How to Kill Your Family(80)

So it was a perfect job for Bryony. Job is possibly a stretch. It was a perfect fit for Bryony. She made video diaries which detailed her day to day activities (one video, with 180,000 views, revolved entirely around a trip to the osteopath) and posted photographs of herself in various bored-looking poses, using a variety of props and backgrounds. By props, I mean her stupidly fluffy carpet, her mirror wall and her walk-in wardrobe. By backgrounds, I’m talking about exclusive holiday locations, often accompanied by hashtags which suggest that she’s desperately in need of a break – #neededthis – as if the carousel of facials, gym classes, and nightclubs was leaving her dangerously close to burn out. I can only imagine that her loyal followers, many of them presumably earning crappy wages and on zero hours contracts, would nod in sympathy and praise her sensible prioritising of self-care.

She interspersed photos of such holidays with sponsored posts which looked just like the rest of her feed. These adverts were supposed to show you how to be a bit more Bryony – tooth-whitening kits, flimsy dresses available for next day delivery, a plated ring with her initials that she described as ‘a must have’. This stuff is gobbled up by the Instagram herd, keen to fit in, desperate to be told what’s good, what works, what will distract them from their lives. But it’s all a trick. Bryony was laughing at them. Or she would have, had she been able to take joy from anything in her life. Perhaps not laughing but sneering. Because if my half-sister wanted her teeth whitened, she’d go to the best dentist on Harley Street. And if she wanted a new dress, she’d put down a grand and have it delivered in a tissue-lined box by courier within the hour. Her jewellery would never leave a green mark on her finger, it’s all from Cartier. The stuff she promotes is photographed, uploaded, and then discarded. I could just about imagine that she gives it to the family housekeeper, but could equally believe that it goes straight in the bin.

Her lifestyle disgusted me and fascinated me in equal measure. Well no, that’s not quite true. It fascinated me more. I have spent hours of my life scrolling through her curated online life, watching her boring makeup videos and logging on for her live Q&A sessions where she spends fifteen minutes at 7 p.m., nightly answering hard-hitting questions from fans like ‘how is your hair so shiny’ which she answers with the intensity and seriousness of someone testifying at a war crimes tribunal. While the internet is a place to get closer to your heroes, it’s also a place to obsessively hate-watch people you would try your best to avoid in real life. I always told myself that it was valuable research, but engaging with it for so long leaves you feeling demoralised and dirty. It’s like repeatedly picking at a scab and wondering why you end up with an ugly scar.

Bryony’s openness on social media had provided me with a lot of options. I had too many – I fell down scenarios of such complexity that at one point I was researching how quickly I could get a helicopter pilot licence. I had to reassess. While not all of my plans had been elegant, they had been effective. Sometimes the lack of style bothered me somewhat. Who doesn’t want to dispatch someone with a bit of wit after all? But it would be the height of vanity to centre all my fragile plans around the visuals of the situation. And vanity can get you caught – just ask the many killers who end up in jail because they hang around the crime scene to admire their handiwork and attract obvious attention.

As it happens, the plan I settled on did have an element of humour to it. There’s one other thing I knew about Bryony, and initially, I almost wrote it off as something she’d exaggerated for effect. All social media influencers try to show some minor vulnerability. It helps the brand. Some pretend they have a palatable mental illness as I mentioned – anxiety often works, never psychosis. Some bang on about ailments like Lyme disease or a chronic pain so vague that nobody can disprove it. Bryony cast her net for something new. A while back, she did a very personal (you knew it was serious because she was wearing a plain black jumper and minimal makeup) video about a recent diagnosis that had shaken her world. Trembling, she spoke directly to camera, explaining that after an evening at Vardo (a restaurant that had recently opened to much fanfare in Chelsea), she’d collapsed and stopped breathing. After extensive tests, the culprit had been revealed and she could never eat a peach again. There were tears, for peaches were her very favourite. When I watched this tale of tragedy, I rolled my eyes and moved on. But she didn’t stop with her PSAs about the dangers of stone fruits. The national food allergy trust got in touch with her, and Bryony found a little cause that would make her look civic-minded and serious. She held a gala evening to raise money for research, roping in fashion designers to donate looks to a catwalk event where she and her friends sashayed through a room in the British Museum, draping themselves around marble statues and posing next to ancient sarcophagi (if there wasn’t a Pharaoh’s curse before there damn well is now). Every so often she’d tell her followers to be mindful of friends with allergies, a service only slightly undermined by the fact that she’d teamed up with a private allergy testing company and recommended their ￡79 testing kit so that you too could see if a seemingly innocent fruit trifle might kill you. #AD.

Her feed soon filled up with photos of couture and sunsets, and I’d half-forgotten her stone fruit crusade until one night when she livestreamed an A&E visit. To be fair, even with a filter she did look dreadful, eyes swollen up, blotchy skin, rasping as she whispered to camera about how she’d had to have three shots of adrenaline after she’d stopped breathing in a nightclub. Someone had given her a cocktail, blithely assuring her that it was peach-free, and she’d gulped it down, before immediately recognising that tangy taste and running for the exit in a wild panic. Because her friends were idiots, or more tragically, perhaps because they didn’t really know her, nobody put two and two together and realised that she was having a serious allergic reaction. Instead, one bouncer assumed she was having a panic attack and the other suspected she was just drunk. It was only when she turned purple and hit the floor that an ambulance was called. I wonder if the experience of an NHS A&E was almost more traumatic for Bryony than the episode itself. She was on a public ward, with only a curtain for privacy, as she whispered into the camera about how scared she felt. Not because she nearly died, but because a drunk man covered in blood in the bed next to her wouldn’t stop singing a Bowie song. She didn’t know it was a Bowie song, I imagine she’d have written Bowie off as a weirdo. Always with the priorities that one.