Page 84 of None of This is True

‘We’re approaching the garage now, with Mr Roberts, the owner of the block. Mr Roberts is opening the main gates and we’re getting ready to go in.’

The footage shows a hand with a key in it going towards a large rusty padlock. The key has a tag attached with the number 6 written on it. The key turns slowly, and the click of the lock is magnified on the audio.

The film slows down and the screen goes black …

… The screen changes to footage of a BBC News report.

A newsreader announces the headlines as the familiar BBC theme music fades out.

‘Good evening. Earlier today, at around eleven thirty a.m., the human remains of a young woman were discovered in the boot of a car in a garage in Kilburn, London, by the Metropolitan Police. They are believed to be those of Brooke Ripley, the young girl who went missing from her school prom in June 2014. The garage was leased by Walter Fair, the seventy-two-year-old man found murdered earlier this week in his flat, while his adult daughter, Erin Fair, was found barely alive and tied to a child’s chair in a cupboard. Erin, twenty-three years old, had last been seen by friends online whilst gaming in the early hours of Saturday the thirteenth of July. A hunt for her had been carried out by her legion of online followers after they heard something strange happening during her last livestream, and a global campaign was ongoing to find out what had happened to her. She has told of surviving her ordeal by sucking on the strands of a floor mop in a bucket of dirty water left on a shelf in the cupboard where she’d been abandoned. Meanwhile, Josie Fair, Erin’s mother, is being sought in connection with the suspicious death of Nathan Summer, the London estate agent found in the shallow waters of Lake Windermere early yesterday morning. Anyone with any information about Josie Fair or her current whereabouts is urged to contact the London Metropolitan Police at the first possible opportunity.’

The screen changes to DC Sabrina Albright.

She shrugs and shakes her head sadly, just once.

‘When we found Brooke, she was still wearing her white prom dress. The fabric disintegrated when it was touched. Literally just turned to dust, like a butterfly’s wing. Poof.’

Sabrina Albright smiles tightly. Her eyes fill with tears.

‘Sad,’ she says. ‘So very sad.’

***

Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

The screen shows a woman of around forty. She has long dark hair and wears tortoiseshell-rimmed reading glasses and a white T-shirt.

She sits on a fold-out vintage cinema seat in the middle of an empty cinema.

The interviewer asks her off-mic if she is OK and she says, ‘Yes. I’m good. Let’s do this.’

The text beneath says:

Abigail Kurti, mother of Brooke Ripley

The screen changes briefly to the re-enactment of a police officer turning the key in the padlock, with dramatic music playing in the background.

Then it flicks back to Abigail Kurti sitting in the empty cinema.

She begins to speak.

‘Brooke left home at about six o’clock. She looked amazing. I mean, she always looked amazing, but that night, in that white dress …’

The photograph of Brooke Ripley in her prom dress comes up on screen briefly.

‘And then she just didn’t come home. I mean, we didn’t know what to think. Brooke was a dramatic girl, you know. There were always tantrums and noise with Brooke. She hated my husband, her stepfather; they rowed all the time . She was rarely at home, and she had run away before. But this – I knew this was different. I thought it was to do with a boy. I didn’t know anything about Roxy Fair. I knew there’d been a fight at school, but I thought it was just another school hallway scrap, you know? Very Brooke. I didn’t know that Roxy and Brooke had been friends, or, or lovers . I didn’t know anything about Roxy, I didn’t know where Roxy lived and so I couldn’t see any significance in the fact that Brooke got off the bus at that stop. And I had no reason really to think that that’s where Brooke might have been heading that night. And God, I wish more than anything that I’d known. Then I could have told the police. They would have gone round and questioned them. That woman …’

Abigail’s voice cracks. She puts the back of her hand to her mouth and smiles tightly.

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s OK. Take your time,’ says the interviewer off-mic.

‘That woman would have been stopped. There and then. Before she had a chance to hurt anyone else. And Brooke might have been saved.’

She begins to cry and the screen fades to black.

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