father’s prognosis for Alzheimer’s?
5. In one email regarding a date with a man called Jamie in May 2009 you wrote, ‘he was intellectually beneath me.’ Yet you only got one A-level yourself, in art. What kind of qualifications did he get?
6. There are no emails or trace of you between February and April 2008. Where were you and what were you doing during that time?
7. At various points you claim that ‘You’re Nobody till Someone Loves You’ by Dinah Washington, ‘Natural Woman’ by Aretha Franklin and ‘I Want You Back’ by The Jackson Five are all your ‘favourite song ever’. Which one is it?
8. In an email to Shona regarding a dinner party you attended the night before, you write that you hated your host for claiming she liked ‘to cook to relax’. This seems like an inoffensive statement to me. Can you explain?
9. In an email to your mother dated 03/06/07 you say she was a terrible mother when you were a child, yet in your psychologist ‘autobiography’ you say you had a relatively normal, happy childhood. Which was it?
10. You registered once at the site adultfriendfinder.com in February 2005. What was the nature and frequency of your usage of the site?
11. On 16/05/08, you wrote to Mira Stollbach that you ‘ couldn’t wait’ to attend her wedding that summer, but then in an email to Justine on June 2nd of that same year, wrote that you ‘hate fucking weddings’. Can you explain?
12. In that same exchange with Justine, in reply to her wondering whether she should stay with the man she was going out with despite finding him unsatisfactory in several areas, you advise her not to ‘settle’. Justine replies, ‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Why is that?
13. Your sign-offs are inconsistent, even in correspondence with the same person. Sometimes you will end with one ‘kiss’, sometimes two, sometimes many and sometimes none. What are the rules governing your sign-offs? Do they change according to the level of affection you feel for that person at that particular moment?
14. In an email to [email protected] on 17/09/10 you wrote that you didn’t think you were going to make it through the night. Did you attempt suicide that evening?
I was oddly nervous before speaking to Tess for the first time. You have to understand that by that point I had spent three weeks completely immersed in her life, reading her emails, examining photographs of her and her friends, trying to catalogue the chaos of her past. Looking back, even at that early stage I probably knew more about her than anyone else alive, because she gave such different accounts of herself to different people. But because everything had been done electronically, it was almost like she wasn’t a real person.
I decided it would be best if I recorded our conversation and transcribed it afterwards, rather than try and note down information as Tess spoke. That way I could give her my full attention; I’ve never been good at doing two things at the same time. I read once that it was illegal to record someone without their knowledge, but decided not to inform Tess that I was taping our conversation, in case she made an irrational fuss and further held things up.
It was 11 p.m., on a Tuesday. I had my list of questions ready. Tess’s laptop rang eight times before she answered, and her ‘Hello?’ was wary. When I introduced myself, she sounded surprised, even though the call had been scheduled. Then she laughed, and said, ‘Oh fuck, sorry. I was expecting you to be Sylvie.’
I hadn’t heard mention of Sylvie before, so immediately, before we’d even begun, I had to deviate off my planned list of questions and ask her about this new character. As we spoke, I searched Tess’s Facebook friends and found Sylvie: she had a long, sad face and thick dark red hair that, when pulled over one shoulder, looked like a fox’s tail.
I didn’t think I had any preconceptions about what Tess would sound like. But I suppose I
5. In one email regarding a date with a man called Jamie in May 2009 you wrote, ‘he was intellectually beneath me.’ Yet you only got one A-level yourself, in art. What kind of qualifications did he get?
6. There are no emails or trace of you between February and April 2008. Where were you and what were you doing during that time?
7. At various points you claim that ‘You’re Nobody till Someone Loves You’ by Dinah Washington, ‘Natural Woman’ by Aretha Franklin and ‘I Want You Back’ by The Jackson Five are all your ‘favourite song ever’. Which one is it?
8. In an email to Shona regarding a dinner party you attended the night before, you write that you hated your host for claiming she liked ‘to cook to relax’. This seems like an inoffensive statement to me. Can you explain?
9. In an email to your mother dated 03/06/07 you say she was a terrible mother when you were a child, yet in your psychologist ‘autobiography’ you say you had a relatively normal, happy childhood. Which was it?
10. You registered once at the site adultfriendfinder.com in February 2005. What was the nature and frequency of your usage of the site?
11. On 16/05/08, you wrote to Mira Stollbach that you ‘ couldn’t wait’ to attend her wedding that summer, but then in an email to Justine on June 2nd of that same year, wrote that you ‘hate fucking weddings’. Can you explain?
12. In that same exchange with Justine, in reply to her wondering whether she should stay with the man she was going out with despite finding him unsatisfactory in several areas, you advise her not to ‘settle’. Justine replies, ‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Why is that?
13. Your sign-offs are inconsistent, even in correspondence with the same person. Sometimes you will end with one ‘kiss’, sometimes two, sometimes many and sometimes none. What are the rules governing your sign-offs? Do they change according to the level of affection you feel for that person at that particular moment?
14. In an email to [email protected] on 17/09/10 you wrote that you didn’t think you were going to make it through the night. Did you attempt suicide that evening?
I was oddly nervous before speaking to Tess for the first time. You have to understand that by that point I had spent three weeks completely immersed in her life, reading her emails, examining photographs of her and her friends, trying to catalogue the chaos of her past. Looking back, even at that early stage I probably knew more about her than anyone else alive, because she gave such different accounts of herself to different people. But because everything had been done electronically, it was almost like she wasn’t a real person.
I decided it would be best if I recorded our conversation and transcribed it afterwards, rather than try and note down information as Tess spoke. That way I could give her my full attention; I’ve never been good at doing two things at the same time. I read once that it was illegal to record someone without their knowledge, but decided not to inform Tess that I was taping our conversation, in case she made an irrational fuss and further held things up.
It was 11 p.m., on a Tuesday. I had my list of questions ready. Tess’s laptop rang eight times before she answered, and her ‘Hello?’ was wary. When I introduced myself, she sounded surprised, even though the call had been scheduled. Then she laughed, and said, ‘Oh fuck, sorry. I was expecting you to be Sylvie.’
I hadn’t heard mention of Sylvie before, so immediately, before we’d even begun, I had to deviate off my planned list of questions and ask her about this new character. As we spoke, I searched Tess’s Facebook friends and found Sylvie: she had a long, sad face and thick dark red hair that, when pulled over one shoulder, looked like a fox’s tail.
I didn’t think I had any preconceptions about what Tess would sound like. But I suppose I
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