Who Are You?: Part 2 of 3: With one click she found her perfect man. And he found his perfect victim. A true story of the ultimate deception.
A dramatic and terrifying memoir of a ‘catfish’ scenario - when a woman meets a man online but nothing is what it seems.25-year-old Megan Henley put her five-year-old daughter to bed one evening and switched on her laptop. A Facebook ‘friend request’ seemed to be genuine. There were a few common friends and very similar interests, so Megan accepted.With that one simple act, she changed her life forever. In her words: ‘looking back on it, it was as if I had opened my front door to a stranger, as if I had thrown away every precaution I’d ever put in place, as if I had freely given access to my whole world – all because of some naïve belief that it was ‘just’ a friend request on a social media site.’ Megan is tricked into a relationship, paranoia, and ultimately betrayal by the man she loved and trusted but nothing is as it seems.
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Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2016
FIRST EDITION
© Megan Henley 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Front cover photograph © Rekha Garton/Arcangel Images (posed by model)
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Megan Henley and Linda Watson Brown assert the
moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008144333
Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008171070
Version: 2015-11-26
Chapter 6
December 2009–July 2010
Christopher was furious about how things had panned out, and wasn’t going to let anything lie. The emails and messages continued, and I couldn’t settle. There was always a knot of worry in my stomach and I wasted far too much time wishing I’d never set eyes on him.
One night, I fell asleep on the sofa, exhausted by stress more than anything, much more than by the pregnancy. I don’t think I’d been asleep more than five minutes when I felt Vic shaking my arm.
‘Wake up, Megan,’ he whispered. ‘Stay quiet.’
My eyes were open in a second. They felt gritty and heavy, but the tone of Vic’s voice made me instantly realise that I couldn’t wallow in sleepiness.
‘What’s wrong?’ I hissed.
‘Someone’s outside. Get upstairs. Turn all the lights off. And hide. Get Ruby and hide. Don’t phone the police.’
‘Are you sure? Are you sure someone’s outside?’ I asked.
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve been sitting here watching over you while you slept and I heard someone. Someone’s in the garden. They’ve been pacing around, checking the doors, so you just get upstairs, get Ruby and hide. I’ll deal with this.’
Ruby’s room was on the top floor so I went up there, quickly but quietly. If Vic had heard someone outside, I had no reason to linger downstairs with something bad maybe about to happen. I sat outside Ruby’s room in case anyone did get past him and came into the house; I’d protect Ruby to my last breath if I had to.
Vic had gone outside, to chase whoever was out there, but I could tell by the wind that he had left the back door open. I heard him shouting and was now terrified – I expected to hear someone come back in the house at any second; I just wouldn’t know who it would be. Sitting on the stairs, in the dark, fully prepared to hurt anyone who came near my child, pregnant and terrified – I wondered how my life had turned into a horror story. I wanted to call the police, I desperately wanted to call them, but he’d told me not to and I had to trust him. I sat there in the pitch black terrified for Ruby, for me, my unborn baby and for Vic, who had disappeared into the garden to find out who was there. I was sure it was my ex, or someone sent by my ex. I sat there absolutely petrified for what felt like an age, knowing that the back door was open, so if there was an altercation and Vic came off worse, then whoever was in the garden could come into the house and I would have no way of protecting myself or Ruby.
My heart was pounding by the time I heard the door bang and Vic’s voice shout, ‘Megan! It’s fine! All sorted!’
I belted down the stairs and threw myself into his arms. He was out of breath but seemed to be pumped up on adrenalin rather than fear.
‘What happened? My God, Vic, what happened out there?’ I asked.
He was breathing heavily as he told me. ‘When I got out to the garden, whoever it was ran down to the bottom. They got out of the gate and I chased him up the hill into the village. I managed to catch him there and … well, let’s just say he’ll be sorry he messed with me.’
‘You hit him?’
Vic nodded. ‘Of course I did. He was on my turf, Megan. Decking him was a lot less than I wanted to do.’
‘Where is he? Where did he go?’ I asked, then, ‘Vic – who was it?’
‘There was a car waiting for him – it must have all been set up, it wasn’t just someone chancing their luck as they went past. It was no bog-standard burglar looking for an open door, Megan.’
‘This has gone too far,’ I said, wiping some blood off his cheek. I picked up the phone and started calling 999.
