If you’re from the UK, I need no introduction. For anyone else, I was something of a celebrity back in the early noughties. I hosted a couple of prime time game shows, I had my own late-night chat show, and even sang on a novelty song, which reached number one in the charts.
My wife Angela was a former glamour model turned serious investigative journalist. We were the golden couple of British celebrity for a couple of years. I felt untouchable. Then I messed everything up.
I slept with Angela’s mum. I know, I’m a monster. It doesn’t make it any better, but it was a mistake and it only happened once. We were both drunk. But as luck would have it, Angela caught us, and that was the end of my life as I knew it.
I knew the parties and awards would disappear down the drain. I knew I would be vilified in the press.
If only that had been the end of it.
I became public enemy number one. Angela’s mum got a lot of flack too, but I was the bigger target for the tabloids, and I took some serious flack. I couldn’t leave my house without cameras flashing in my face.
And then it got worse.
I was asleep when the phone beside my bed rang. It was my private number, so I didn’t expect it to be press. I picked up and I heard Angela sobbing down the line.
“I’ll never let you get away with this” she choked. I knew I deserved this, so I let her get it off her chest. I just sat on my bed and listened.
“We were happy, you bastard!” she screamed. I sighed, and closed my eyes.
“At least give me the respect to look at me when I’m talking to you!”
My eyes snapped open, and what I saw was utterly horrifying. It was Angela, only not as I knew her. Her face was right in front of mine, her eyes wide and bloodshot. A look of disgust adorned her pale face and I could feel her hot, rank breath on my own face.
She was dripping wet, and I knew in an instant that she was dead. I’m ashamed to admit that I screamed and wet the bed, but it’s true. She disappeared immediately and I heard the burr of the ringtone on my phone.
Once my breathing got back to some semblance of normality, I cleaned myself up and made a large mug of coffee. What else do you do when something so hideous happens?
I turned on the radio and after a few bland pop songs, the news came on. “Breaking news this morning, we’re hearing from Kent Police that the bodies of two women have been retrieved from a car in a river. So far the women have not been identified”.
I knew one of the women was Angela. But the second? You guessed it. Her mother.
If I thought I was unpopular before, I was wrong. The media and public seemed to think that Angela getting drunk and crashing her car into a river was my fault. Former friends of mine went on talk shows to say how I was domineering. One former co-star implied that my affair with Angela’s mum was the tip of the iceberg. Police had to put an officer on my door for three months because of the death threats.
But the worst thing is the calls. Every night, Angela calls me. Even now, thirteen years later. Always the calls. The hideous face. The drip drip drip and the wet sheets. It’s her anger, her fierce accusations that it’s my fault.
She has started to tell me to do things. Bad things. I don’t do them because the public hate me enough already, and besides, I’m not a bad person.
But she tells me if I do an interview and tell the world that I killed her, she’ll leave me alone. I don’t know if I believe her. I feel so tired, and I fear I’ll make the wrong decision.
But for UK viewers, keep an eye on the news this weekend. I think you’ll be seeing me again soon.