Page 17 of Forever is Now

By Adelaide James

Over the last few days, the nation has been gripped with a tale that seems far stranger than fiction itself. Bestselling crime writer Summer Taylor-Braddon finally tied the knot with childhood sweetheart Ruari Braddon—the very man who recently shot to fame on YouTube for his videos on Dartmoor Archaeology—and yet disaster struck upon their honeymoon.

The two lovers were honeymooning on Lombok, and then of course, the devastating tsunami struck. Taylor-Braddon was able to get herself to safety very quickly—something that makes sense, given their hotel wasn’t anywhere near the affected area—yet curiously Ruari Braddon was later reported missing.

Now, there are several things about this that simply do not add up. Firstly, the missing man’s phone was at the hotel. As were his shoes and all of the clothes that he was said to have taken with him. His wallet and all personal possessions were also there. Therefore, why was Ruari Braddon out and about, seemingly with nothing on, with no phone or wallet? The only thing I can believe for sure he had on was his wedding ring. And why was he so far away from his new wife?

The location that Summer Taylor-Braddon reports that she was when the tsunami struck was a good hour’s car-ride away from her new husband. Why was he down on the coast, again, seemingly naked, and why was she not?

Of course, we cannot speculate that Summer knew the tsunami was about to happen, can we?

Well, as it happens, perhaps we could. Early 2017 saw the publication of Taylor-Braddon’s first novel,Swept Away. It is a love story in which the main couple get separated, you guessed it, by a tsunami. In blog posts published around that time, Taylor-Braddon freely admits that she did a lot of research on how to spot when a tsunami is coming and the warning signs you get right before they strike. Therefore, I propose it is possible that Taylor-Braddon realized what was going to happen.

And that leads me to my next point: she purposefully asked her new husband to get swept away—or to at least appear like he has been. To go ‘missing’. Here, I have two theories. One, is that she asked him to hide, so she could publicize his disappearance. I spoke to her publisher recently and a marketing consultant there told me that sales ofSwept Away, were down. This would seem like the perfect opportunity to increase her publicity, would it not? Real life playing out exactly the way she had written it? Is Taylor-Braddon actually psychic? Or is this all a scam?

Or we have my other theory: Taylor-Braddon is a killer.

It is strange, is it not, that all of Ruari Braddon’s belongings were in his hotel? Even his swimming trunks. And we know that Taylor-Braddon has a dark mind. Her second and third novels proved that, for they followed a serial killer as she went on a rampage, killing so many people, yet she was never caught. She was able to outwit everyone.

Things weren’t always rosy between Taylor-Braddon and her new husband. While they had been childhood sweethearts, a source close to Taylor-Braddon told me they’d have plenty of arguments, particularly over Braddon’s fondness of a tipple. Or perhaps, more than a tipple. ‘It wasn’t uncommon for him to drink eight pints a day,’ my source told me.

And Taylor-Braddon didn’t like this.

It’s a common known thing, that people drink on honeymoon, and what if things got just a bit out of hand between this couple?

What if Taylor-Braddon killed her new husband in a moment of cold, calculated murder? Her internet search history is certainly questionable, and what better cover is there for that than saying that you’re just a crime writer?

So, Taylor-Braddon was left with a body. A body to hide. Something she would appear an expert at. And then the tsunami struck. She could so easily have dumped the body in the hours before, ready to be swept away, while she went to higher ground, ready to play the hysterical wife who can’t find her husband.

One thing is for sure: Summer Taylor-Braddon is a skilled writer, and I think she’s pulled the wool over all of our eyes.

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Summer Taylor-Braddon: We were warned that our situation—Ruari’s disappearance—would be all over the British media. Not just when I arrived back, but that vultures like you had already been talking about it. And I was naive, I thought that it could only help. The publicity. I just wanted to find Ruari. That was all I wanted. I’d have done anything—and I thought the more people who knew, the better.

But it didn’t take them long, really.

I remember the first time I saw you, Adelaide. You knocked on our front door. I was back in Devon then. You said that she’d traveled a long way to see me.

Adelaide James: I had.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I thought you were nice—I didn’t realize then that you’d already published that piece about me.

But you published another, didn’t you? Two days later.

I still can’t believe it—how anyone could’ve thought that I had killed Ruari and let the tsunami take the blame. You really went for that in your second article, lifting passages from the novels I’d written and showing how apparently it was proof of what I’d done. You made such a big thing too, out of me needing publicity because my book sales had dropped.

I’d actually signed a new deal just beforeSwept Awayreleased—January 2017. A lot happened that month, didn’t it? It had been a moderate advance with the new deal, but I remember my agent saying to me, amid all this happening in the summer, that she was really going to push for a six-figure advance for my next one. But I couldn’t even imagine myself writing again, not with all this going on. Yet it was this that was making my books sell more. Everyone was talking about me.

There was a whole new group of readers I got—they all came flooding in, wanting to read my murder mysteries and psychological thrillers to see if I could’ve done this. They came up with all sorts of ridiculous theories. Painted me as a killer. There were whole online forums dedicated to the discussion of this.

And, well, every journalist on the planet seemed to run with that.

Mum’s house was egged. Threats came in—not the death threats then. I mean, there were some of them online, the police told us, but we had actual threats arriving in the post to us. And people outside.

We stayed in a hotel for a bit, in Paris. It felt weird, flying off again with Mum, but Matilda had a shoot there, and we joined her. It was only a few hours though before our location was published and cameras were flashing outside the hotel windows.

I was in tears. Mum was in tears. Even Mattie was.

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