Four weeks later
Nathan’s funeral was every bit as horrific as Nathan’s funeral was always going to be. Nathan knew so many people, and everyone who knew Nathan loved Nathan. The atmosphere in the packed crematorium was febrile with pain and shock. Unlike Alix, Nathan had known hurt in his life. His mother had died when he was twelve. His little brother had killed himself when Nathan was twenty-eight, just two years before Alix met him. And Nathan had dragged himself out of pain and grief and made a good life for himself. He hadn’t gone to university; he’d gone straight out to work and grafted hard for every penny he ever earned and was generous to a fault with the money he worked so hard for. And the drinking – it was so painfully crystal clear now to Alix – it was not about her, it was never about her. It was about him, about Nathan, about how he balanced out the delicate ecosystem of his damaged psyche. He didn’t want Alix to see that dark side of him. He did not want her to see him that way. When he drank like that, to the point of oblivion, it was self-medication, it was relief, it wasn’t good times and escaping-from-the-battleaxe. He hated himself like that and that was why he didn’t come home. Not because he didn’t want to be with her, but because
he didn’t want her to be with him.
Nearly three hundred people packed out the crematorium near Nathan’s father’s house in Kensal Rise. Beyond the gates of the cemetery and on to
the main road, the press and paparazzi kept a discreet distance. Alix wore a dress that she’d chosen to match the colour of Nathan’s eyes. The shop assistant had called it artichoke . Alix didn’t know what colour an artichoke was; she just knew that the dress was the same colour as Nathan’s eyes and that was the most important thing.
The weather was pleasant that day, four weeks to the day after Nathan’s body was brought out of the waters of Lake Windermere, not yet bloated, thank goodness, still recognisably Nathan. The month had been a blur, but that day felt sharp and clear to Alix, somehow. Being with so many people felt right, and afterwards at the wake thrown by Nathan’s company at a
huge bar in Paddington overlooking the canal, with seats outside and
bottomless champagne and a playlist put together by Nathan’s best friends and the children dashing about in summer clothes, and lively urgent chatter and laughter and people looking their high summer best, it felt almost as if Nathan would appear at any moment, in his element, loving every second, and when he didn’t appear it felt as though maybe he was at home waiting for her, and when he was not at home waiting for her it felt as though
maybe he was away on a boys’ trip and when, ten days after the funeral, he is still not home, it is then and only then that Alix collapses. She lies on her bed, the day before Eliza’s first day at secondary school, wearing her
artichoke dress and clutching a pillow, arching and un-arching her back as spasms of agonised crying rack her body at the realisation of what she has lost.
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
The screen shows footage of a BBC News report filmed outside a cemetery in Kensal Rise, northwest London.
The male reporter speaks respectfully and solemnly.
‘Today Nathan Summer, the husband of podcaster Alix Summer, has been laid to rest at Kensal Green crematorium in North London. Dozens upon dozens of well-wishers, friends and family have flooded through these gates this morning to say their final farewells to a man who, it appears, was loved by many. But today, still, a month after his body was discovered in the shallows of Lake Windermere, police are no closer to tracing the woman accused of killing him with an overdose of barbiturates in a kidnapping gone wrong. Josie Fair, forty-five, was last seen on Thursday the twenty- fifth of July in the village of Ambleside, where she handed her dog to a pair of strangers before disappearing completely. Fair is also being hunted in connection with the murders of her husband, Walter Fair, seventy-two, and sixteen-year-old Brooke Ripley and the attempted murder of her daughter Erin Fair, twenty-three years old. Since her disappearance, police have been following leads of sightings of Fair
as far afield as northern France, Marrakech, Belfast and the Outer Hebrides, but still, to this moment, her whereabouts remain a mystery.’
The footage shows a long-range shot of Alix Summer and her two young children exiting the cemetery.
Alix is in a green dress, with a black jacket slung over her shoulders, wearing dark glasses.
Mourners come to her as she walks and offer condolences.
‘But for now,’ the reporter continues , ‘there is some small semblance of closure at least for Alix Summer as she says a final
farewell to her husband. This is Matt Salter, from Kensal Green, for the BBC.’
The screen changes to Alix Summer.
She is sitting in her recording studio, wearing a yellow sleeveless top. Her blonde hair is tied back from her face.
The text beneath reads:
Alix Summer, January 2022
Alix speaks to an off-camera interviewer.
‘I couldn’t come in here’ – she gestures at her recording studio – ‘not for months and months. It felt so … full of her. So full of Josie. So, I just abandoned it. Focused on the kids, focused on getting my daughter through her first term of secondary school without a dad, on persuading my grieving son that I could be fun too. You know?
And then a few months later, of course, the pandemic hit and life changed and everyone started doing things differently. Getting dogs. Baking bread. Writing novels. All of that. And I realised that it was all on me now, all of it. There was no life insurance policy, no income.
There’d been a few thousand in our joint bank account when Nathan went missing, but that wasn’t going to last very long. I needed to get a job, but of course, how can you get a job in the middle of a global pandemic when you’re a single parent home-schooling two children? I felt terrified, started making plans to sell the house, downsize. But then one night, a few weeks into the first lockdown, I looked out across the garden and there was this fox, sitting by the door to my studio, staring at me. And he looked like he was issuing me with a
challenge. Like, a, you know, what are you going to do now? kind of thing. Like an are you just going to sit around feeling sad about everything or are you going to fire up your engines and make something out of all this fucking awfulness? Because believe me, it was truly awful. But I knew that I had the makings, if I could only stomach it, of a truly unbelievable story.
‘So the next morning I made myself a strong coffee and took a deep breath and I unlocked the door to the studio and I thought: Right, Alix Summer, it’s all there, everything you need to make this happen, hours and hours of recordings with Josie, with Roxy, with Pat. I had access to all the news reports online. I had recorded all my calls throughout, so I had my phone conversations with DC s Albright and Bryant. I had more than enough to create something completely unforgettable, something unmissable. I got in touch with Andrea Muse, the famous true crime podcaster, and asked if she would help produce and edit. My previous podcasts had been straightforward one-on-one interviews, all recorded in one sitting, just needed polishing and a light edit before they went out into the world. This was going to be hugely different, involving complex editing skills that I did not possess. So, with Andrea on board, I started, that day.
By the end of the month we had the first episode, and it went live in late May. And yes, as you know, it went viral. Totally viral. After the first episode aired, I had people contact me directly wanting me to
interview them. Brooke Ripley’s mother. Josie’s friend Helen from school. Walter’s son in Canada. So week by week the podcast was becoming more and more complex, more and more multi-layered, more and more gripping. And then, midsummer 2020, close on a year since Nathan died, I got a message from Katelyn. You know – Katelyn Rand? They’d just relaxed the restrictions then, which meant I could meet up with her, face to face. So we arranged to meet in
Queen’s Park, just around the corner from my house. It was a Wednesday afternoon. I was quite terrified.’
Wednesday, 15 July 2020
Alix pushes her sunglasses from her face and into her hair when she sees Katelyn approaching. Her heart races in her chest and she feels a sickening mix of nerves and excitement.
Then the woman’s face opens up into a huge disarming smile and her pace picks up and she comes to Alix looking as if she might hug her, then quickly remembers that she’s not allowed to any more, so they sit six feet apart and Katelyn says, ‘Wow, you’re beautiful. I mean I saw you on the news, obviously. But you’re much more beautiful in real life.’
‘You’re beautiful, too,’ Alix says, without the same warmth with which Katelyn had imbued her compliment. And Katelyn is spectacularly pretty. Her skin is clear and honeyed and her hair is a mass of soft blonde curls, tied away from her face into a puff ball. She has dimples and a small gap between her very white teeth and she is leggy in skinny jeans and a cropped fitted cardigan that clings to breasts at least three cup sizes bigger than Alix’s.
Katelyn pooh-poohs the compliment, likeably, and Alix feels herself being drawn against her will into liking this human being who played such a huge part in the death of her husband. She sets up her phone and portable microphone ready to record their conversation. Katelyn chatters as she does so.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you’d put a podcast out. It’s everywhere! I mean, I don’t even listen to podcasts, I don’t even know what a podcast is, barely. But this one – wow! – I mean, inevitable, I suppose. It’s not every day you get thrown into your own real-life crime. And I’m sorry, Alix, but I have to warn you in advance, I have no filter. I say words before I hear them in my head, you know? And sometimes it makes me sound
insensitive? Uncaring? But really, I am not that person. Not at all. And I need you to know, Alix, how horribly, horribly sorry I am for what happened. And for the part that I played in it. I can barely sleep at night,
sometimes, thinking about it all, wanting to turn back the clock, wanting never to have walked into that alterations shop that morning.’
‘You met Josie in the alterations shop?’
‘Yeah. Well, I knew who she was already, she was kind of famous on my estate for being the girl who ran off with her mum’s boyfriend, you know? But I hadn’t seen her for years before that. But listen, Alix, please believe me, I thought I was doing something good, you know? I thought I was doing something for the sisterhood. The way she painted it, that you were stuck in this marriage with this guy who couldn’t keep it in his trousers, you know? And she was helping you escape. And I wanted to help you escape too. Obviously, the money was a huge incentive. A thousand pounds is a thousand pounds, yeah? But mainly I just thought: Let’s show this woman what sort of man her husband is. Let’s show her and then she can be free of him. And then of course, it turned out that your husband was not that guy at all. Not at all . My God, Alix, that man loved you. He didn’t come near me in that way. He was not interested in me in that way. He was just so drunk and I think he saw me as his drinking buddy, you know? He just wanted a drinking buddy. But all the while it was Alix-this and Alix-that. And showing me photos of you on his phone.’
Alix glances up at Katelyn at this and says, ‘His phone. Yes. I always wondered, why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he text me? Why didn’t he reply to my calls? When he was with you?’
‘He was too drunk, Alix. I’m not sure I can really convey to you what a fucking mess he was. I’m sorry for swearing. Can you edit that out? Sorry.
But he was seeing double. So I took over his phone for him. I told him I
was messaging you to come and get him. But all the time I knew that Josie was going to come and get him. I lied to him, Alix, and I am so sorry . I mean, really. He was such a nice person. Such a good person. And I lied to him. Told him he was safe. Told him you were coming. Told him I was looking after him. And all the while …’ Katelyn shakes her head sadly.
Alix feels a slick of bitter bile at the back of her throat as she absorbs Katelyn’s words. She wants to hurt her. She wants to scream into her face.
‘You can hate me,’ Katelyn says, as if she’d been reading Alix’s mind. ‘I want you to hate me. I really do. I’m not here to be your friend or look for forgiveness. I’m here for your podcast. To make it, like, the biggest podcast there ever was, to make you famous, to make you fly. Because that’s what I thought I was doing that night, the night I lied to your beautiful husband
and destroyed your life: I thought I was helping you to fly.’ She tuts quietly at her own folly and shakes her head again.
‘Just know, Alix Summer, that you had a husband who adored you, adored his kids, adored his life. A husband who didn’t want anyone else. Only you.’
Alix nods and holds back tears. Then she smiles tightly and says, ‘Right, shall we start from the beginning? From the day you met Josie at the
alterations shop.’ And the interview begins.
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
The screen shows Alix Summer in her recording studio, taking off her headphones, shutting down her screens, walking to the door and closing it behind her.
The camera then pans slowly around the detail of Alix’s studio in her absence and the following text appears on screen:
The last episode of Alix’s podcast was released in August 2020 on the one-year anniversary of Nathan’s funeral.
This is Alix’s closing message.
Alix’s voice is heard as the camera carries on exploring her studio
.
‘And that brings us to today. I’m here, near the end of August, in
the middle of a global pandemic, not sure what the world holds for me, or for any of us. I do know one thing, that tomorrow I am collecting our lockdown puppy from a breeder in Hampshire. She is an Aussie sheepdog with mismatched eyes, and she will be called Matilda, for obvious reasons. She will, I hope, bring joy to our small family as we learn to live with the absence, with the grief, with the questions, with the pain. And earlier today I also had a very exciting email from a US production company expressing an interest in buying the rights to this podcast in order to film it as a documentary, so you never know, before too long you might be watching Hi! I’m
Your Birthday Twin! from the comfort of your own sofa. And just two days ago Roxy told me that she and Erin have found a place to live together, that Erin is moving in this weekend, and bringing her whole gaming universe with her. So there is lots to celebrate as we reach these final moments. But, frustratingly for me, as a journalist, and for you, as listeners, and as is so often the way for true crime podcasts like these, there is no real closure, no real THE END , because, of course, as I speak, Josie Fair is still out there somewhere. She may claim to have done all of this to secure her freedom, but the truth is, Josie Fair has no freedom. None whatsoever. She is trapped now in a prison of her own making, where she will forever be looking over her shoulder, on the run, lying low, hiding. And I am glad. And of course I nurse a secret fantasy that moments before I press end on this recording my phone will ring and DC Albright will be on the line telling me that they’ve found her, they’re bringing her in, she’s going to court, she’s going to prison, she’s atoning for her crimes. And what crimes they are. What shocking, unthinkable, unbearable crimes. A feisty, clever teenage girl with her whole life ahead of her, her battered body left to rot in a dirty, damp garage, for no good reason. No good reason at all. Josie’s pensioner husband, whilst clearly far from a good husband, and by some accounts even a bad man, but a good father to his children, beaten whilst having a heart attack and left to die in a bathtub. The attempted murder of her own daughter, her vulnerable, firstborn child. What? To steal her money? To keep her from living her own life? Pursuing her own dreams? My God … And lastly, the pointless, ridiculous, dreadful murder of my own husband. Nathan Summer. My boy. My man. My flame-haired partner in life. My children’s father. Friend to dozens. Loved colleague. Just … God. Just a nice guy, you know? We had our problems, yes. We had our issues. And yes, in the weeks before Josie took him, I’d considered a life without him. I really had. I’d imagined what it might be like to go it alone and not have to live with those long, awful nights where he didn’t come home to me and I lay in the dark sleeplessly, my stomach churning, my thoughts racing, wondering if he was dead, wondering if he was having sex with a stranger, wondering why he didn’t just want to come home to me.
And maybe one day I would have reached the end of the road,
maybe one day I would have decided to live without him. But Josie took that choice from me. She took all the other possible paths our lives could have taken away from us. And worse than that, she took a good father from his children. And whatever her reasons – her psychosis, her childhood trauma, her mental health, her difficulties and issues – whatever reason she would give for what she has done, I maintain, whatever she herself might say, that she did what she did because she is evil. Pure and simple. So, Josie Fair, if you’re out there somewhere listening, know this. Your fight is yours and yours alone. Do not claim to be fighting on anyone’s behalf. Do not claim that you are a victim. Do not claim that you are anything other than what you are. An evil motherfucking basic bitch.
‘My name is Alix Summer. And this has been Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! Thank you for listening. And farewell.’
The audio plays the single click of a recording being ended. The screen fades to black and the closing credits roll.
Series ends.
Wednesday, 28 October
In October of that year, just before the second national lockdown is imposed, DC Albright phones Alix.
‘We’re closing off most of the investigation now, clearing out some
boxes of evidence, and I have something for you. The bits and pieces that
Josie took from your house last year – I thought you might like them back? I can drop them over this afternoon.’
DC Albright arrives just after four o’clock, when the children are both back from school and the puppy is in hyper mode, leaving hot puddles of pee in her wake as she turns circles of excitement at the appearance of somebody at the door.
‘Sorry, Alix. I can see you’re busy. I won’t keep you. But I just wanted to say, I listened to your podcast, the whole thing, and it was amazing. It really was. You know, for a detective, it’s rare to get that level of deep, deep insight into a criminal you’re still trying to hunt down. And her voice – just listening to it, it put shivers down my spine all over again. It was like reading a novel, you know, I just couldn’t stop listening. And that last line! My God! I did laugh out loud! And of course, it’s sent lots more info our way.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Most of which is total nonsense and time-wasting. But a couple of leads worth following up. Someone who thinks they saw her in Northampton last week. We’re looking into that. So yeah, we’ll keep you up to date with everything. And fingers crossed. Soon enough. I mean, ten grand won’t last her forever, will it? She’ll have to plug back into the real world at some point, start leaving a trail again. It’s just a matter of time. Anyway, here you go. Here’s the things. We returned the other things to Brooke’s mum, but she said only a couple of bits belonged to Brooke. The corsage. The hair scrunchie. She said she’d never seen the phone case before. And Roxy and Erin didn’t recognise it. So yeah, that’s a mystery.
One of many.’
She smiles warmly at Alix and then she goes. Alix goes straight to the kitchen to get pet spray and kitchen roll to mop up Matilda’s accidents and
then she sits at the kitchen table with the jiffy bag in front of her. It takes her a minute to summon the will to open it. She pulls the objects out, one by one, and lays them in a row. She is horribly aware of where they have been, of what they imply, but also aware that these are small and important pieces of her that Josie had stolen, and suddenly the need to reinstate them in her
home overrides her distaste about where they’ve been and she gets quickly to her feet and moves about her home, replacing each object in turn. She
finds the small space on the cork board where Eliza’s drawing had once been and pins it back into place in the exact spot it had been taken from, feeling a strange satisfaction as the tip of the pin meets and inserts into the same hole. She puts the receipt back inside the Livingetc magazine and
takes it to the front door and places it halfway down the pile in her recycling bin. She takes the Nespresso pod and replaces it in the jar in her recording studio, puts the teaspoon in the dishwasher and the hand soap in the guest WC beneath the stairs. She is about to put the passport
photographs of Leon back in the messy drawer where they’d once lived, but decides against it. He looks so young, so awkward, so fed up in the photos. But they are him, caught at a moment in his life when he hadn’t known pain, loss or grief, and she wants to celebrate that, so she takes another pin and attaches the strip to the cork board, and touches it tenderly. And then lastly there is the bracelet. The delicate golden bracelet that Nathan had bought her for her birthday, and as she stares at it she hears the echo of her voice, calling through to the husband that she no longer has: Nathan! Have you seen my bracelet? The one you bought me for my birthday? and then
she rewinds fast past that moment to the memory of Nathan giving it to her a year earlier, clipping it together gently on her wrist, which she held against this table, right here, this very spot. And she upturns her wrist and she calls through the house to her son, her flame-haired boy, ‘Leon! Baby!
Can you help me with something?’ And he appears in the doorway, his pale eyes blinking.
‘What?’
‘Can you do up my bracelet for me?’
He puts his iPad down on the kitchen table and walks towards her. He smells of boy, of home, of hair, of love. She can hear his slightly nasal breathing as he stands over her, concentrating on feeding the loop in the clip, missing a couple of times and then saying, ‘There. It’s in.’
He’s about to wander off again but Alix draws him close, her arms around his thin waist. ‘We’re good, aren’t we?’ she asks him. ‘Us three? We’re good?’
Leon nods, rests his chin against her head and says, ‘Yes. We’re good.’
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
Screen shows a dramatic re-enactment of a postman dropping a pile of letters through the letterbox of a Victorian terraced house.
An actor playing Alix Summer picks up the letters and takes them into a kitchen, where she begins to open one.
The text below reads:
On 2 November 2020, two months after the release of the last episode of Alix Summer’s podcast, Alix Summer received a letter in the post.
The screen changes to Alix Summer reading aloud from the letter in her recording studio.
‘“Alix. It’s taken me a long time to know what to say to you and how to say it. I listened to your podcast this summer. Basic bitch? Really? I’ve been under attack all my life, Alix. All my life. And now from you too.
‘“When I first met you, I thought you were special. I thought it was some kind of destiny. Finally, someone who got me, who understood me, someone who realised how hard my life had been. And I gave you my truth, Alix. And what did you do with it? Turned it into some tacky ‘true crime’ rubbish, when not one minute of it was true. None of it. And as for Erin and all her lies, I knew she would lie. Of course she would lie. Her and Roxy, trying to make me look bad when it was them all along. The fact that you bought into their act makes me think less of you. I am so disappointed in you. I really am.
‘“And I did not take Nathan from you on purpose; I told you that already. I explained: it was an accident. I was giving him the right
dose but it stopped working and he was making so much noise and so I had to give him more. How was I supposed to know that it would kill him? But still you’re holding it against me, acting as if I knew what I was doing, acting as if there’s something wrong with me when there isn’t. It’s the world that’s wrong – you and I both know that.
‘“Fate has brought us together twice now, Alix, once on the day we were born, then again on the night we turned forty-five. Maybe it will find a way to bring us together again and maybe then we can get back to where we were. I hope so, I really do.
‘“Please send my love to your lovely children, especially Leon. I had such a soft spot for him. A lovely boy. A delicate boy. Keep him safe.
‘“Josie”.’
Alix folds the letter in half and puts it down on her desk. She looks at the interviewer and shakes her head wryly. The text below reads:
At the time of broadcast, Alix Summer has not heard from Josie Fair again.
