Page 3 of The House Swap

Another message, but also the notifications were stacking up. Over a hundred of them. She opened the comments section, hands shaking now.

I knew something was off.

Name and shame!!

Women like her get jobs like this and think they know best.

I said from the start it didn’t sound like him.

People were still furiously typing, eager to add their opinion. And now they knew her identity, she saw her name appear again and again.

Poppy Taylor ruined your book.

Poppy Taylor is a fraud.

@Poppy Taylor. You are a bitch.

It was Poppy? I am disappointed. I thought better of her.

The words blurred. Her eyes stung, but she didn’t cry. Not yet. She was still in shock.

How could you do this to him, Poppy? He trusted you.

She clicked on the commenter’s profile. A woman in her thirties, smiling at the screen, a toddler on her hip.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

That was from an older woman with a crochet banner as a header.

It was the certainty that hurt the most.

They were all so quick to believe Simon and not one of them had asked him for proof. They didn’t hesitate or consider that there might be two sides to the story.

He had spoken and that, apparently, was enough for them.

Poppy continued to scroll, horrified to see her business name pop up. Screenshots of her website, the one she had built from scratch, were circulating. It had taken her ages to get the branding right, even longer to build up the testimonials. Now all of that work she had done making it look professional and safe was being undone.

Don’t hire this woman.

She destroys books.

Total fake.

The comments were sickening and she should say something. Defend herself. But in the heat of the moment, that would be foolish. No. She needed to step back from the situation and decide how to respond.

The bathroom felt too hot, too small, and she sank down onto the closed toilet, the porcelain lid cold against her thighs, as she stared at the screen.

Think, Poppy.

She couldn’t let Simon destroy her career.

Although they knew each other through social media, she had never met him personally. She lived in South East London and Simon in Devon. They were online friends. It was the same with most of the authors she worked with.

The book she had worked on had been the first of his that she had read. He was self-published and his espionage thrillers featuring the character Roman Killian were successful, with a big readership. When he had reached out to Poppy wanting to hire her for the launch of a new series, she had been both flattered and excited. He was older than her – in his early sixties, while she was only thirty-two – and he had a capable and worldly-wise aura about him.

But then she had read the manuscript and the quality of his prose had shocked her. It wasn’t up to the standard she had expected, and quietly, she couldn’t help but wonder if all the offers from the publishing houses Simon claimed to receive, but chose to turn down, were actually real.

She had done her best with the edit, but he hadn’t been happy. If anything, he had been infuriated that she had dared to make corrections to his book. And his last email to her replayed in her mind with nauseating clarity.