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‘Why?’
There is a short pause.
The camera zooms in on Erin’s and Roxy’s entwined hands and then pans out again.
‘Because I was scared. Scared that if she could do that to Brooke, she could do it to me.’
‘So what really happened that night?’ the interviewer asks off-mic . ‘The night she turned up on Alix Summer’s doorstep claiming to have been attacked by your father?’
Erin sighs.
The screen changes to a dramatic re-enactment of the night.
An actor playing Erin is in a messy bedroom at night, her face lit up by her computer monitor. She has headphones on and is interacting with online friends.
She pauses and removes her headphones.
She goes to the door of her room and puts her ear to it.
Erin’s voice continues in the background:
‘They came home. I heard them at the front door at about ten o’clock. It was quiet for a while and then a few minutes later I could hear shouting. Really bad. I opened my door and watched through the crack. My mother was accusing my father of being an embarrassment. Saying that he’d shown her up. That she’d been ashamed of him, and my dad did what my dad always did, just sat and took it. But then, out of nowhere, my mum called him a paedophile. She was screaming it at him, over and over, saying that he had abused her and now he was abusing me and then I heard my dad start to shout back. He was saying that he’d had enough of her, that he couldn’t take it any more, that it was the end of the line. And then he said she was mad – “You’re actually mad” – and was telling her that she was stupid, and that was when I heard my mother scream, it was like an animal scream. And there was a bang and a crash and then suddenly it just went quiet. I walked in and I saw my father on the floor. I thought he was having a heart attack. His hands were up against his chest, there was blood running from the side of his head, and I ran over to him and was going to try and, I don’t know, try and resuscitate him or something. My mum just stood and watched. She said, “It’s too late. He’s an old man. It was always going to happen sooner or later.” And she turned away and I said, “But we need to call an ambulance!”
‘She said, “I already did. It’s on its way.” I said, “Why did you call him a paedophile? Dad was not a paedophile.” And she said, “He had sex with me when I was sixteen. He was forty-three. What’s that if it’s not a paedophile? You put him on a pedestal but he’s nothing that you thought he was. He’s nothing at all. Just a dirty old man. A sad, pathetic, dirty old man.” And that was when I went for it. I said, “And you’re a murderer ,” and I picked up the remote control and I ran to her and I battered her with it. Just battered her and battered her and she didn’t fight back, just put her hands up around her head, and then, suddenly, she made this weird noise and she pulled herself up and she pushed me, really hard, and I fell onto my bum, winded myself so I could barely breathe, and she put her foot into my guts and pressed down so hard and I couldn’t push back against her and my father was groaning, trying to get to his feet, and she just kicked out at him with her other foot and he was still clutching at his chest, making the terrible noises, and my mother, she stood above us both, and her face – there was nothing there. And she kept saying, “I am not mad. I am not stupid.” She said, “It’s you. It’s you. You two drove me to this. You two. All I do is look after you both and all I get is hate. I can do better than this. I can do better than all of this.” And then I don’t remember anything after that. Just woke up and I was in the cupboard. Tied to a chair. And Dad was … well. We all know what happened after that.’
Erin shakes her head sadly, and the screen fades to black.
Part Four
Four weeks later
Nathan’s funeral was every bit as horrific as Nathan’s funeral was always going to be. Nathan knew so many people, and everyone who knew Nathan loved Nathan. The atmosphere in the packed crematorium was febrile with pain and shock. Unlike Alix, Nathan had known hurt in his life. His mother had died when he was twelve. His little brother had killed himself when Nathan was twenty-eight, just two years before Alix met him. And Nathan had dragged himself out of pain and grief and made a good life for himself. He hadn’t gone to university; he’d gone straight out to work and grafted hard for every penny he ever earned and was generous to a fault with the money he worked so hard for. And the drinking – it was so painfully crystal clear now to Alix – it was not about her, it was never about her. It was about him, about Nathan, about how he balanced out the delicate ecosystem of his damaged psyche. He didn’t want Alix to see that dark side of him. He did not want her to see him that way. When he drank like that, to the point of oblivion, it was self-medication, it was relief, it wasn’t good times and escaping-from-the-battleaxe. He hated himself like that and that was why he didn’t come home. Not because he didn’t want to be with her, but because he didn’t want her to be with him.
Nearly three hundred people packed out the crematorium near Nathan’s father’s house in Kensal Rise. Beyond the gates of the cemetery and on to the main road, the press and paparazzi kept a discreet distance. Alix wore a dress that she’d chosen to match the colour of Nathan’s eyes. The shop assistant had called it artichoke . Alix didn’t know what colour an artichoke was; she just knew that the dress was the same colour as Nathan’s eyes and that was the most important thing.
The weather was pleasant that day, four weeks to the day after Nathan’s body was brought out of the waters of Lake Windermere, not yet bloated, thank goodness, still recognisably Nathan. The month had been a blur, but that day felt sharp and clear to Alix, somehow. Being with so many people felt right, and afterwards at the wake thrown by Nathan’s company at a huge bar in Paddington overlooking the canal, with seats outside and bottomless champagne and a playlist put together by Nathan’s best friends and the children dashing about in summer clothes, and lively urgent chatter and laughter and people looking their high summer best, it felt almost as if Nathan would appear at any moment, in his element, loving every second, and when he didn’t appear it felt as though maybe he was at home waiting for her, and when he was not at home waiting for her it felt as though maybe he was away on a boys’ trip and when, ten days after the funeral, he is still not home, it is then and only then that Alix collapses. She lies on her bed, the day before Eliza’s first day at secondary school, wearing her artichoke dress and clutching a pillow, arching and un-arching her back as spasms of agonised crying rack her body at the realisation of what she has lost.
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
The screen shows footage of a BBC News report filmed outside a cemetery in Kensal Rise, northwest London.
The male reporter speaks respectfully and solemnly.
‘Today Nathan Summer, the husband of podcaster Alix Summer, has been laid to rest at Kensal Green crematorium in North London. Dozens upon dozens of well-wishers, friends and family have flooded through these gates this morning to say their final farewells to a man who, it appears, was loved by many. But today, still, a month after his body was discovered in the shallows of Lake Windermere, police are no closer to tracing the woman accused of killing him with an overdose of barbiturates in a kidnapping gone wrong. Josie Fair, forty-five, was last seen on Thursday the twenty-fifth of July in the village of Ambleside, where she handed her dog to a pair of strangers before disappearing completely. Fair is also being hunted in connection with the murders of her husband, Walter Fair, seventy-two, and sixteen-year-old Brooke Ripley and the attempted murder of her daughter Erin Fair, twenty-three years old. Since her disappearance, police have been following leads of sightings of Fair as far afield as northern France, Marrakech, Belfast and the Outer Hebrides, but still, to this moment, her whereabouts remain a mystery.’
The footage shows a long-range shot of Alix Summer and her two young children exiting the cemetery.
Alix is in a green dress, with a black jacket slung over her shoulders, wearing dark glasses.
Mourners come to her as she walks and offer condolences.
‘But for now,’ the reporter continues , ‘there is some small semblance of closure at least for Alix Summer as she says a final farewell to her husband. This is Matt Salter, from Kensal Green, for the BBC.’
The screen changes to Alix Summer.
She is sitting in her recording studio, wearing a yellow sleeveless top. Her blonde hair is tied back from her face.
