‘Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!’ Episode 3
DISCLAIMER: This podcast has been created using extracts from the audiobook of Lisa Jewell’s book None Of This Is True (publishing 20 July 2023). ‘Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin’ is the fictionalised podcast that features in the book. This is therefore a marketing stunt and the content is fiction. For the full story and reading experience you can order your copy of None of This is True here: https://linktr.ee/LisaJewell
SPOILERS: Please note Episode Three of ‘Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin’ may feature spoilers for None of This is True (publishing 20 July 2023).
What follows is the transcription taken from the ‘Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin’ podcast, first aired on 13th July 2023. Listen on Spotify, Acast, or Apple Podcast.
Music/jingle
ALIX:
Hi, and welcome to episode three of Hi! I’m Your Birthday twin! My name is Alix Summer. The recording you’re about to hear was recorded a few days after the evening of the dinner with Josie and Walter at my house. The night was not a success. My husband had failed to turn up after work and this lent the evening a sour note. Walter seemed awkward and Josie seemed anxious. And then something utterly shocking happened that night, after Josie and Walter left my home. Josie appeared on my doorstep at 3am, covered in blood and claiming to have been beaten by Walter.
The following is Josie’s account of those events, recorded a few days later, and my attempts to try and make sense of it.
ALIX:
So, Josie. The events of Friday night? Are you ready to talk about that?’
JOSIE:
Yes. I suppose so.
ALIX:
Shall we begin?
JOSIE:
Yes. OK. Well, he hadn’t wanted to come in the first place, Walter. Made such a fuss. I bought him some nice new clothes, but he refused to wear them, insisted on wearing cheap stuff from Primark, deliberately got a terrible haircut, just to spite me. And then of course, when Nathan didn’t make an appearance . . .[sigh] Well, you could see how annoyed he was. And then he seethed the whole walk home. I could feel it coming off him. The dark rage building and building. By the time we got home . . .the atmosphere was putrid. I couldn’t control my anger by that point. I felt it all, all of it, rolling and churning through me like a storm, and finally, after all these years, I found the strength to hurl it out of my gut and into the air, to hit Walter with it, right between the eyes. I just screamed at him. “Paedophile! You’re a paedophile! You groomed me and you took me when I was too young to know what I wanted. And then you groomed that girl and you took her when she was too young to know what she wanted. And you abused your own daughter. The only daughter you have left after what you did to Roxy. You have abused your daughter over and over again and I have let you do that because I have been programmed by you to believe that you are God and that you can have anything you want. But you are not God, Walter, and you cannot have anything you want. You cannot. And it stops tonight. What you’re doing to Erin. It stops tonight. No more. No more.”
And then I ran to Erin’s door, and I pushed it open and there was my baby, my Erin, staring at me from wide, dead eyes. I said, “Pack a bag, baby. Quickly. I’m getting you out of here. We’re leaving.” I said, “I know what Dad’s been doing and I’m so, so sorry, baby. So sorry that I abandoned you.” And that was when I felt it, a blow to the back of my head, then a kind of deep radiating heat and pain and wetness. I turned and saw Walter’s arm coming back towards me, with the remote control he’d just used to hit me with held in his hand, coming towards my face and then he beat me with it, all over my face and head. Erin just stood there; so thin, she was. So thin. And I threw myself towards Walter and shoved him in his chest with both my hands outstretched and said, “Enough. That is enough.”
And I saw him raise his hand to hit my child and I just flung myself between them, and then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. A moment later I peered into the living room. Walter was sitting at his laptop. The remote control was sitting on the coffee table. It was like he was trying to give the impression that none of it had ever happened, like I didn’t have a split lip and blood seeping down the back of my neck. It was as if he thought we were all just going to carry on. Normally. Like we always did. But he was wrong. I grabbed my handbag, I grabbed the dog, I grabbed Erin, and we left. Neither of us said goodbye.
[significant pause]
ALIX:
Where did you go? When you left the flat?
[Josie issues a small laugh]
JOSIE:
Well, here, obviously
ALIX:
But in between?
JOSIE:
Nowhere.
ALIX:
But – you said that the argument started when you got home. And it only lasted a few minutes. I just—
JOSIE [interjecting]
No. It didn’t happen when we got home. I didn’t say that. It happened when Walter got out of bed. Like he does nearly every night. Like I told you. We went to bed and then I couldn’t sleep. It took me ages. And then I finally dropped off and I felt him, I felt him peel back the covers. I knew. I knew what he was doing. Where he was going. And that was when I confronted him.
ALIX:
So, you were in bed. In your pyjamas?
JOSIE:
Yes.
ALIX:
And then you got up and followed him?
JOSIE:
Yes. I saw him going to Erin’s door. And that was when I screamed at him.
ALIX:
But you weren’t wearing your pyjamas when you came to me. You were wearing the dress. The lovely dress.
JOSIE:
I put it back on. I wasn’t going to walk halfway across Kilburn in my pyjamas.
ALIX:
But the dress had blood on it. How did the dress have blood on it if you weren’t wearing it during the
attack?
JOSIE:
Alix. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Are you saying that you don’t believe me?
ALIX:
No! Not at all. Of course not. But listeners are going to be hearing this like it’s a novel, they’ll notice plot holes. You and I have been having this conversation for a month, but listeners will be gobbling this down in a day once it’s out there and edited down. It needs to make sense. For the listener. Do you see?
[Josie sighs deeply]
JOSIE:
Well, yes. I suppose. But you’d think that the sort of people who listen to your stuff would have some sympathy, some empathy. You’d think they’d understand that when something like that happens, like what’s happened to me, when someone has been the victim of abuse and violence and gaslighting, that maybe they might get a bit confused.
ALIX:
Yes. Josie, yes, of course. That’s absolutely true. So I just want to help you to unpick it all a bit and then put it back together. So that it makes sense. That’s all. So Walter got out of bed in the early hours. You accosted him. He attacked you. He tried to attack Erin. Then you and Erin collected a few things – you got redressed – and then you both left together?
JOSIE:
Yes.
ALIX:
And you walked here – and Erin? Where did Erin walk?
JOSIE:
The opposite direction.
ALIX:
At three in the morning?
JOSIE:
Yes.
ALIX:
Did she have things with her?
JOSIE:
I suppose so, yes. A small bag.
ALIX:
[Sigh]
I hope Erin is OK. It’s very scary thinking of her all alone in the night.
JOSIE:
Yes. But she’s safer out there than she ever was in her own home. Wherever she is, she’s safe.
ALIX:
I really think we should try to track her down, Josie. It’s been nearly six days. No messages. No calls. I know she’s safe from Walter now. But is it possible she might have found herself somewhere worse? That maybe her online friend wasn’t who they claimed to be? I mean, you hear that sort of thing a lot, don’t you? People with fake online identities. It’s just—
JOSIE:
She’s fine, Alix. She’s fine. She can take care of herself.
ALIX:
But you said she can’t. You said you’ve been feeding her baby food. You said—
JOSIE:
I’m trying to tell you my story, Alix. My truth. And you seem to be trying to make it into something it isn’t. You either want my story or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways. (shouts) You just can’t.
Sound effect of Josie taking off her headphones, slamming them down, door slamming in her wake,
Maybe Alix calling out after her?
Music/jingle
ALIX:
It was to be our last recording session. Two days later Josie disappeared completely, and well, of course, you all know what happened after that, don’t you? Please join me next week for episode 4 of Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! When I will be speaking to people close to Josie about the shocking events that followed.