Where the light goes, p.1
Where the Light Goes, page 1
CONTENTS
GONE The End – Tuesday
1 DAY GONE Tomorrow (morning)
1 DAY GONE Tomorrow (afternoon)
2 DAYS GONE Other people
3 DAYS GONE My people
4 DAYS GONE Hell is other people
5 DAYS GONE Leo (part one)
6 DAYS GONE Message from the dead
7 DAYS GONE Jodie (part one)
8 DAYS GONE Penguins
10 DAYS GONE Prom
11 DAYS GONE I still have friends
12 DAYS GONE Questions
13 DAYS GONE I still have a boyfriend
14 DAYS GONE Exclusive (part one)
16 DAYS GONE Funeral
16 DAYS GONE Wake
17 DAYS GONE After
21 DAYS GONE “No Loss”
25 DAYS GONE Loss
29 DAYS GONE Away
50 DAYS GONE Home, again
51 DAYS GONE Summer
52 DAYS GONE The boy in the kitchen
59 DAYS GONE Change
60 DAYS GONE Secret
74 DAYS GONE Fight
78 DAYS GONE “Tomorrow”
79 DAYS GONE The Jinks
80 DAYS GONE Distraction
82 DAYS GONE Exclusive (part two)
83 DAYS GONE Jodie (part 2)
83 DAYS GONE Love. Love. Love.
84 DAYS GONE Leo (part two)
85 DAYS GONE Progress
86 DAYS GONE Everything I ever wanted
87 DAYS GONE Choice
87 DAYS GONE Mum
87 DAYS GONE B & E 8 & 3
5 YEARS GONE Emmy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
RESOURCES
About the Author
Copyright
A Note on Content
This book addresses the grief that arises from the loss of a loved one who has died by suicide.
Please be aware that the following pages therefore contain discussions of – and references to – suicide, grief and related issues throughout.
A list of further resources is available at the back of this book.
Imagine you pick up the phone. The house phone, the one you don’t usually bother picking up because why would anyone call you on the house phone, but it’s weirdly early for anyone to be calling, and you’re the only one up, standing in your kitchen, barefoot, eating toast, so when the phone rings you lean over and answer it.
Imagine you do that, just answer the phone. It’s a Tuesday morning in June, days into what promises to be a long, lazy summer. Your exams are over, and so is the stress. You should have chosen a better breakfast in celebration; something with chocolate, or some kind of syrup. When you answer the phone, that is what you’re thinking about.
Imagine that phone call is about to change your whole world, but you don’t know it right up until it happens. Your whole life is about to stop making sense. Everything coherent and logical and linear is about to collapse.
Imagine you pick up the phone and your life and your world and everything you’ve ever known s h a t t e r s
into
hundreds and thousands
(of thousands of thousands)
_____________________________________________________________
11.39 am
Andrew Saul @AndySaulJourno
BREAKING Lizzie Beck dead. More to come.
_____________________________________________________________
@frranchez Wtf???
_____________________________________________________________
@louise41stone No way
_____________________________________________________________
@rainbowm00n Fuck, no
_____________________________________________________________
@stanleylebulldog Um, SOURCE?
_____________________________________________________________
@wesleyfred4ever Got to be a hoax. She’s 21. Verify or GTFO
[see more replies]
_____________________________________________________________
12.46 pm
Breaking News UK @breakingnewsofficial
Lizzie Beck, member of British girl band The Jinks, has died at the age of 21, her family confirms.
_____________________________________________________________
@jonestim97 Shiiiiiit did she kill herself then?
@wiseoldferret Well she didn’t die of old age, did she?
_____________________________________________________________
TRENDING IN UNITED KINGDOM
#1 Lizzie Beck
TRENDING WITH RIPLizzie, RIPLizzieBeck
849K TWEETS
_____________________________________________________________
@kerrysouthlee Shit this is so horrible, so sad. RIP Lizzie Beck.
_____________________________________________________________
@ninestopshome Fuck, it’s true about Lizzie Beck? That poor girl. 21 is nothing at all.
_____________________________________________________________
@forthehijinks Can’t even type. Devastated. Fuck this world. #RIPLizzie
@thisjinksygirl What happened though?? Loads of people saying must be suicide but do we actually know that yet? #LizzieBeck
@balebefore Drugs, I reckon. Wasn’t she in rehab like twice? #LizzieBeck
@lincolnlodger Or murder. Wasn’t her body found at Leo Peters’ house?
@balebefore Er… are you accusing someone of murder, mate?
@lincolnlodger Just asking a question. Mate.
_____________________________________________________________
@jonhawl33 Brass neck of the lot of you pretending you give a fuck about Lizzie Beck now she’s dead
_____________________________________________________________
@backtoparris Can everyone just stop all the speculation? Think of her poor family. #RIPLizzie
TWEETS I DIDN’T SEND
(Even though I scrolled through Twitter for hours and read every single tweet I could find.)
Her name is Beth.
Her name is Beth.
Her name is Beth.
Her name was Beth.
WHAT I DO THE DAY OF MY SISTER’S DEATH
• Scream
• Cry
• Scream and cry and scream and cry
• Lie on the floor in my mother’s arms while we both wail
• Watch my father’s feet as he puts his boots on and leaves the house to go and do things the father does when his daughter has been found dead
• Words like “identify”
• And “coroner”
• And “inform”
• Brush my teeth
• Listen to my mum making call after call to everyone we love, frantic and calm at the same time – very weird – because this has to be done fast fast fast before someone who loved Beth – really loved Beth, not Lizzie Beck – finds out that she’s dead from a tweet
• She says, “It’s Beth”
• She says, “She’s gone”
• Or “She’s passed”
• Or “We’ve lost her”
• Or “She’s … yes…”
• She doesn’t say, “She’s dead”
• And she definitely doesn’t say, “She killed herself”
• But even though she doesn’t say the words, she still tells them, somehow, and when she hangs up, I know they know
• She turns and sees me
• She says, “Oh, Emmy.” Just that, nothing else
• Watch from my window as the journalists gather outside our house, knock on our door, stand in clusters on our driveway
• Hide in my room
• Open Twitter, wait for the storm to break
• Watch the first tweet come in, the second, the third
• Then 100, 1000, too many to count
• Scroll
• Scroll
• Scroll
• Ignore the WhatsApp notifications as they start filling my phone screen, the people I love, the people I should have told already but haven’t, because to be honest I forgot that they exist, that there is anything but this shock, this grief, this pain
• My best friend, my boyfriend
• Who are still here, who love me
• Turn off my notifications
• Hear people in my house, more wailing (women) and talking (men)
• Go downstairs and see pizza boxes
• Mum says I have to eat something so I
• Pick all the pepperoni slices off an entire pizza and eat them one by one
• Then I am sick
• And I cry some more
• Ask who the man standing outside our door is (a security guard)
• Ask who sent us a security guard (the band’s management)
• So quickly? (it had to be quick, the journalists – if you can call them that – are ruthless)
• Why do we need a security guard? (oh, Emmy, I can’t – please, I can’t deal with questions right now, I—)
• Security from what? (from … the noise)
• Leave Mum in the kitchen so I don’t have to see her break down again
• Watch the six o’clock news
• “Good evening. Lizzie Beck, member of British girl band The Jinks, has died. She was twenty-one.”
• A clip of the first “Great British Sounds” audition, the sound fading as the colour turns to black and white
• A live reporter outside Leo Peters’ house, telling the world t hat this is where her “body” was “found”, as if this information is relevant or necessary
• A series of tributes from people all over the music industry, talking about how “devastating” it is, how “tragic”, “what a loss”, “what a talent”, these people who never defended her when she was alive to hear it
• I can’t bear it
• I can’t bear it
• Cry
• Cry
• Cry
MY SISTER IN NUMBERS
Instagram followers: 5.1M
Twitter followers: 689,923
Years on this earth: 21
Years of celebrity: 5
“Last warnings” from management: 4
BRIT awards: 3
Stints in rehab: 2
Little sisters: 1
MY SISTER IN WORDS
I can hear my mother crying somewhere in the house.
My dad’s low voice.
This is our family now. The three of us.
For as long as I can remember, our family was
Beth at the centre and us in her orbit.
Satellites to the star.
And now there’s just …
darkness.
Except there’s not. (I tell myself this.)
Because we’re still alive, which means there’s tomorrow.
For us, there’s tomorrow.
Wednesday 13th June 2018issued 7am
Official statement from The Jinks
We are utterly devastated at the loss of our friend, bandmate and sister, Lizzie Beck. We are focusing on supporting each other and Lizzie’s family during this dreadful time. We are so thankful for the support and love that is being shown to all of us by our fans – we love you all so much and we’re so grateful. As we’re sure you can understand, we as a band are going to take some time to grieve, comfort each other and try to come to terms with this tragedy. We ask that the press and the public respect our privacy – and especially the privacy of Lizzie’s family – at this time. We are heartbroken.
Lizzie, we love you, and we will miss you every day.
Jodie, Aiya and Tam
THE JINKS
LIES. ALL LIES.
Wednesday 13th June 2018issued 7am
Official joint statement from Electric Records, Skyscape Management, and NorthWest Entertainment
The death of Lizzie Beck has come as a tremendous shock to everyone who has worked with, nurtured and supported Lizzie and The Jinks over the past five years. Our deepest condolences and thoughts are with her family and friends. We are focused now on supporting Lizzie’s bandmates, Jodie Soto-Hahn, Aiyana Mehta and Tamryn Lord, and providing whatever assistance we can to her family during this unimaginable time. The planned relaunch of the band has been postponed indefinitely, and all booked engagements, including interviews of any kind, have been cancelled.
For all press enquiries, please contact Melissa Sandford, publicist, at melsandford@electricrecords.co.uk
SELF. SERVING. LIES.
They’re all LYING.
Talking like they loved Beth
worried about her
cared about her
FUCK THAT.
They wanted her out. They wanted her gone.
The band she STARTED.
The band that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for her.
“The relaunch is postponed.” I BET IT FUCKING IS. The relaunch that was going to go ahead WITHOUT BETH. The Jinks with three members instead of four.
I bet they’re glad they hadn’t announced it yet. Bet they’re glad that people didn’t know that those RUTHLESS UNGRATEFUL HEARTLESS BITCHES had ganged up on my sister and KICKED HER OUT OF HER OWN BAND and now
She’s Fucking DEAD
It wasn’t official yet, oh no. Because Beth FOUGHT. She wasn’t going to roll over and let them steal her band from her, kick her to the kerb like a dog.
It had been all negotiation and ultimatums and promises. She would have won them round, I know it.
Now they’ve got what they wanted, haven’t they? And even better, they got what they wanted without any nasty headlines about them, no trolling on social media about how pathetic they are, no chink in their armour of being THE GOOD ONES in the band while Beth soaked up all the hate, all the abuse.
Now she’s gone and they get to be sad.
They get to say they’re “sorry” but not for what they should be sorry for.
They get to say they loved her.
They get to call her their sister.
She wasn’t your sister.
She was mine.
I say to Dad, “Can they do that?”
“Do what?”
“Pretend none of it happened? Them trying to get rid of Beth?”
A look on his face like he’d swallowed pain. “Not now, Emmy.”
“It’s not right.”
“It’s business. It’s the music industry.”
“You think it’s OK?”
“I don’t think they should start sharing their dirty secrets with the world, no. I don’t see what that would achieve.”
“But Beth—”
“There’s no need to taint the band,” he says. “There’s still a chance they could carry on without her. Why deny them that?”
Me, speechless. My head going, Carry on without her. Carry on without her. Carry on without her.
Unthinkable. Monstrous.
Dad is still talking. “Do you really want the world to know that Beth had been thrown out of the band? Do you think that would make her look good?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Em.” Gritted teeth, eyes closing for too long. Breath in through his flared nostrils, like a horse. He says quietly, “There’s a lot you don’t understand.”
And isn’t that the truth.
His eyes open and he looks at me, sudden and piercing. “You haven’t posted about this, have you?”
“What do you mean, ‘posted’? Online? Of course not!”
“Good. Don’t.”
“I know that!” How can he think I need to be told this? The number one rule in the world of the famous is “no comment”. Literally, don’t comment. Don’t say it in a phone call, don’t post it on the internet. Don’t risk exposing secrets, don’t tell anyone your feelings, just don’t say a word.
I was eleven when Beth got famous, and sometimes my parents act like I’m still that young. Like I’m not sixteen, like I’m not literally a student at Shona Lee School for the Performing Arts, where learning things like this is basically part of the curriculum.
Beth did it too. Coddled me.
“Have you posted anything?” Dad asks.
“No, Dad!” And what would it matter if I did, anyway? All my accounts are private.
“Good,” he says again. He hesitates, then shakes his head, sighing. “Thank you,” he adds, quietly. “I know I don’t have to worry about you. You’re a smart girl.”
Maybe this should feel good, but it doesn’t. It just makes me think of how Beth used to pour seemingly every innermost thought onto the internet for the world at large to feed on, how she was a lot of things but never smart in the way Dad wanted her to be, how he did have to worry about her, all the time, and how there will never be a post from her ever again. Her last post already exists, and I know what it is, but when I think about it my entire heart convulses with pain.
“Thank you,” Dad says again.
Dad is part of The Jinks’ management team.
Before, he was an IT consultant for a water company. Before that, before Mum and then Beth and then me, he was in a band called Owlface. They played weddings and corporate gigs and never had a record deal. He became the unofficial manager for The Jinks before their “Great British Sounds” audition. When they won and got big, they also got a team of managers, and Dad, now official, got a salary.
A big one.
(Bigger than the band got.)
He was part of the reason they couldn’t just get rid of Beth from the band without a fight. Dad fought for her. (And his job.)
Now I don’t know what there is left to fight for, but he’s still fighting.
Obituary
Lizzie Beck
Lizzie Beck, founding member of “Great British Sounds”-winning girl band The Jinks, has died aged twenty-one after taking her own life.
