Everyone Follows Ella

Paul Winstanley

Description

Detective John Mathers must discover the identity of a social media influencer, Ella, who is driving vulnerable teenage girls to suicide, before his own daughter, Dawn, becomes their next victim. In a world where beauty is idolised, Ella offers the girls the chance to be as beautiful as she is; to preserve their youth and looks forever by becoming one of her 'chosen angels'. Dawn is a shy, withdrawn girl who Mathers has sworn to protect since the death of her mother and who he does not want to see age a day. As he enters the girls' online world, Mathers finds Dawn's profile; a profile of a girl strikingly different to the impressionable innocent who hides in her room. He soon learns that to discover Ella's real identity he must discover Dawn's real identity. When the truth of Ella's identity is finally revealed it will reveal with it a deeper truth of his own identity, and that of the daughter and life he thought he knew.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781398441408
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Everyone Follows Ella
Paul Winstanley
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
Everyone Follows Ella About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11
About the Author
Paul lives and works in Greater Manchester, Northern England. He has been writing contemporary fiction for many years, but only recently considered publishing after being encouraged to do so by friends and family. When not writing, he can be found with his head in a book, enjoying the works of other authors.
Dedication
For my family, and for ‘A’.
Copyright Information ©
Paul Winstanley 2022
The right of Paul Winstanley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398441392 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398441408 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
To the team at Austin Macauley Publishers.
Chapter 1
#Ella. The hashtag flickered at the end of the last sentence that Kelsie Dyer had typed on her Instagram page before swallowing her mother’s prescription medication, washed down with her father’s best Scotch whisky.
It was the bottle that he had hidden from her just a week prior after permitting her to hold a house party in their absence. He remembered the trepidation he had felt at the thought of losing a precious thing of such rare quality.
It was that same bottle that he had first noticed when he opened her bedroom door and found her curled on her bed in the position that she always lay in just before she fell asleep.
He recalled to Detective John Mathers in the minutes after his arrival on the tragic scene how he had felt an acute feeling of dread to see the vintage bottle laying empty and discarded. This was followed almost instantly by a contemptuous and overwhelming anger towards her for the vindictiveness of the method that she had chosen; for that special thing that had been stolen from him, never to be replaced.
‘Our children know just how to hurt us,’ he told the detective calmly, still staring resentfully at the empty bottle as his daughter’s still-warm body lay casually discarded by its side.
It was a dead man’s stare, matched with equal menace by his daughter’s deathly stare, which looked back at him like a family portrait. Her eyes were still open. They gazed vacantly towards the doorway, as if surprised by the sudden and unwelcome intrusion. The dim light of her bedside lamp fell down softly upon their black surfaces and over the surface of the iPad that she was still clutching, causing their centres to shine with the same obscure flicker as that single hashtag on the screen.
Mathers did not know the girl. He had heard her name mentioned in passing by his own daughter and he knew they were school friends; good enough friends for her to have attended the beforementioned house party the previous week.
He recognised the grieving father too. Their paths had crossed at various parents’ evenings and other school and social functions. Each time they passed each other, they exchanged the same casual, impersonal glance that they now shared again; a glance that, just as it had done in all their previous meetings, seemed to say all that there was for two men of their kind to say.
After all, what could he say? The man’s daughter was dead. Should he say that he was sorry? No, they would both know that was a lie. The truth was, it could have been his daughter. He could not apologise for that. He was glad that it was this unfortunate man’s daughter lying there. And, looking on, he regarded her sleeping body with a paternal warmth and affection. She looked as pretty as a picture. She was wearing her favourite dress and her mother’s make up, which, like the sunny smile that she had worn in life, had been applied with the liberal freedom of all young girls who have not yet learnt its value.
She was now the third pretty picture that he had gazed upon in as many months. Three teenage girls, all made up in the same way, all dead by their own hand, all influenced by ‘Ella’ to commit the ‘beautiful act’. For that is what Ella called it, ‘beautiful’, whoever Ella was.
The mysterious profile had appeared on social media less than twelve months before and had already gained thousands of followers. She was an ‘influencer’, as the young people called her. And like most young people, she pursued an eternal quest for physical perfection. She made beautiful swans out of ugly ducklings. Then, together with the rest of her swans, convinced an unfortunate duckling that the only way to retain its beauty for now and for always was to preserve it within a photograph before taking their own life.
She insisted that the act should be streamed live for the admiration and appreciation of her followers. The deathly pale faces became pin-up portraits to be liked and shared.
Mathers’ daughter was an ugly duckling. She had inherited his looks. They both knew it and he knew that she resented him for it.
But lately, there had been a change in her. He had looked on with a father’s paternal pride as she had started to blossom, growing into her gangly body like one of those flapping swans first spreading their winds.
Now her friend was dead and it was his job to get to the truth of it. He had to find Ella before his own duckling took flight.
Like the other tragic scenes, Kelsie had left no note behind. There were only the macabre live streamed images, which had already been ‘liked’ hundreds of times before they could be taken down.
Later that night, he returned to the station and watched the video, viewing it with that peculiar sense of intimacy felt by all voyeurs: the detached, veiled intimacy that both they and the object of their obsession know can only exist between two perfect strangers.
He watched from the privacy of his dusty, back-room office, safe in the knowledge that one does not spy to see what hidden secrets are revealed to them, but to conceal the naked truths that their eyes would betray.
For the duration of the film, Kelsie’s eyes continued to stare directly into the camera, until at last the iPad slipped from her hand. With his detective’s eye, he tried to determine the exact point at which the light left them. But in death they only shone brighter. The single obscure flicker never wavered or dimmed. There was no sadness to be found there. She looked happy.
It is a secret known only to the young that the sum of our pain is the limit of our joy.
It is a lesson that had been taught to him many times by many wretched victims, the pitiful truth of it caught in their frozen stares.
Grieving relatives had told him again and again that their loved ones could no longer live with the pain that dwelt in their hearts, comforting themselves with the myth that at least they are now at peace. Even he, hardened and cynical as he had become over his twenty-five years on the Force, was not callous enough to inform them that the real tragedy was not that they had witnessed too much horror but that they had seen too much beauty. Their wide-open eyes knew that they had already seen all that there was to see in this world, that they would never again witness a sight so beautiful as in that single fleeting moment of their youth. That is the real tragedy, to know that the surface beauty that they worship is all that there is, that there are no more wonders lurking beyond those shallow depths. Life is lived on the surface. That is where it is preserved, in those fleeting moments, never to return. That is what their eyes see. That is the remote light that still lingers on their surfaces. They see everything and nothing. Like a person beholding a perfect vision, they stared blinded.
His own daughter’s eyes had begun to shine brighter lately. It had not occurred to him until he looked into Kelsie’s eyes what it was about her new cheery disposition that so disturbed him. Now he knew that it was the same light that he saw in her as he had seen in these unfortunate creatures, the very same gleaming surfaces. And he knew too that it was Ella who had lit the spark. She had found another duckling, another poor creature to take under her wing.
He and her mother had called her Dawn, to symbolise new life. It was her mother’s idea. He thought it was soppy. She said that little Dawn was the light of their lives. It seemed ironic to him now, that this new light should signal something much darker. Her mother would not have understood this. She did not get the irony. She only saw what was good. Her eyes always shone. Even when the illness finally took her, she went smiling. She went to the light. Her own mother had said that her light had now passed into Dawn. She was only six months old at the time. It was a nice thought, but Mathers did not buy it. Even back then, his job had taught him that life, like everything, is born out of death. It is the eternal cycle, the way it has been and always will be. Today, it was Kelsie Dyer; tomorrow, another young girl would take her place. I