The police eventually returned Charlotte’s mobile phone, iPad and laptop after the inquest. They were contained in clear, sealed plastic bags with evidence and case numbers written on stickers with a black marker pen. That’s all she was to people who didn’t know her: a case identified by two letters and seven digits.
Her electronics had been thoroughly examined by a digital forensic team, but nothing of note or concern had been discovered. And, frustratingly, there was still no link to the man she’d died with. Despite the media attention their story had generated, he’d yet to be identified by the public and his body still hadn’t washed ashore.
I’d never had any reason to check up on Charlotte, but she’d left me with so many unanswered questions, she owed me explanations. It was eight o’clock in the evening when I began with her phone and relived our text conversations. I didn’t like that the police had probably read through our private moments, even the mundane crap about whose turn it was to get the car serviced. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed seeing her name appear on my phone.
As Charlotte’s pregnancy progressed, the number of calls she’d made to friends fell steeply but her emails and texts rose. I guess it was easier to hide her sadness behind the written word than to disguise the emptiness in her voice.
I scrolled through her Facebook timeline, and in her last few months she hadn’t posted a single thing. Most mums-to-be can’t wait to talk about what stage of pregnancy they’re at or their cravings or to complain about how fat they’re feeling. But I’d been the only one of us to give our friends status updates or share photographs. Charlotte had gone from an active poster to a lurker.
I leafed through the saved documents on her laptop, but they all dated back to her pre-pregnancy design work. Her music library was full of the cheesy pop she loved so much and there was nothing suspicious about either her browser history or her favourites bar. Most of her emails had been deleted, and then deleted from the deleted folder. Her cookies were also cleared. Just as I feared, there was nothing new to learn about my wife.
I was surprised – and disappointed – that there were no photographs of us at all on her phone or her iPad. I’d teased her about how trigger-happy she was when it came to her camera phone; it didn’t matter where we were – in the kitchen, on holiday by a pool, or in the aisle of a supermarket, the girl loved a picture. I flicked though several folders on her devices, but she’d erased every image she’d ever taken of us. It was like our relationship was so hideous to her that she needed to wipe away any trace of it. Even four months after her death, she was still finding new ways to hurt me.
As midnight approached, I knew from experience that if I continued down this road any further tonight, I’d wind myself up further and further and wouldn’t be able to sleep. But as I was about to put the iPad away, I lost grip of it. My fingers slid across the onscreen keyboard as I scrambled to stop it falling to the floor.
As I picked it up, I suddenly became aware of two calculator apps – the standard operating-system version and another. Who needed two calculators? I clicked on the unfamiliar one and four numbers had already been inputted – 1301. I recognised them immediately: it was the date Charlotte died; a date she had been working towards.
I pressed the equals key but nothing happened. I followed it with the plus, the minus and divide keys, but it wasn’t until I pressed the percentage symbol that an entirely new screen popped up. It was a home screen that burst into a hive of activity as various folders of photographs, documents and notes sprang to life and covered the screen. She’d downloaded an app that allowed her to hide what I was never meant to find.
I took the tablet to my bedroom and propped myself up on the bed. The first documents folder contained dozens of screengrabs she’d taken from a variety of websites, and pages of links to other sites. All of them related to suicide.
Images included illustrations of where best to sever an arm to effectively bleed to death, and documents featured the best combination of tablets needed for a successful overdose. There were hyperlinks as to where they could be purchased online and from which country.
Charlotte had also favourited a link to a message board called The Final Push, which suggested ‘suicide hotspots’ around the country. There were multistorey car parks without safety railings or netting, accessible bridges, railway lines with broken fencing, and stretches of water with powerful undertows that would drag you under in seconds. There were photos, street maps, written instructions of how to find them, postcodes for satnavs, and Ordnance Survey map coordinates. Everything had been thought about in minute detail, and Charlotte hadn’t only read them, she’d bookmarked them, too.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen, saddened by the desperation of people who were at their wits’ end and sickened at the enthusiasm of others encouraging them to die. As far as I could see, nobody had inserted a link or a telephone number to End of the Line or the Samaritans. Nobody had suggested maybe death wasn’t the right way to go about things or urged them to talk to someone.
There were threads from teens who’d had enough of living their too-few years and victims of terminal illnesses and mental health problems. Some came from elderly people so scared of a long, drawn-out death that they wanted to go on their own terms. Loneliness, abuse, depression, war, bullying, sexuality, eating disorders . . . the list of reasons to die was endless.
I scoured the pages for names that might indicate Charlotte was a member of these boards but I couldn’t find any proof she’d posted. Maybe she’d just lurked there like she had on Facebook.
A thread on another message board caught my eye, made just days ago. The subject heading was ‘Need someone 2 Talk 2 As I Die’. The poster had almost three hundred messages numbered under her avatar. She’d chosen a photo of a young Angelina Jolie and the screen-name GrlInterrupted.
So guys, I’ve decided where and when to do it (pills arrived on Wednesday from Trinidad and I’ve booked into a hotel in Birmingham). Also decided that even though I came in alone, I don’t want to go alone. Anyone here want to be on the other end of the phone as it happens? I need company.
Among the many congratulatory replies, nobody in her online support network had the guts to blur the lines between fantasy and reality and take her up on her request. But they were quick to recommend other screen-names who might help.
Whereabouts are you hon? asked someone by the name of R.I.P.
Leicester, UK, she replied.
U know Chloe4 who used to post here? She was a Brit. She used to talk about a woman over there who’d helped friends of hers once and who was now helping her. It must’ve worked as we never heard from Chloe4 again, and we were pretty tight.’
What do you mean by ‘help’?
She tells people what to do, what not to do, she knows the risks, suggests what to say in notes, etc. Chloe4 called the woman the ‘Helpline Heroine’.