It wasn’t love at first sight.

I can admit that now. But by the end, I loved her more than I
thought it was possible to love another human being. I cared about
her far more than I ever cared about myself. That’s why I did it. Why
I had to. I think it’s important that people know that, when they find
out what I’ve done. If they do. Perhaps then they might understand
that I did it for her.

There is a difference between being and feeling alone, and it is
possible to miss someone and be with them at the same time. There
have been plenty of people in my life: family, friends, colleagues,
lovers. A full cast of the usual suspects that make a person’s social
circle, but mine has always felt a little bent out of shape. None of
the relationships I have ever formed with another human being feel
real to me. More like a series of missed connections.

People might recognize my face, they may even know my name,
but they’ll never know the real me. Nobody does. I’ve always been
selfish with the true thoughts and feelings inside my head; I don’t
share them with anyone. Because I can’t. There is a version of me I
can only ever be with myself. I sometimes think the secret to
success is the ability to adapt. Life rarely stays the same, and I’ve
frequently had to reinvent myself in order to keep up. I learned how
to change my looks, my life … even my voice.
I also learned how to fit in, but constantly trying to do so is more
than just uncomfortable now, it hurts. Because I don’t. Fit. I fold my
jagged edges inside myself, and smooth over the most obvious
differences between us, but I am not the same as you. There are
over seven billion people on the planet, and yet I have somehow
managed to spend a lifetime feeling alone.
I’m losing my mind and not for the first time, but sanity can often
be lost and found. People will say that I snapped, lost it, came
unhinged. But when the time came it was—without doubt—the right
thing to do. I felt good about myself afterward. I wanted to do it
again.

There are at least two sides to every story:
Yours and mine.
Ours and theirs.
His and hers.
Which means someone is always lying.
Lies told often enough can start to sound true, and we all
sometimes hear a voice inside our heads, saying something so
shocking, we pretend it is not our own. I know exactly what I heard
that night, while I waited at the station for her to come home for the
last time. At first, the train sounded just like any other in the
distance. I closed my eyes and it was like listening to music, the
rhythmic song of the cars on the tracks getting louder and louder:
Clickety-click. Clickety-click. Clickety-click.
But then the sound started to change, translating into words
inside my head, repeating themselves over and over, until it was
impossible not to hear:
Kill them all. Kill them all. Kill them all.

Her
Anna Andrews
Monday 06:00
Mondays have always been my favorite day.
The chance to start again.
A clean enough slate with just the dust of your own past mistakes
still visible—almost, but not quite wiped away.
I realize it’s an unpopular opinion—to be fond of the first day of
the week—but I’m full of those. My view of the world tends to be a
little tilted. When you grow up sitting in life’s cheap seats, it’s too
easy to see behind the puppets dancing on its stage. Once you’ve
seen the strings, and who pulls them, it can be hard to enjoy the
rest of the show. I can afford to sit where I want now, choose any
view I like, but those fancy-looking theater boxes are only good for
looking down on other people. I’ll never do that. Just because I
don’t like to look back doesn’t mean I don’t remember where I came
from. I’ve worked hard for my ticket and the cheap seats still suit me
fine.

I don’t spend a lot of time getting ready in the mornings—there is
no point putting on makeup, just for someone else to take it off and
start again when I get to work—and I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t eat
much at all, but I do enjoy cooking for others. Apparently, I’m a
feeder.
I stop briefly in the kitchen to pick up my Tupperware carrier,
filled with homemade cupcakes for the team. I barely remember
making them. It was late, definitely after my third glass of
something dry and white. I prefer red but it leaves a telltale stain on
my lips, so I save it for weekends only. I open the fridge and notice
that I didn’t finish last night’s wine, so I drink what is left straight
from the bottle, before taking it with me as I leave the house.
Monday is also when my trash gets collected. The recycling bin is
surprisingly full for someone who lives alone. Mostly glass.
I like to walk to work. The streets are pretty empty at this time of
day, and I find it calming. I cross Waterloo Bridge and weave my
way through Soho toward Oxford Circus, while listening to the Today
program. I’d prefer to listen to music, a little Ludovico perhaps or
Taylor Swift depending on my mood—there are two very different
sides to my personality—but instead I endure the dulcet tones of
middle-class Britain, telling me what they think I should know. Their
voices still feel foreign to my ears, despite sounding like my own.
But then I didn’t always speak this way. I’ve been presenting the
BBC One O’Clock News bulletin for almost two years, and I still feel
like a fraud.

I stop by the flattened cardboard box that has been bothering me
the most recently. I can see a strand of blond hair poking out the
top, so I know she’s still there. I don’t know who she is, only that I
might have been her had life unfolded differently. I left home when I
was sixteen because it felt like I had to. I don’t do what I’m about to
do now out of kindness; I do it because of a misplaced moral
compass. Just like the soup kitchen I volunteered at last Christmas.
We rarely deserve the lives we lead. We pay for them however we
can, be it with money, guilt, or regret.
I
open the plastic carry case and put one of my carefully
constructed cupcakes down on the pavement, between her
cardboard box and the wall, so that she’ll see it when she wakes.
Then, worried she might not like or appreciate my chocolate frosting
—for all I know she could be diabetic—I take a twenty-pound note
from my purse and slide it underneath. I don’t mind if she spends
my money on alcohol; I do.

Radio 4 continues to irritate me, so I switch off the latest
politician lying in my ears. Their over-rehearsed dishonesty doesn’t
fit with this image of real people with real problems. Not that I’d
ever say that out loud or on-air during an interview. I’m paid to be
impartial regardless of how I feel.
Maybe I’m a liar too. I chose this career because I wanted to tell
the truth. I wanted to tell the stories that mattered most, the ones
that I thought people needed to hear. Stories that I hoped might
change the world and make it a better place. But I was naïve. People
working in the media today have more power than politicians, but
what good is trying to tell the truth about the world when I can’t
bear to be honest about my own story: who I am, where I came
from, what I’ve done.
I bury the thoughts like I always do. Lock them in a secure secret
box inside my head, push them to the darkest corner right at the
back, and hope they won’t escape again anytime soon.
I walk the final few streets to Broadcasting House, then search
inside my handbag for my ever-elusive security pass. My fingers find
one of my little tins of mints instead. It rattles in protest as I flip it
open and pop a tiny white triangle inside my mouth, as though it
were a pill. Wine on my breath before the morning meeting is best
avoided. I locate my pass and step inside the glass revolving doors,
feeling several sets of eyes turn my way. That’s okay. I’m pretty
good at being the version of myself I think people want me to be. At
least on the outside.
I know everyone by name, including the cleaners still sweeping
the floor. It costs almost nothing to be kind and I have a very
efficient memory, despite the drink. Once past security—a little more
thorough than it used to be, thanks to the state of the world we
have curated for ourselves—I stare down at the newsroom and it
feels like home. Cocooned inside the basement of the BBC building,
but visible from every floor, the newsroom resembles a brightly lit
red-and-white open-plan warren. Almost every available space is
filled with screens and tightly packed desks, with an eclectic
collection of journalists sitting behind each one.
These people aren’t just my colleagues, they’re like a
dysfunctional surrogate family. I’m almost forty years old, but I don’t
have anyone else. No children. No husband. Not anymore. I’ve
worked here for almost twenty years but, unlike those with friends
or family connections, I started right at the bottom. I took a few
detours along the way, and the stepping-stones to success were
sometimes a little slippery, but I got where I wanted to be,
eventually.

Patience is the answer to so many of life’s questions.
Serendipity smiled at me when the previous news anchor left.
She went into labor a month early, and five minutes before the
lunchtime bulletin. Her water broke and I got my lucky break. I’d
just come back from maternity leave myself—earlier than planned—
and was the only correspondent in the newsroom with any
presenting experience. All of which was overtime and overnight—the
shifts nobody else wanted—I was that desperate for any opportunity
that might help my career. Presenting a network bulletin was
something I had been dreaming of my whole life.
There was no time for a trip to hair and makeup that day. They
rushed me on set and did what they could, powdering my face at
the same time as they miked me up. I practiced reading the
headlines on the teleprompter, and the director was calm and kind in
my earpiece. His voice steadied me. I remember very little about
that first half-hour program, but I do recall the congratulations
afterward. From newsroom nobody to network news anchor in less
than an hour.