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‘How would you feel’, she said, ‘about contributing to the podcast? Telling your side?’
‘When?’ Roxy asked.
‘Now? I live just up there. Two minutes away. Less.’
She’d expected Roxy to say no, to be cagey and private and prickly, but she’d immediately picked up her small rucksack and started to stand up. ‘Is this going to be like a true crime podcast, then?’ she asked, and Alix had felt a shiver run through her at the realisation that somehow, through the stultifying fug of fear and dread, it had escaped her that that’s exactly what she was now doing. She was making a true crime podcast, out of the events of her own life.
Now she plays Roxy a small part of one of Josie’s recordings. It’s from the day that Josie told her about Brooke. She watches Roxy’s face as she listens, the looks of confusion and incredulity that pass across her fine features. She shakes her head occasionally, as if trying to dislodge something from her ear. Alix presses pause and waits for Roxy to speak.
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
The screen changes to a close-up re-enactment of someone pressing record on a mixer desk.
Underneath the text reads:
Over the next twenty-four hours, Alix Summer recorded nearly four hours of testimony from Roxy Fair.
Roxy’s voice plays over a blurred visual recreation of the Fairs’ apartment interior.
A teenage girl can be seen from behind, chatting to an older man in the kitchen.
‘Brooke Ripley started late at my school. Everyone hated her. I remember being glad because it took the spotlight off me for a moment. She was kind of pretty, looked older than fourteen, big boobs. And we sort of paired off just because everyone hated us. And yeah, she and I got quite close. Really close. In fact, Brooke and I ended up being, like, together, you know? I’d always known I was gay, from a really young age. But Brooke was my first girlfriend, and it was seriously intense for a while. We were really in love. Didn’t tell anyone about it, only Erin. But not Mum, not Dad. And I remember this time, it was Christmas, my dad was home. I remember that now. He was baking cookies, in his Christmas apron. We were listening to Christmas music. It was kind of nice, felt like a normal family for once.’
Alix interjects: ‘Were you not a normal family?’
‘No. We were not a normal family. Not by any stretch. But right then, in that moment, it felt normal. And my dad was laughing and joking and I looked at Brooke and I thought: I bet you wish your dad was like mine. I remember thinking that. I remember it really clearly. I felt proud. You know? And yes, of course my mum hated it. Hated seeing us all having a laugh. All being happy. Afterwards Brooke said something like, “I think your mum hates me.” I said, “Why do you say that?” She said, “I dunno. The vibes I was getting off her.” I think Mum just really resented her, because she could tell how much I liked her. How much we all liked her. She could tell that Brooke was more important to me than her, that I loved her, you know, and she couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t deal with anything that wasn’t about her. She was sick with envy.’
The background scene changes to a school playground filled with teenagers in uniform.
Alix asks: ‘And then there was a fight? According to witnesses, you and Brooke had a physical fight on school premises towards the end of your last term of school.’
‘Yeah. She, er, or at least I thought she’d said something about Erin. Someone told me she’d used a derogatory word about her. So I just went in, like I do, stupid, no fact-checking, lamped her. School suspended me, even though I was about to start my exams.’
The screen changes to Roxy sitting on a stool in an empty bar.
She is smiling coolly.
On the recording, she can be heard sighing.
‘I was kind of impetuous, when I was young. I was kind of a nightmare, to be honest. And that was it for me and school. I was done with it. I was done with all of it. But mainly I was done with my mother. So I ran away from home. I wanted Brooke to come with me. She said she wasn’t ready. She wanted to do her GCSEs. She wanted to go to the stupid fucking prom. She wanted to do it all properly. So I just went without her. Hoped she’d come to her senses. Hoped she’d come and find me. But instead, she just went and disappeared. Into thin air. And that was that.’
Alix asks: ‘So you running away from home – it was nothing to do with your father and Brooke? There was nothing going on? Erin didn’t tell you she’d heard them having sex? None of that actually happened?’
Roxy raises her gaze to the camera and shakes her head.
‘I’ve never heard so much bullshit in my life.’
***
11 p.m.
Roxy sleeps in Alix’s spare bedroom that night. Despite her coarse bravado, Alix senses the soft child beneath, the sixteen-year-old girl living in a toxic environment who just needed someone to nurture her. As Alix shows her to her room, she explains that this is where her mother had slept for a week, just before she disappeared. ‘She had this key, hidden under her mattress. It had the number six written on it. I gave it to the police, but they couldn’t match it with any of the locks in your parents’ house. Do you know anything about it?’
Roxy shrugs. ‘No.’
‘You don’t have access to an outhouse or a shed or, I don’t know, some kind of storage unit?’
