What You Wish For (24 page)

25

Dear Richard

It’s been such a long time, I really don’t know where to start. Perhaps with sorry, though I don’t think that word could ever be enough. How can five letters make up for the way I’ve made you feel? I just hope the words I’m going to write go some way to make you see why I did what I did. Why I had no choice. Maybe then, I hope, you’ll be able to accept it, and forgive me. I hope.

A few hours ago I watched from the window as Andrew and the others forced you to leave. I could see the anguish on your face. It hurt me, Richard. Right here in my heart. I wanted to run down into the yard, to put my arms around you, hold you for one last time. But I knew that if I did you wouldn’t let me go. You would ask me to go with you, to leave Andrew and the others.

“Come home with me,” you would say. And I might not be able to resist.

That was my fear.

Because I do love you. I know that must be hard for you to believe. Would I believe you if it were the other way round? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.

Those hot, summer months we spent together . . . They were sublime. Beautiful times.

I remember so much. That night we first met. I thought you were gorgeous, and when I spotted you later in the club I made my friends hang around outside for ages, waiting for you to come out. I didn’t want to approach you in that horrible meat market. But I wanted you to walk me home. I could almost have invited you in that first night, but well, you know! A girl doesn’t like to appear easy :)

Do you remember when I was late for our first date? I really did plan to be on time but then I bumped into Andrew in town. You remember we were arguing? I told you it was about what time we were going to go to the convention. That was my first lie to you. Really, we were arguing about you. Andrew said it was too dangerous for me to have a boyfriend. He said it would get in the way, present difficulties later. He was right. But at the time I was angry with him. I thought it was jealousy ( yes, Andrew and I were lovers, once), and his opposition made me more determined to go ahead. It was the first and only time I have acted against Andrew’s wishes.

Richard, if I had known the pain we would go through later, I would have stood you up that first day. But I couldn’t help myself. I went ahead. I fell in love with you. And that nearly fucked everything up.

No doubt you are fixating on my statement that Andrew and I were once together. I know what men are like. But it was a long time ago, when we first met, and I swear to you, there is nothing sexual in our relationship now. He is my best friend, my teacher, my guide. Yes, I love him. But it is not a physical relationship now. I know that’s the kind of thing you would worry about, so I hope this puts your mind at rest, on that point at least.

But you must have loads of questions. I would love to be able to sit down and talk to you, face to face, but like I said, it’s impossible. Too dangerous. You might try to persuade me. But I will try to explain things as best I can. I’ll start at the beginning:

I met Andrew when I was sixteen. I was still at school, but already I had come to believe firmly in the existence of extraterrestrials. I didn’t have any real friends at school – they thought I was weird – plus my dad had left and my mum had withdrawn into a spiky shell.

I’m not even sure what got me interested in the visitors. A TV show, a library book? But I do remember reading something online about the vox celeste. And when I concentrated I discovered I had the gift. I could hear it! The voice, the singing, the abstract music. It made me feel special, when nothing else did.

I was a member of several forums and groups online, where experiencers and believers could chat. After I’d been on one these forums a while, I got a PM from Andrew, asking if we could meet in the flesh.

We met in a café in Eastbourne. He was older than me, yes, but I liked that. He was a real man, so unlike the little boys at school. I guess, if you want to analyse it, he reminded me of my dad, or was filling a ‘father figure’ void in my life. The reason he wanted to meet, he said, was because I’d mentioned hearing the vox celeste.

“You’re the first person I’ve met who can hear it too,” he said. He told me there were people in America who could also hear it, but he thought he was the only one in Britain. He said the fact that we lived just a few miles apart showed it must be fate. We were meant to find each other. I believed him.

My mum didn’t approve of Andrew. She said he was too old for me. I told her we were just friends, but she didn’t believe me. She turned out to be right. Andrew said that to cement our bond, to strengthen our aural capacities, we should become lovers. He said the voice had suggested it. I thought I had heard something too, although being a young stupid schoolgirl I had resisted it. Sex was the unknown. It frightened me. But Andrew was so gentle, so caring. And when we made love it did make the voices grow louder. They were amplified tenfold. It was almost deafening.

I stopped reading for a moment, realising that my fists were clenched with anger. I felt overcome with sickness. Andrew had ‘seduced’ her when she was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, exploited her beliefs, just as I had suspected. I wanted to kill him.

I read on.

I left school and home at 16 and moved into Andrew’s flat.

Through our online activities, we came into contact with the Loved Ones, and Andrew flew out to
Oregon
to meet Lisa and Jay. He came back inspired. He spoke of setting up our own branch of the Loved Ones, in
preparation
for contact. Samantha – Andrew’s ex-
girlfriend
– was always popping round, discussing things with Andrew for her books. And there were others too: Philip, Jacqui and Melissa. The girls were both around my age – they’re with us here now, in fact.

After the disaster of my family, it felt so good to be part of something. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged.

A few months after his return from Oregon, Andrew said we needed to make money. “The Loved Ones have discovered a clever way of making cash,” he said, and he explained about the erotica.

At first I was really opposed to the idea. It was pandering to sickos, the kind of people who gave us a bad name. But we were desperate for money to buy a house where we could live undisturbed, and although we earned some money from the consultancy, and Samantha made a fair amount from her books, we needed more. So I agreed.

Kevin told me you found the pictures. I’m not proud of them. I agreed to it for the greater good, and the pictures and the videos, which featured some of the other girls, did bring in some money. Andrew came up with the name Candy for me, and it could have been the start of a whole career. But after a few months I said I wouldn’t do it anymore. I felt a deep sense of shame, of self-
disgust
. I was terrified that my mum would find out. So I refused. I felt like the photos had stolen some of my soul. I developed a phobia of having my photo taken at all.

It wasn’t long afterwards that Andrew found an
easier
way of making money through alien erotica. He started working for Gary Kennedy. We were all out one night in Brighton – myself, Andrew and a girl called
Charlotte
 – or Cherry, as they called her – who is actually asleep in the room next to mine right now. Andrew sent Charlotte home with Gary, and soon afterwards he started taking photographs for Planet Flesh.

Andrew took photos and shot videos for Gary. Charlotte was the most popular model, though there were a few others who would come round to the flat, whose names I couldn’t remember. Charlotte became my best girlfriend. But then one day I came home and found her and Andrew having sex in our bed. This was when Andrew was still my boyfriend.

I was so angry I almost left the group. They had betrayed me. I stormed out, and Andrew chased after me. He found me sitting on the beach. He persuaded me that he had done nothing wrong. The vox celeste had told him that by making love to Charlotte he could make her hear too. It was fated that she would be one of us. She had been chosen. He said he still loved me, but he loved Charlotte as well.

“When we join the Chorus we will need to learn to share. There will be no possessiveness, no selfish jealousy,” Andrew said, and I saw that he was right. However, I decided to move out, to give him and Charlotte space. Andrew reluctantly agreed and I moved back into the bedsit with Calico. Then Gary complicated things by falling in love with Charlotte as well, but Andrew said it was OK for her to see both of them. It suited him for a while.

We spent the next couple of years recruiting. It’s not easy. Everyone has to be vetted very carefully. Only a certain type of person could be allowed to join the group. They had to be 100% committed, prepared to sacrifice everything.

For a brief while I hoped that I might be able to show you that Andrew and I were right, that alien abduction is real. I wanted to make you believe, so you could join us. I clung to the hope that you would change your mind for ages.

We recruited nine people to join the group alongside myself, Andrew, Charlotte/Cherry and Samantha. The last of them was Kevin, who found us just a week ago, when we were already in the house. He didn’t know about us when you met him – but you did him a favour. You set him on our trail.

When I met you, we were almost ready. There had been an incredible increase in UFO activity. Crop circles were springing up all over the place, for the first time in years; animal mutilations had started to happen all across Sussex and Kent; there were so many sightings and reports of abductions that we had a hard time keeping up with it all. And the vox celeste was growing louder. Andrew and I knew something was going to happen soon. We started to prepare.

I must be blunt: meeting you almost wrecked everything. You were in the way. You worked for a newspaper and could therefore have made things very difficult for us. A lot of the girls in the group are very young. Jenny is sixteen, Alison only fifteen. Their parents have no idea where they are. We could have had all sorts of problems.

Andrew was furious when I moved in with you. I still hoped that we could convert you, and that’s why we brought Sally round your house. We hoped that after hearing her experience – when she was abducted and her baby removed – you would see the truth. But it backfired. You were horrified, and when I ran off that night it was partly because I panicked. I spoke to Andrew the next day and together we decided what we had to do.

We needed to be in the house by the end of October, so we would have time to get ready for contact. I knew that you would never let me go. You would disturb us, cause trouble . . . It would be impossible. I knew that if I just disappeared you would guess that I had gone off with Andrew somewhere. You would be out there asking questions, trying to track us down.

That’s when we came up with the idea of faking Andrew’s death. If you thought Andrew was dead it would mislead you, muddy the waters. Better still, it gave me a motive for having disappeared: after Andrew’s death I would be so grief-stricken I would lose it and run away somewhere. It would set you on the wrong track, and delay you enough for us to fulfil our destinies before you found us. And faking Andrew’s death also helped us break our ties with Gary and allowed Andrew and Charlotte to be together. Andrew had become more and more worried about her. Gary was violent towards her but was obsessed with her. We knew he would never let get go, especially if he thought she was leaving him to be with Andrew.

We also knew it would help us shake off Fraser, who had become increasingly obsessed with Andrew.

To put it bluntly, we only needed to fool three people: you, Gary and Fraser.

The cremation never took place. The ashes we scattered that night were those of a pig Andrew bought from a butcher and burned. Melissa and Katie, who are here now, were in on the act.

There was only one negative repercussion of this scheme: Fraser Howard’s death. We had needed to shake off Fraser because the vox celeste told Andrew that Fraser was not chosen after all. Fraser couldn’t handle it and I understand from reading the news that he came looking for me after I went.

That was unfortunate.

To be honest, I never realised you would pursue me as hard as you have. You’ve surprised me. Kevin told me about how you attacked him, and I was afraid I had driven you over the edge. And I never thought you’d go to Oregon. If I had known, we would have warned Pete, spun him a lie that made him wary of you, so he wouldn’t have told you where we were. That was our one mistake: we underestimated your persistence.

Oh Richard, maybe if I’d known that you felt that strongly about me I would have made a different choice. I might have stayed with you longer. Tried harder to persuade you to share my beliefs. But although I knew you loved me, I didn’t know how much. Who ever does? How can you measure love? I thought you would recover quickly. I thought you would try to find me for a while and then give up. I thought you would heal. But your persistence has taught me a
lesso
n – never underestimate what love can do.

It is a lesson I will carry forward with me, but not one I can use to alter the past.

I paused again. I was furious with Andrew, my loathing for him at a fever pitch. But I also felt angry with Marie. For going along with it, the deceit, the way she called Fraser’s death ‘unfortunate’ and the fact they were harbouring teenage runaways, one of them only fifteen. I could imagine the hair-tearing panic their parents must be feeling. I wanted to reach into the email, through the computer, and shake Marie, ask her if she knew what she was doing.