What She Left: Enhanced Edition (18 page)

‘Ah yes, that. Them.’ Fliss and I had pretty much given up on a family by that stage, despite us being poked and prodded by a small army of medical professionals. Some of the old rancour swelled up in me; it made me want to tell Liz
how degrading it had been, how emasculating: how the human race would have become extinct if it had been left to couples like us.

‘Maybe we’re simply not destined to have a baby,’ Fliss had said. ‘Maybe it’s going to be just you and me.’

I’d baulked at the prospect of that ‘not’. ‘Don’t say that,’ I’d retorted. ‘We’ll keep trying until it happens.’

‘Maybe it’s just not in God’s plan for us. Besides, that wouldn’t be so awful, would it, if it
was
just the two of us?’

Liz said: ‘Because I do want kids. Ideally one of each, but mainly a girl. That’s unusual, isn’t it? It’s boys that women are supposed to want.’ She was off again. She could be like this, tumbling from optimism to despair in the time it took her to smoke a cigarette.

The news had left the Falklands for Washington and that garish, glorified actor Reagan on his pet subject, the so-called nuclear deterrent. I said: ‘Some people might argue the world’s sufficiently dangerous that you’re doing the next generation a favour by not bringing them into it.’

‘What if my daughter inherits all my bad traits and none of my good ones?’ she asked.

‘You haven’t got any bad ones.’

She merely snorted at that. ‘If I have a baby girl, when I have a baby girl, I’ll be terrified she’ll be too much like me, poor lamb.’

I touched her skin, her soft, thin skin and it occurred to me that maybe it would be with this woman that I have the son I’d always so wished for.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘You haven’t answered my question. Do you never get scared?’

‘Never mind being an academic, you could be a journalist,’ I said, reaching out again for her hair.

‘You’re insatiable,’ she said.

‘Hardly.’

‘What are you then?’ she said. ‘What are we?’

I should have known that was the beginning of the end.

Trespass
– Rose Tremain

How to be a Woman
– Caitlin Moran

Cranford
– Elizabeth Gaskell

The Time Traveler’s Wife
– Audrey Niffenegger

The Brightest Star in the Sky
– Marian Keyes

The Snowman
– Jo Nesbo

Gone with the Wind
– Margaret Mitchell

Cold Comfort Farm
– Stella Gibbons

Fifty Shades of Grey
– E. L. James

Eat, Pray, Love
– Elizabeth Gilbert

The Help
– Kathryn Stockett

The House of Mirth
– Edith Wharton

Alice best friend reveals dead pet threat

 

The best friend of dead river girl Alice Salmon has thrown fresh controversy on the case by revealing Salmon received a ‘death threat’ just days ahead of her February death.

Speaking exclusively to the
Star
, Megan Parker claimed previously reported threats were ‘merely the tip of the iceberg’ and
said the 25-year-old had been ‘living in fear for her life’ after flowers had been left on her doorstep with a ‘sinister’ note.

This latest explosive revelation is set to raise further questions about the death of journalist Salmon, whose body was discovered in a city-centre river, leaving the authorities baffled as to the exact events surrounding the incident.

Parker said: ‘Alice confided in me about how she’d come home one night to find a bouquet of dead flowers, with a note pinned to them saying “You next” .’

One suggestion is that the threat could have been connected with Salmon’s work as an anti-crime journalist, which helped to bring high-profile prosecutions against more than one south-coast criminal.

‘She’d been getting threats for ages,’ added Cheltenham-based Parker. ‘She used to go out on these crazy long walks on Clapham Common – I was constantly warning her how dangerous it was doing that at night – but she’d even stopped that because she was convinced she was being followed.

‘I only wish she’d gone to the police, but she made me promise to keep it a secret. She reckoned even sharing it with me could have put me in danger. She was the bravest woman I’ve ever met.’

Parker, who’s considering closing her social-media accounts for fear of recriminations over her connections with the crime-buster, said she was speaking out now as a mark of respect for her friend.

She said the tragic death had ‘knocked her for six’, but played down rumours of a spat among Salmon’s friends. ‘In our own separate ways, we all feel some accountability. I was well aware she hadn’t been happy for the last couple of months and stood by and watched her spiralling downhill. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

‘There are a lot of crazy allegations being bandied around, but ultimately this may have simply been a terrible accident. She’d
made a lot of enemies, but it would be conjecture to assume that they had any bearing on all this. We may have to accept that we’ll never piece together the chain of events that led to Alice’s death.’

In an article for leading women’s magazine
Azure
as recently as last October, Salmon herself disclosed a feeling of ‘watching life through a pane of thick glass’ and detailed how she ‘simply wasn’t designed for it’.

Hampshire Police confirmed this morning that they were keeping an ‘open mind’ on the case. ‘It’s a live investigation with multiple lines of enquiry,’ a spokesman said. ‘Meanwhile, we have assigned the Salmons a family liaison officer and once again extend our sympathies to the family and friends of Miss Salmon.’

The case continues to grip the public’s imagination and these latest revelations, following feverish media coverage, will inevitably put it back in the spotlight.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if some scumbag she’d banged up went after her,’ one
Star
reader commented on our Facebook page. ‘Crime is rife in all our cities … Salmon took a few big scalps and villains can’t be seen to let journalists take liberties.’

• The photograph on this article was replaced on March 16. The original showed Megan Parker, Alice Salmon and a third woman identified in the caption as ‘ill-fated Salmon’s friend Kirsty Blake’. Ms Blake has asked us to make clear she was not the person in the picture and asked us to remove it, which we were pleased to do.
  

Hi Alice,

 

Thank you for your idea, which I read with interest. It was swirling around my head on the train on this morning’s commute and that’s typically a good barometer of a piece’s potential strength! We’d need you to major on the personal element in terms of how diary-keeping helped you address some of your teenage issues, but use the proposed national diary archive as a nice topical hook. Let’s grab a few minutes on the phone to nail a detailed brief.

 

Call me.

Olivia x

 

PS: ‘An antidote to life’ – I
adore
that line. Is that yours or a quote from somewhere?

‘Megan Parker, best friend.’

At least they introduced me correctly, Alice, although it went rapidly downhill. Maybe I was naive, like those idiots who go on
Big Brother
convinced they’ll be portrayed flatteringly.

‘Best friends have such a special bond,’ the journalist had said, when she contacted me via LinkedIn. ‘Doing an interview would be a chance to explain why she was so important to you.’

To avoid any curveballs, I enquired what her first question would be before the cameras rolled.

‘That’s easy. It’ll be: Describe Alice.’

She was true to her word on that one.

‘Kind,’ I said. ‘Beautiful. Talented.’

The journalist, Arabella, nodded encouragingly and the camera twitched in the corner of my eye. She’d insisted we did this by the river. ‘It’ll help put your comments in context,’ she told me. ‘It’ll help make it feel more real to viewers.’

‘Can you give me an example of those things, Megan?’

She’d used my name a lot, to reassure me we were friends, on the same side, team Alice. I’m fully au fait with all the devices and tricks journos use; that’s what working in PR does for you.

I recounted the tale of you travelling halfway across Southampton on a mercy mission once when I was laid up with flu, then said there’d never been a dull moment when you were around: you were a total live wire. Cue enthusiastic nodding: I was delivering.

‘Megan, how did you feel when you heard your best friend had died?’

You would have chuckled at that one. Clichéd, you’d have said.

‘Shattered,’ I said. ‘Numb. I still am. I’ve never been without her before. We were besties, even when we were small.’

We were standing at the spot where – depending on who you listen to – you entered the water.

‘Tell us about that, about when you were small.’

I bumbled that one a bit, managing to claim we’d met when we were five and then six. Stupidly, I hadn’t done any planning, preferring to speak from the heart.

‘Any particular memories from when you were that age you’d like to share with viewers?’

I gave her lots, but none made the final edit. They were cut – probably by an intern or media studies graduate, a whizz with Final Cut Pro, desperate to produce a hard-hitting piece of work for their portfolio. There was no room for that sort of colour; they had a very specific angle in mind.

The journalist smiled, a practised well-worn manoeuvre. ‘What’s your take on what might have occurred that night?’

What I should have said was it wasn’t my place to speculate and that we’d be better placed to respond once the facts had come to light, but for now, out of respect for your family, we should hold off conjecture. But what I said – and it was stupid, I’m not unaware of that, but being by the river had upset me and this woman had thrown me off kilter – was: ‘I wished she hadn’t drunk as much.’

‘Was she very drunk?’

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘Is there a lesson in this for other young women drinking on nights out? For us all perhaps?’

I broke down and felt the forensic heat of the camera. They left that in, of course they left that in. Nothing like a few tears to serve up with the microwave meals and cups of tea, as long as they’re someone else’s.

‘Was Alice popular?’

‘Massively,’ I said. ‘Everyone loved her. But me most.’

‘You’ve spoken of her receiving threats.’

‘I loved her so much.’

‘This must be devastating for her friends. Her boyfriend, especially – did she have a boyfriend?’

I hesitated, praying she’d throw me a lifeline. She could have said, ‘I gather she was a fan of
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
’ or ‘She was planning a sponsored half marathon, I believe?’, but she’d picked up a scent. ‘She did have a boyfriend?’

As if she wasn’t perfectly well aware of that fact. She’d have done her research, watched other clips, read up on today’s subject: Alice Salmon.

‘Yes, sort of.’ What I should have done was sworn – I’d been taught on a course that if a media interview’s going badly wrong, swear, because then they’ll then be forced to cut it.

‘I heard she was about to get married.’

‘Was she?’ I asked, dumbfounded.

I should have done this interview in the days following your death rather than seven weeks afterwards. They’d have been more respectful then. It was a tragedy then, nothing more. Now, the ‘isn’t it awful she’s dead’ angle had been done. They were after a new hook; in editorial meetings they’d have discussed how they could ‘take the story on’ and some bright spark would have mentioned there was a lot of chatter on the Internet about threats, about how drunk she was, about a rift with her boyfriend. What is it they say?
If it bleeds, it leads
. This wasn’t the sort of journo you were. ‘We haven’t heard much from her friends – she must have had a best friend, get her best friend,’ the news editor would have said.

So they got me.

‘I hear she was quite a complicated individual,’ the interviewer said.

I was a breath away from shouting, ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ But I was desperate to make it right, to leave everyone with the right impression of you, to make you proud of me for having put myself in front of a camera when I hated the limelight. So I said yes, a woman of many sides, hidden depths, not without contradictions, and with every answer you slipped a fraction further from me.

‘I’m interested in what her boyfriend Luke is like,’ she said.

‘He’s a good actor,’ I said and immediately regretted it.

‘Really?’

‘No comment,’ I said.

The cameras switched off, they un-miked me. ‘Thanks, sweetie,’ Arabella said. ‘You were perfect.’

‘Is that it? There’s other stuff I’d like to share.’

‘Another time, sweetie.’

I knew how it worked. They’d pack up their kit, grab lunch on the hoof and head back to the studio. She’d make a diary note to revisit the topic when they were next covering binge drinking or if there’s a heatwave this summer and they’re doing a slot on the dangers of
swimming. Possibly a year on; yes, that’s always an easy story: the anniversary angle.

‘Are you proud of what you do?’ I asked and any sympathy she might have had over how I was edited dissipated.

Her colleague informed me the segment would ‘probably’ make the six o’clock show, but that depended on whether something ‘bigger’ happened between now and then. ‘With a bit of luck, it’ll air at nine as well,’ she said.

I rang your parents, explained there’d be more on the news tonight, and apologized.

Predictably, the report ended with the shot of me looking wistfully across the water. In the end it went out at six and nine and then again at ten. I’d obviously cried enough.