Clickbait

Astronomers cannot always predict where a meteor might strike or when the sun will next hiccup a solar flare. An omniscient narrator, however, sees all things. It is simply a matter of focus. And so when a young woman is thrown into the path of C-list fame, we do not need any particular skills to guess where exactly things might land.

Bella Noone was an ordinary child by most metrics. She was pretty, and her parents and brother loved and protected her. She went to ballet classes, (with no particular distinction), and that didn’t matter. Her school days were uneventful, and she was popular and admired. She was a child of infectious joyfulness, raised in a family with enough money to do most things but not enough to throw caution to the wind. A perfect childhood, in other words. A story not everyone gets to write.

Later she went to university and studied criminal psychology, (don’t they all), but lacked the application for the medical aspects of the degree. At twenty, just a few months into the course, she dropped out, and it was this decision at this specific time that set the course of her particular comet’s journey to a place where it would cause the maximum harm: not a glancing blow and a few scorched trees in the Siberian forests, but a bloody great crater where a fetching and self-aware young woman had once lived and breathed.

She was approached at the door of Boots the Chemist, looking to replace her favourite lipstick. A man and a woman, bubbly, insincere media types. Her parents were still in a state of disapproval about her decision to quit university, and every day was a series of questions concerning what Bella would do next. So she was perhaps vulnerable to the fake smiles and their gushing appreciation of her natural, girl-next-door beauty. When they asked her to lean against a wall so they could take a photo, (because, they said, not all beautiful people are photogenic), the slight smile dancing across her lips was one of curiosity. A smile that was not immune to flattery.

It was, they said, over a drink in a nearby bar, a new concept in reality TV. Yes, it would be an equal mix of young men and women, where some sexual tension was certain to arise - but it would be set in a series of haunted buildings - some furnished, others near derelict, and the business model was to attract the spook-hunters and the vicarious voyeurs alike. Doubling the market share, they called it.

‘It will be like Love Island on Elm Street!, they quipped. The working title was ‘You Haunt Me,’ which was an allusion to both their surroundings, and the people they would be drawn to when feeling scared and vulnerable. ‘We would expect you to mingle with men and women,’ they said.

‘But I’m straight!’ she protested. They smirked and told her that nobody was straight anymore.

‘Anyway,’ said the woman. ‘Think about it. We’ll let you know how the photo shoot comes out, so expect a call, one way or the other.’

On reading her expression, the male leant forward and said .. ‘There’s a potential fortune in it for you. Think about it seriously.’

Back at home, the lipstick forgotten, Bella looked at herself in the mirror, tilting her chin, moving her head from side to side, practicing her smile, putting her hair up, leaving it down. Blonde hair, blue eyes, slim figure and all that time she had taken it for granted. She thought of her mother, constantly on edge because Bella was not doing what all her friend’s daughter’s were doing - working diligently at uni whilst taking part-time jobs in shops and bars to make ends meet. And so we understand that when the phone rang several days later and a cheery media type told her to attend an audition, Bella didn’t need to be asked twice.

She did not tell her parents or even her brother. Of course, it wasn’t an acting audition. All the words would be her own, unscripted, although not necessarily unedited. None of the nineteen individuals she auditioned with were scheduled to appear in the pilot show; they were just nepo babies helping out for some pocket money, but Bella didn’t know that at the time. Having settled her gaze on a handsome lad called Beau, she looked forward to meeting him again, but she never would.

A week before filming, Bella packed her bags. She had thought to lie, to say she was staying with some brief acquaintances from uni, but as she stowed her luggage by the broad and scuffed front door, she felt she could not leave without telling them. She hoped they would understand, but of course, they didn’t.

A week before the first episode was due to be screened, she still hadn’t told her parents of the outcome. She didn’t tell her parents when she signed the contract either, which would prove to be the biggest mistake of her life, her father being a lawyer and all.

But it all blew up, before and after. Her mother shrieking about reality TV, her father chastising her for signing a contract without legal preview, and her brother shaking his head and wondering what version of his sister would eventually come home.

*****

The show was a success, not least for Bella. Over two weeks of frights, shocks and painfully awkward sex scenes, she emerged as the inaugural winner of You Haunt Me. The show aired in early November and carried the country through to the comforting Christmas repeats. Social media was largely supportive, although there will always be those who specifically enter a site merely to say that reality TV sucks and they don’t know why anyone watches it.

But the word about Bella was that she was a natural beauty, a really independent young woman, who didn’t spout predictable political views or join the other girls in make-up sessions in the bathrooms of haunted houses. She held her own and showed gumption at times when the other contestants were screaming. For a time, she was the nation’s sweetheart. The blend of shock and romance was hailed as a winning formula, and it ran for nine years before the production company ran out of ideas.

Even today, a regular quizzer will know that the question, ‘Who won the first series of You Haunt Me?’ is almost always met with the right answer: Bella Noone.

But let’s get back to Bella as she returned from her triumph, and waited out the remaining late summer and autumn months, guarding her secret and quietly cashing the money. She saw her family only briefly after that. At first she had been advised to keep her distance because she was bound to blab if she got too familiar at home. Blabbing before the final episode was aired was a breach of contract. So she rented a flat in London and spent her money on clothes and makeup, allowing a few air-kissing neo-pals to invade her space when the silence of living alone became unpleasant noise.

During those quiet days, she would occasionally pull out her contract, the one she had not bothered reading before. The close print did not lend itself to absorption, and so she had to keep going back to it, and then reading a little further, until the truth slowly dawned. She was the property of the production company and would be for fifteen years. She was not allowed to undertake any acting work, or presenting work, unless it was tied to You Haunt Me or other subsidiaries. On the first of every month, she must present her schedule, so that photographers could be at the ready whenever she ventured out. She would be invited to award ceremonies and charitable functions, during which her clothing would be subsidised or borrowed.

By the time the show finally aired, Bella was no longer in the mood to celebrate.

She returned home for Christmas. Her parents said nothing, which was so much worse than saying something. Her brother, trying harder to understand, could still not disguise the innate contempt he felt for the show and its format. And Bella could hardly bear to watch herself on the screen, or to read the social commentary. When photographers fetched up at her parents’ home on Boxing Day she made her excuses and left for London, where she was relentlessly pursued until the winter months cleared away and spring brought other diversions.

She was glad of the respite, but it didn’t last.

In May she was called to the office, where she was advised to have a number of tweakments. Her eye brows, they said, lacked clear definition and her mascara was not adequate. She was to wear falsies when going out in future. Her lips were just a little thin for modern tastes and her bust could do to be larger. And divorced from her family, with no real friends and a no-pet policy in her second floor apartment, Bella came to believe that she was really quite a plain girl after all, and what harm could these changes do?

In the beginning the reviews were good. Bella Noone looks glowing! they gushed. Are her lips a little plumper and the hair a little blonder? Simply stunning!

And then: Bella Noone shows off a daring cleavage at the National Television Awards! Has she had work done???

The cameras clicked until they slowed to make way for another reality star on the rise.

And when they stopped clicking, the production company suggested a butt lift and further chest enlargement. Another shade blonder, almost peroxide, her hair starting to dry out a little, brittle and lank.

Her nose, her beautiful nose was narrowed and then further narrowed until it became difficult to breathe through. Her teeth were veneered and whitened to an unnatural shade. Her young brows were smoothed out before they had even dared to wrinkle. Eventually, her face resembled the death mask of an internment victim, and people browsing their news would whisper, ‘Jeez, is that Bella Noone?’

Bigger lips, bigger tits, bigger arse, and then the suggestion of feline eyes. More dramatic, darling.

And each time she returned from these procedures the paps were waiting and the public were souring. What is she doing to herself? What happened to that independent girl from You Haunt Me? Where did her natural beauty go?

Whenever I look at Bella Noone lately, wrote one, I start to find the ugly girl in the library really attractive. She’s not trying to look like an over-inflated sex doll. She’s got the cool chops, not like these women nowadays who look like something that gets delivered through your letter box in brown paper …’

She cancelled her social media accounts but the production company made her reinstate them. She belonged to them. All revenues she generated belonged to them, in exchange for a fat monthly paycheque. Sometimes the amount was more than other times, but she didn’t really query it. It was more than enough for her wardrobe, which needed to be constantly updated as parts of herself grew ever larger. Her waist, ridiculously thin, made it difficult to find the right things to wear, but the production company were always on hand to deal with such sartorial matters.

Over time, Bella began to take drugs to help her sleep. In the evenings she would light candles and only allow herself brief glimpses of her reflection. When she was high, she imagined herself as Monroe, but the daylight revealed a different reality. Globules of filler had begun to distort her forehead, and walking became a matter of sensible footwear. In the space of eight years, she had become a monster and yet she still went back for more, because they told her to, because they said it’s what women ought to look like, and because if she refused she would be in breach of contract.

On a holiday to Jamaica, accompanied by a rent-a-friend from Sao Paolo, Bella got stuck in the seat on the plane. Her swollen buttocks had become so freakishly large, she had to be extracted by two bemused cabin crew who moved her to another seat in first class. The production company, they said, would pick up the bill for the upgrade.

And a mile up in the troposphere, the cameras still clicked. On terra firma, the news outlets responded, and all that dirty money came rolling in.

Because that is all she was and all she had ever been. Clickbait. When her star waned, they sought to make a grotesque of her instead. All clickbait, the easiest damned money you can make.

You don’t want to know what happened to Bella in the end, because you can guess where the meteor landed. She did not live to see out the end of her contract, but you can be sure that the production company made plenty more money out of her in the weeks and months that followed.

A salutary tale, the papers said, about the dangers of fame and the pressure on women to look a certain way.

A sad reminder, her father said, to always read a contract.

A heartbreaking loss, her mother said. I don’t know what she thought she looked like!

What happened to my sister? her brother said. I wouldn’t have recognised her in an empty room.

And the plain woman in the library, reading the account in the daily paper, wondered at the price women pay for sacrificing their essence on the altar of lucre and a room full of frocks that don’t fit.