind. She adored Salma every bit and more than the vice versa. And three was, most assuredly, a crowd. Which meant Poppy, funny, popular, and that sickeningly appealing combination of feisty and laid back that Faye desperately contrived to be, had to go.
The irony was stinging indeed, because Poppy had many people of colour among her friends. Her sister, whom she loved, was gay. She was the last person to exhibit prejudice in any of its guises. She loved everyone but sadly people who love everyone make soft targets.
Poppy had been a target more than once, and swore she would never be again.
* * *
So here is the twist. Here’s where things take a much darker turn and where digital layers become entwined with the tattered fabric of reality.
Because when Poppy logged in one evening, alone in her bedroom, door shut firmly against the violence both physical and emotional that was hurled back and forth between her mum and her mum’s boyfriend, which occasionally exploded to catch Poppy in the crossfire, she had been greeted with a stark and devastating message informing her that YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN SUSPENDED.
Pending appeal of course, because very little in the digital world is final. But it was terminal enough for Poppy, who at 25 felt she was too old not to have a place of her own but who couldn’t afford to do anything about that, who’d had as much of the real world as she could take because for caring people, the real world can be cruel and violent. Poppy’s digital friends had become her lifeblood and her oxygen, as evidenced now by the paling of her features and the silver sparkles suddenly flooding her vision.
Distantly she knew what had happened and distantly she decided it was just. She should be condemned. She didn’t know what for, but it was appropriate because she had been condemned her entire life, and everybody else couldn’t be wrong. She deserved no place in the digital world any more than she did in the real one. And so, blinking away tears, Poppy West slowly folded her laptop, abandoning it forever, carried herself downstairs past her screaming mum and her screaming mum’s screaming boyfriend, and out the front door. They didn’t notice that she was dressed only in her pyjama shorts and a vest top. They didn’t notice her at all.
It was a five-minute walk to the bleak stretch of sand that looked out over the angry North Sea, frothing in the moonlight.
She was a good swimmer. Or had been. She wasn’t in shape anymore. But that had been her one redeeming feature. There were trophies and certificates in the bedroom she’d left behind to prove it. These days she ate too many ready meals and got too little exercise to be competitive. Competitive was a lifetime ago. Still, she surprised herself, beating out into the waves with strong, swift strokes.
By the time she tired and stopped to look back she had covered almost quarter of a mile. Her legs hung below her in the blackness. The cold water was biting her flesh and already the muscle cramps were setting in. She panicked, knowing there was no team coach to yank her out of the water. The lights of her town looked close and warm. She thought above the wind and the fizzing waves that she could hear cars and perhaps the odd snatch of shouted greeting. Somewhere up that dark rise, among the row of lights along the hilltop, was her house. Behind one of those sets of windows her mum and her mum’s boyfriend were still going at it.
Suddenly the sights and the noises of the town were another world. She didn’t belong among those voices or behind those lit windows. She didn’t belong anywhere.
Say it, she urged herself as saltwater flooded her nose and mouth again. You. Don’t. Belong.
Shivering, crying, gasping, Poppy pulled herself onwards through the dark water, up and down over the undulant waves, until the cold seeped into her muscles which were simultaneously burning and freezing, and they ceased to respond to the commands from her brain.
* * *
Poppy West was never found. Perhaps she made it out to an offshore current and her lifeless form was carried far out to sea where, full of water, it sank. Perhaps it was struck by an ocean liner and butchered by the screws.
We’ll never know.
But of this one thing, this singular, irrefutable fact among the swirl of illusion we’ve conjured, you may be assured: Poppy West’s existence, while conducted principally on digital platforms, ended very much irl.
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