Watching You Page 16

  And then, just as she was about to leave, once there was enough physical distance between them for her to feel able to breathe and think again, she turned and said, ‘Sir, why were you talking to B—?’

  He grasped his tie. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, losing her nerve. ‘Nothing.’

  40

  Freddie didn’t have any friends at school. He walked to school alone. Even if his journey coincided with a boy or two from his form there would be no acknowledgement of his presence, no nod of the head or casual All right Fred? He ate lunch alone in his form room. Twice a week he went to lunchtime chess club sessions, but there was no bonhomie there, no banter or potential for friendship. And once a week he went to coding club after school. Not because he wanted to but because his dad had said he had to do at least one after-school club or he’d cut off his access to the internet. Coding was all right. There was a guy there called Max who always made an effort, said hello, asked how he was, partnered up with him when they were told to do things in pairs. Freddie wouldn’t call him a friend but he was as close as it came.

  But Max was of no use to him right now because Max was five feet tall, about six stone, had long hair and wore squashy shoes, and it was obvious just from looking at him that he had precisely zero interest in girls, let alone any useful insight into them.

  Posters for the spring ball had gone up around school and tickets were on sale. Romola had mentioned it in a chat on Instagram the night before; some girl had posted a photo of herself posing in a changing room in a skin-tight dress with the caption #springball17 #sayyestothedress #doesmybumlookbiginthis.

  After a slew of girls piling in to say ohmygod, no of course your bum does not look big, are you mad? like, you’re so perfect, ohmygod, Romola left a comment saying that is a really very nice dress indeed.

  Freddie had zoomed in on the photo, looking for some clue as to where it might be from, and found half a logo painted on to the inside of the cubicle that looked like the letters URBN arranged into a square. He’d googled URBN and found that it was the Urban Outfitters’ logo and he’d gone straight onto their website to find the dress and ordered it, even though it was sixty pounds.

  ‘You going to the spring ball?’ he asked Max now.

  Max peered at him through the curtains of his hair. ‘What?

  ‘The spring ball? Next week. You know, the one with St Mildred’s?’

  Max grimaced. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Why would I?’

  Freddie shrugged. ‘I didn’t say you would. I just asked if you were.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said casually. ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Max. ‘Think I’d rather die.’

  ‘Thought you’d say that.’

  ‘What’s your motivation?’

  ‘A girl,’ he said. ‘I want to take a girl.’

  ‘What, like a particular girl, or just some random girl?’

  ‘Yes, a particular girl.’

  Max looked at him curiously and said, ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Hmm what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Max. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No. Seriously. Tell me what you’re hmming at?’

  ‘Nothing. Really. Just, you know, guys like us’ – he pointed at himself and then at Freddie – ‘we don’t get to take girls to dances. It’s against the laws of nature. Of natural selection.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Unless she’s a moose? Is the girl you want to take to the dance a moose?’

  ‘No. She’s entirely gorgeous.’

  ‘Well then, my friend, forget it.’

  Freddie blinked slowly. He felt a terrible dark swirl of fury building inside him. He wanted suddenly to hurt Max. Not just lash out at him with a swinging fist, but somehow to dissect him. Pull him into tiny bits, slowly, agonisingly.

  ‘I am not’, he said through gritted teeth, ‘a guy like you.’

  Max shrugged and turned back to his laptop. ‘If you say so,’ he muttered.

  Freddie turned to his computer and tried to concentrate on the task they’d been given but his head was too full of hatred of Max. He stared at his pathetic face in profile: his downy skin and droopy baby cheeks, the lank hair that hung in his eyes.

  ‘I bet’, Freddie hissed in his ear, ‘that you sleep in your mum’s bed and wake up every morning with a tiny little hard-on.’

  Max threw him a look of disgust. ‘Christ, you’re sick.’

  The hands on the clock on the wall of the IT room turned from 4.59 to 5 p.m. Freddie pulled his blazer from the back of his chair and stalked from the room. He snatched his stuff from his locker and left the school building, letting the doors slam closed in someone else’s face.

  He walked to Romola’s house even though he knew she was probably already tucked up inside. He stood at the entrance to the little mews, pretending to be texting someone. A man appeared by his side. The man paused briefly to look at his own phone before sliding it into his jacket pocket and continuing past Freddie into the mews. Freddie watched with interest as he pulled a set of keys from his pocket and approached Romola’s house. The little dog started to yap behind the front door. The man opened the door, herded the dog gently back into the hallway with the edge of his foot and then closed the door behind him again.

  Romola’s dad.

  The thought that he’d seen Romola’s dad gave him a rush of something to his chest, a kind of dopamine, winning feeling, as though he’d just cleared a level on a computer game. Now he’d seen her dog and her dad. He glanced up at the first-floor windows: tiny squares covered over with smart, slatted wooden shutters. Up there was Romola’s room. He wanted to see inside Romola’s room. He wanted to sit on her bed and watch her getting ready for the spring ball.

  At the thought of the spring ball the memory of Max’s comment about guys like us reappeared and made his head fill with rage again. He kicked his foot against the wall where he was standing and muttered under his breath. How could he be a guy like Max? There was just no way, literally no way. He was way better than Max. He was way better than most of the guys at his school.

  He was about to turn and head home when he heard the unmistakeable sound of multiple teenage girls behind him; that ambiguous noise which sat exactly halfway between mirth and terror. He looked up and then quickly down at his phone again. He turned away from the mews so that he was facing the other way and leaned, as casually as he could, against the wall he’d just kicked. It was Romola and two girls who both looked like total fucking bitches.

  One of them had a paper packet of McDonald’s chips in her hand, the other a paper cup full of Starbucks shit. Romola had just a bottle of water. They passed him in a swathe of body spray and horrible honking laughter. All three eyed his Poleash Hall blazer warily, looked him up and down to see if they knew him and then turned their gazes quickly away when they realised they didn’t. He watched surreptitiously as all three walked up the mews to Romola’s house. Even from here and based on under one minute of observation, Freddie could tell Romola wasn’t comfortable, that she’d somehow been coerced into after-school jollies with these girls, somehow allowed them to invite themselves back to her house. She was the new girl. She would, he knew from vast experience, take what she could get in the early days.

  He heard the dog yapping again as Romola unlocked the front door, he heard the honking girls start to squawk and squeak with excitement about the tiny dog – ‘Ohmygod, ohmygod, he’s sooo cute!’ – then the door banged shut behind them and it was quiet again.

  He looked at the time. It was five thirty-five. He was hungry. He headed home.

  His mum was sitting in the kitchen watching a game show on the telly. She didn’t turn when he walked in.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, love,’ she replied, still without turning.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yup. I’m fine.’

  He put down his school bag and stood between his mum a
nd the TV.

  Her face was pale. She looked wan and run down. Ever since they’d moved to Melville, and especially since her broken ankle had healed and she’d been able to start running again, he’d been used to seeing his mum with a vital glow, cheeks flushed with colour, eyes bright with life.

  ‘You not going running today?’

  She looked at him distractedly for a moment, and then managed a smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not today.’ As she said this her hand moved vaguely towards her throat and then away again. It was a tiny, throwaway gesture, but Freddie had seen it before and he knew what it meant. His eyes searched for and found the tinge of reddish-blue bruising above the collar of her shirt.

  His stomach churning with nausea, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom.

  41

  14 March

  Jenna could see him trundling down the hill from Melville Heights the next morning, his weird oil-slick hair curtaining his eyes, that look of pained disdain visible even from here. She waited by the bus stop in case he was going to get the bus, but he didn’t, he carried on out of the village, towards the city where his posh school must be. She followed behind him for a moment, practising her opening line over and over in her head, and then she increased her pace to catch up with him.

  ‘Freddie,’ she said.

  He turned sharply at the sound of his name and then looked at her in utter shock. ‘Oh. Right. Hi.’

  ‘I was just thinking’, she said, ‘about what you were saying the other day. About that time in the Lake District. And I was there. Me and my mum and dad and my kid brother. I remember it.’

  Freddie stopped walking and turned to face her. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I remember you all on the coach and I remember the woman coming out of nowhere and screaming at your dad.’

  He nodded encouragingly but seemed to be having trouble forming a verbal response.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘you said you wanted to talk about it? What was it you wanted to know exactly?’

  ‘It was …’ She saw a red veil creep up his face from his neck. ‘It was … Do you know what happened?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I thought you might know? I mean, who was that woman?’

  Freddie shrugged. He rubbed his chin with his fingers and seemed to be trying to look thoughtful, but just looked a little odd. ‘I don’t know. My father always maintained that she’d mistaken him for someone else. But I always had this … this feeling that there was something more to it. Something he didn’t want me to know.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He shrugged. ‘I think I never really believed that he didn’t know her. It didn’t ring true.’

  Jenna nodded.

  ‘How well do you remember it?’ he asked.

  ‘I remember it really well,’ she said. ‘It’s just one of those things; when you’re a kid, and you see adults being really angry, really aggressive, it sticks in your mind.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Exactly.’

  There followed a brief silence. Jenna felt that there was more to this conversation, something Freddie was holding back, but she wasn’t sure how to dig it out of him. They’d almost reached the turning for Jenna’s school.

  ‘Do you remember her saying viva?’ she asked in a rush.

  Freddie stopped. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Actually, I do.’

  ‘Can you remember her exact words?’

  Freddie touched his chin again. ‘Something about how viva was her life, viva was her everything.’

  ‘What do you think viva was? Could it have been a person?’

  Freddie shrugged. ‘I always assumed it was.’

  Jenna saw a familiar figure appearing at the bottom of the road. It was Bess. She was on her own. She turned to Freddie, an unplanned question suddenly burning at the tip of her tongue. ‘Do you like your dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your dad? Do you get on with him? Is he an OK dad?

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Is he nice to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s pretty nice to me. Much nicer than I am to him.’

  ‘You’re not nice to him?’

  ‘No. Not really. He’s kind of a dick. Well, not a dick, but, you know, everyone thinks he’s so amazing. And I live with him and I see him all the time and I know he’s not that amazing and sometimes he’s really hard to live with and moody and he can be really—’ He stopped and she saw his gaze fall hard to the ground. ‘He can just be difficult. But basically, he’s fine.’

  ‘Do you think your dad would … would he ever …?’ She stopped. She wanted to ask him about Mr Fitzwilliam, about his taste for young girls. She wanted to know if her best friend was in danger of being manipulated or not. But she couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. This was his son.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, stopping at the crossroads. ‘Look, I’m going to wait for my friend to catch me up so you should go ahead. I’ll see you around, OK?’

  Freddie looked flummoxed for a moment, as though there was something else he wanted to say. Then he nodded and said, ‘Yeah. Cool. I’ll see you around.’

  She watched him loping off towards the city and sighed. She’d hoped that Freddie Fitzwilliam might have offered up a nugget of insight into his dad, something that might make sense of her strange dislike of him, of her mother’s bizarre obsession with him, of the oddness she felt about him and Bess. But she was none the wiser.

  She took a deep breath, turned on the spot and waited for Bess to catch up.

  ‘Hey,’ she said as Bess came alongside. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m good,’ Bess said. ‘Who was that you were talking to?’ She jutted her chin towards the road into the city.

  ‘Just some boy,’ Jenna replied, ‘from a private school.’

  ‘Why were you talking to him?’

  She shrugged. ‘Just was.’

  They stood at the pedestrian crossing, waiting for the red man to turn green. ‘You around at lunchtime?’ Jenna asked awkwardly as the light changed and they started across the road.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bess. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Want to have lunch?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Bess.

  Mr Fitzwilliam was stationed at the door. He eyed them walking in together and said, ‘Miss Ridley! Miss Tripp! Good morning!’

  ‘Morning, sir,’ said Bess, her comportment shifting immediately from awkward and monosyllabic to gushing and cute.

  Jenna threw him a tight smile and passed him as quickly as she could without running.

  She found Bess in the home room at lunchtime. She was sitting alone, doing her Spanish homework. She looked up when Jenna walked in and gave her an uncertain smile. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Jenna. She glanced down at Bess’s homework. ‘Shit,’ she said, ‘Didn’t you do that?’

  ‘No. Forgot.’

  ‘But there’s, like, loads. You’ll never get it all done.’

  ‘I know,’ Bess said. ‘I’m going to pretend my printer broke down halfway through printing it out.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you said last time?’

  Bess looked up at her uncertainly. ‘That was physics, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jenna. ‘It was Spanish. Definitely.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Bess. ‘Well, what shall I say then?’

  Jenna contained a smile. After almost a week of not talking, they’d slipped back into their traditional roles in under a minute.

  ‘I dunno. Maybe you could just hand it in and when he asks where the rest is you could just act all surprised and say you thought it didn’t seem like that much, maybe the rest of it got muddled up with some other papers. Something like that. Or’ – she smiled – ‘you could just let me help and do it all?’

  Bess smiled back. ‘Yes. Option two. Please.’

  Jenna laughed and sat down next to Bess.

  ‘You not eating?’ she asked Bess, unzipping her lunch bag and taking out a chicken and pasta salad. She glanced at the nutritional information. Si
x hundred and eighty-two calories. God, she thought, how could salad have so many calories in it?

  ‘No,’ said Bess. ‘I’m trying to skip lunch this week.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m getting fat.’

  Jenna grimaced. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’

  ‘I am,’ said Bess, leaning back to show her the waistband of her school skirt. ‘Look. Fatty McFatfat.’

  Jenna rolled her eyes. ‘That’s just water retention, you dick. You’re not fat. Here.’ She unzipped her bag again and pulled out a spoon. ‘Share this salad with me. It’s way too fattening for me to eat it all.’

  Bess sighed and smiled and took the spoon from Jenna. ‘OK then,’ she said, digging it straight into the pasta and wolfing it down.

  For half an hour they shared the pasta and worked through Bess’s Spanish homework. Then, as the clock ran down towards the end of lunchtime, Jenna took a deep breath and said, ‘Saw you were over in Lissenden on Friday night.’

  Bess looked up at her. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We were at Ruby’s cousin’s place.’

  ‘Jed?’ said Jenna.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bess. ‘Jed. You been stalkin’ me?’

  ‘No, just saw it on Snapchat. Was it good?’

  ‘Yeah. It was fun.’

  ‘Is he fit?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s fit. But he’s really annoying? Thinks he’s such a clown. You know, you just want to say: Be yourself. Stop being like this professional buffoon. Then maybe some girls might like you. ’Cos you’re properly fit.’

  Jenna smiled. She didn’t care too much about Jed and she was running out of time to ask the question she really wanted to ask. ‘I saw you get a taxi back. On Snap Maps.’

  ‘Oh my God, you have so been stalking me!’

  She shook her head. ‘When you didn’t get out of the taxi I came to find you. I thought you were being, like, raped on the back seat or something.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘And when I came out, I saw you over the way. Talking to Mr Fitzwilliam.’ She paused and watched her friend’s reaction. ‘What was that all about?’