How to Kill Your Family(65)

I explained that she lived in Monaco (kind of like France, yes) and that she’d turned my dad against me over the years so that we were almost entirely estranged (not a complete lie). I wanted to freak her out and teach her a lesson. Did he know anything about smart houses? He knew a little, he said, but came back to me a day later fully clued up on the different methods used by companies who offered smart technology. The kid must have been up all night reading about all the ways you could infiltrate a home like Janine’s, and he was confident that we could get into her hub. The best way would be if we could get a new device into the house – if you can add another item to the system, we can take control of the whole thing. Are you planning a visit any time soon? This threw me. I had hoped that we’d be able to access the home hub without ever having to set foot inside the property and I had no clue as to how I might be able to get into Janine’s apartment without risking everything. I wasn’t a cat burglar and I had no illusions about how well secured it would be. But then, I’d never actually been to Monaco to see how Janine lived for myself. I had some holiday to take, there was no harm in seeing the lie of the land, even if it meant knowing for sure that there was no way to carry out this particular plan.

I told Pete that I was going to be out there in a couple of weeks but wasn’t sure if I’d actually be invited in. She hates me lol, I wrote, and I usually stay with my mum at a hotel and see my dad when she’s not around. It was weak, but if Pete thought this was a weird familial set-up, he didn’t say. Despite nearly being an adult, his family made him go to church twice a week and every day during the holidays, so I guess he didn’t have a great yardstick for what was healthy.

I booked a week off work and sorted out a hotel in Monaco, which hit my finances hard. This entire project had drained a large amount of the savings I’d diligently gathered, and it pained me to see my hard-earned funds being depleted like this. I’d been putting a little bit aside every month since I started getting an allowance from Sophie and John (they obviously felt as though they had to treat me like one of their own in this respect. I felt uncomfortable about it, but I still took the money) and it gave me a sense of security that I didn’t get from anything else. Every time I checked my savings account I felt a fresh sense of fury at the imbalance between the Artemis financial landscape and my own. I accept that this is ridiculous, given that I was spending my money in order to kill them, but not every emotion is rational.

Still, a week in the sunshine wasn’t something to entirely despair about, and Monaco was tiny, roughly the size of Central Park, so deliberately bumping into Janine wouldn’t be a problem as long as she was in town. Unfortunately, there were no guarantees for this, given the propensity of the super-rich to jet off at a moment’s notice. Her Instagram was private, but she’d accepted a request to follow her from the handle ‘Monaco deluxe’, which was an account I’d made with pictures stolen from society sites. They showed the rich and powerful at parties and charity events – it was easy to repost them with gushing tributes to ‘Mrs Daphne Baptiste, generously donating a beautiful mink coat to the Children’s care fund’ or ‘Mrs Lorna Gold, who hosted an elegant evening soiree at her beautiful penthouse for the street dog society.’ If these women ever even looked at my page, they would just accept the praise at face value. They were pillars of Monaco society, of course people wished to show some thanks. From that page I could see a little of what she was doing, but Janine wasn’t a frequent poster, nor was she a talented photographer. Apart from a few posed pictures taken by professionals, the images on her account were mainly blurry photos of sunsets from private jet windows, the odd snap of a lunch table with a caption like, ‘Great time catching up with Bob and Lily at Cafe Flore’, and a few photos of family events. Bryony lived her life in real time on Instagram and it was invaluable. Janine was old school. Her last picture was three days ago, and was a close up of her slightly chubby bejewelled hands, showing off a dark red manicure. The caption said, ‘Thanks again to @MonacoManis for a good job’, so at least she was there for now.

I flew out on a Monday, and as soon as I’d showered off the sadness of a budget flight and a shuttle bus, I went out to explore. Of course, I knew where Janine’s flat was. It’s remarkable how easy it is to find out where people live. Even if they’re not on the electoral roll, so many people geotag their locations, or follow accounts on social media from their area. If you follow eight different accounts with ‘Islington’ in their name, nobody gets a prize for figuring out where you get your morning paper. Even worse, people are so trusting that they post photos of the view from their bedroom windows, or of their own front doors. And for celebrities, it’s even easier. A lot of the time, the media will report on the exact location of someone’s home. If they’re involved in something truly scandalous, they might even fly a helicopter over it, or mock up a floor plan. Janine gave me her address directly. She gave it to every reader of Hello! two years ago when she opened her doors for a reception to honour a Turkish businesswoman who was winning much praise for inventing a possible cure for eczema. The piece literally opened with ‘Janine Artemis welcomes us to her beautiful penthouse in the Exodora building in Monaco’s gilded playground.’ The businesswoman by the way, was later sentenced to eight years in jail for taking close to ￡100 million in funding and fabricating research. The fight to eradicate eczema goes on.