Watching You Page 17

  ‘Oh God, yeah, that! I got out the taxi and he was just sort of there. Said he was on his way to the all-night shop.’

  ‘Oh, right. And what were you talking about?’

  ‘Just – stuff. You know.’

  ‘No,’ said Jenna. ‘Tell me.’

  Bess laughed. ‘There’s nothing to tell!’ she said. ‘Just, you know, where’ve you been, how’re you doing sort of thing.’

  ‘Were you talking about my mum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you swear?’

  ‘I totally swear. We just chatted, like about boring stuff.’

  ‘Didn’t it feel sort of weird though?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Bess. ‘Why should it feel weird?’

  ‘Because he’s our head teacher. And he’s a man. And he’s old. And it was the middle of the night. Didn’t it feel awkward?’

  Bess shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, a smile spreading across her face. ‘No, it didn’t feel awkward. It felt really nice.’

  Jenna frowned. ‘What’s going on with you and him, Bess?’ she hissed.

  ‘Going on?’

  ‘Yes. Is he, you know, trying to groom you or something?’

  The minute she said it she knew it was the wrong line to take. Bess turned and stared at her. ‘Oh my God, Jen,’ she said. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I don’t get what you see in him. I don’t get why you like him. I think he’s really dodgy.’

  ‘He so is not dodgy. God. He’s the total opposite of dodgy. He’s kind and caring and nice. I swear. He’s just the nicest, nicest man in the whole world. Please, Jen,’ she said, holding her hands in hers, ‘please don’t turn into your mum.’

  Jenna pulled her hands from Bess’s and then pushed back her chair so hard and so fast that it nearly fell over. She stalked from the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

  42

  A day that started with a conversation with one of the most lusted-after schoolgirls in Melville was always going to be unsettling. A day that started with a highly personal conversation about his relationship with his father, even more so. But it was Jenna’s closing comments that stayed with Freddie as he walked towards the city. Do you think your dad would … would he ever …?

  Ever what?

  What had she been alluding to?

  What did she think his dad might be capable of? More interestingly, what did he think his dad might be capable of?

  He could air a theory or two but that’s all they were: flimsy hypotheses based on nothing more than hazy childhood memories, no facts to back anything up, just a sense that something bad had been following them about as a family ever since he could remember.

  He recalled vividly how, as he’d stood and watched the mad woman hit his father by the lake that day, he’d experienced a strong, almost dizzying sensation that he was about to discover something remarkable about his father, about his family, the kernel of something that would explain everything. But it hadn’t come.

  He’d always thought it was he and he alone who suspected there was something off about his dad. But now there was Jenna Tripp. Jenna Tripp could see it too.

  He passed Max as he turned down the road to his school. Max threw him a look of fear blended with disgust. Freddie totally blanked him. As he followed behind him through the school gates he pictured himself with a pair of giant rusty scissors hacking off his stupid long hair and shoving it down his throat.

  He handed his phone in to the school receptionist sitting in her big mahogany panelled booth; then he headed to his locker. Here he unloaded his rucksack and his coat before heading to the toilets. That was another shit thing about these old-fashioned private schools housed in Victorian mansions: terrible, cold, echoey toilets. He examined his face for a while in the mirror, the face that Jenna Tripp had just engaged with during their conversation this morning. He stared at himself, trying to see what she might have seen. He looked like his mum. That’s what everyone always said. It hadn’t meant much to him when he was younger – who cared which one of his parents he looked like? He didn’t want to look like his mum; he didn’t want to look like his dad either. He ran his hands over his hair. He had very straight, very shiny hair, like his mum. She wore hers in a short bob. It looked nice on her. But did he, with his shiny, poker-straight fringe, maybe look a little monk-like? Or a bit like a girl? He pushed his smooth hair off his forehead and examined the planes of his face. He thought of Max and his infuriating girl’s haircut. He pulled hard at his hair until it was all bunched inside his hand and he could barely see it. He grimaced. He snarled. And then he smiled.

  That night he walked home via the Greek barber’s on the corner and paid them ten pounds to shave it all off into what the barber referred to as a number three. Afterwards, as they swept his hair away and unpinned his cape and brushed the snippets from his shoulders he stared hard at the boy in the mirror who had suddenly transformed into a man. All the weakness and passivity had been expunged from him with the removal of his hair. He was no longer one of Max’s guys like us. He no longer looked like his mum. Neither did he look like his dad. He looked hard-baked. He looked fierce and fresh and feral. He looked, he thought, running his hand over the suede of his scalp, totally fucking amazing.

  He walked home past Romola’s school and then past Romola’s house and then, just for old times’ sake and to test out the feeling of walking about with a shaved head, he walked past Whackadoo. He saw neither Romola nor Joey, but it didn’t matter. Just the very act of allowing himself to be seen in this new and somewhat alarming guise was exciting and made his blood pump. People might think he was a yob, he thought, they might think he was about to mug them, or start a fight with them. He passed a group of older teens, swaggering in cheap, baggy sports gear, rangy, swinging limbs, roll-ups pinched between fingers, greasy hair, gimlet eyes. Usually he would shy away, move inside a shadow or to the other side of the street. Often there would be something like cat calls or dangerous looks. Today he strode past them, bristling with fake attitude. He held his breath, waiting for it but it didn’t come. They had not registered him. He no longer looked like a kickable private-school freak. He was not on their radar.

  His mother was on the sofa when he got home. As much as Freddie found his mum’s hyperactivity exhausting to live with, he found these slumps of hers even harder. He propelled himself into the room, to a point directly in front of her, hoping to shock her into some kind of reaction with his new haircut.

  ‘Tada!’ he said, striking a pose. ‘Whaddya think?’

  She glanced up at him. For a moment he saw only the foggy blankness behind her eyes that had been there since Saturday morning. But it quickly lifted and was replaced by a look of sheer horror.

  ‘Oh my God. Freddie. What on earth have you done?’

  ‘Got my hair cut off,’ he said. ‘It was getting in my eyes.’

  ‘But, but … you have such lovely hair.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t. I have stupid long shiny hair that made me look like a freak. And anyway, it will grow back.’

  He sat alongside his mother on the sofa and smiled at her. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ he said teasingly.

  ‘But you don’t look like you any more.’

  ‘I know. It’s great. I feel great.’

  ‘Oh God, I hope it grows back before we see Grandma next month. She’ll probably have a heart attack.’

  ‘It’s just hair,’ Freddie said, thinking that actually it was much more than just hair. It was his very essence. He looked at his mum and saw that she was crying. ‘Oh, God, Mum,’ he said. ‘God. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. It’s just something I needed to do, for me. It’s not about you. I swear. Please don’t cry.’

  But his mum kept crying and he moved across the sofa so that he was closer to her and he put his arms around her and he tried to hug her but she shouted out in pain and pushed him away. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

&nb
sp; ‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of back pain.’

  He remembered the dark shadows on her throat yesterday, the raised voices in his parents’ room on Friday night. He backed away from her and looked her in the eye and he said, ‘Mum. What happened with you and Dad on Friday night?’

  She wiped away her tears, sniffed and said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, Dad went out in the middle of the night and came back with cornflakes and then you were both shouting at each other and ever since then you’ve been really depressed. And this …’ He gently pulled down the fabric of her polo neck. She flinched away from him and pulled it back up. ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Some kind of friction burn.’

  ‘A friction burn? On your neck?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is, OK? I just woke up in the morning and it was there. It doesn’t even hurt.’

  He stared at her and sighed. And as he stared into her eyes he had a sudden overwhelming sense of her being a stranger to him. Who are you, he wanted to ask her, who are you?

  ‘What happened’, he found himself asking, ‘that day in the Lake District? Who was that woman?’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mum. You know what I’m talking about. I heard you and Dad talking about it in the kitchen the other day.’

  He felt emboldened and brazen. He was sick of living like a gimp in his room at the top of the house, letting his life happen to him passively. He was sick of being the kid. He wanted more autonomy, more power, more say in how things happened. And buried somewhere in the dark, tangled roots of the incident at the Lake District back when he was nine years old was the key that could unlock the strange darkness at the heart of his family.

  ‘It was nothing,’ she replied. ‘You know that. We’ve talked about it enough times.’

  ‘I don’t think it was nothing,’ he continued firmly. ‘I think that woman did know Dad. And I think she was cross with him because he’d done something bad. And I think you’re both lying to me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling.’

  ‘I’m not being silly. I’m being deadly serious. What did Dad do to that woman? I need you to tell me. I need to know.’

  ‘Oh, it was probably just something to do with his job. You know. Maybe he had to expel her daughter or maybe she wasn’t pleased with her last report. You know how over-sensitive parents can be.’

  ‘Daughter?’ he said. ‘How do you know it was a daughter?’

  ‘I don’t!’ she shouted.

  He looked at her in surprise.

  She continued, more softly: ‘Son, daughter, whatever. Her child.’

  Freddie nodded. He’d pushed her as far as he felt comfortable. And there it was. Her daughter. A slip of the tongue. A giveaway. There was a story behind that moment. Not just a case of mistaken identity. But a woman with a daughter. A daughter who had had some kind of interaction with his father that had made that woman incredibly, terrifyingly angry.

  43

  17 March

  On Friday Alfie came back from Tom and Nicola’s house with an envelope of cash.

  ‘All done,’ he said. ‘Paid in full. I’m taking you down to the Melville for champagne!’

  ‘Or,’ she said, thinking of her sore feet and her dirty hair, ‘we could buy a bottle of champagne and drink it in bed with pizza and sex?’

  He eyed her curiously. ‘Pizza and sex, you say?’ He smiled and began stripping off his overalls. ‘Here.’ He passed her the envelope of cash. ‘You go and get the champagne and I’ll have a shower and order the pizza.’

  She peered inside the envelope, her fingers touched the edges of the notes. Tom’s money, she thought. She caught her breath.

  ‘OK,’ she said, grabbing her trainers off the floor. ‘It’s a deal.’

  The village was buzzy. The early spring weather had brought people out of hibernation. Some of the restaurants had even put their pavement tables out and for a moment she wished she’d taken Alfie up on his offer of a night out in the village.

  The chilled cabinet was at the back of the shop. Alfie had told her to spend up to thirty pounds. She found a bottle of something vintage for £29.99 and took it to the till, only to turn a corner and find herself standing right behind Tom Fitzwilliam in the queue. She almost put the bottle down and left, but before she’d had time to make a move, Tom turned and saw her standing there. His face opened up into a smile of genuine pleasure and he said, ‘Josephine! Hello!’

  ‘Tom,’ she said, ‘hi!’

  She moved ahead of him to put her bottle on the counter. Tom eyed it. ‘Are we celebrating happy news?’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, her voice coming out far too loud and far too intense. ‘Just celebrating pay day. With your money, I believe.’

  ‘Aah,’ he said, looking at the notes in her hand. ‘Alfie’s last day. Of course.’

  She turned back to the guy behind the till and handed him the notes. He passed her her penny change and began rolling the bottle in tissue paper.

  ‘How are you, anyway?’ she heard Tom ask from behind her.

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ she said, without turning around. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am also absolutely fine.’

  ‘Good,’ said Joey, her heart racing, ‘good.’

  The man put the bottle in a bag and passed it to her and she said good evening and thank you and turned to find Tom Fitzwilliam waiting for her. He had a small smile playing on his mouth and he was so handsome that she could barely look at him.

  ‘Are you walking back up the hill?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘me too. I’ll walk you up.’

  She managed a smile. ‘OK.’

  ‘It was lovely to see you the other night,’ he said as they stepped out of the wine shop.

  ‘Likewise,’ she said.

  ‘Freddie was most perturbed.’

  She threw him a look.

  ‘Boring old Dad talking to a mysterious, beautiful young woman.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Right. Although I refute any suggestion that I am beautiful or even young.’

  ‘Don’t be disingenuous.’

  ‘I’m not! I’m going to be thirty in three years. And I am cute, at a push, but I am definitely not beautiful.’

  ‘Thirty is shockingly young when you’re fifty-one. And yes, you’re very cute. And very beautiful.’

  Joey swallowed. There was nothing ambiguous about this. Tom was flirting with her. A situation that had lived inside her head for weeks was now happening in reality. She needed to cut it off right now. But instead she found herself saying, ‘Well, thank you, I am very flattered.’

  He stopped for a moment, and she stopped alongside him. His mouth half opened as though he wanted to say something, but then it closed again and he smiled at her. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘what happened outside the pub that night—’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please don’t. I can’t even bear to think about it.’

  ‘But that’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. When I’m alone, in the car or in the shower, I replay it in my head, over and over again.’

  Blood rushed to Joey’s face. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m not expecting you to say anything. I’m not expecting you to do anything. I just wanted you to know. That I liked it. That it was nice. That I didn’t think badly of you for it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I appreciate that.’

  They’d crossed the pedestrian crossing opposite the Melville and were at the bottom of the escarpment. Here there was a narrow pavement, overhung with foliage, muted street lights buried deep inside heavy spring blossom. There were no houses down here, just an old red telephone box and a tiny Victorian letterbox built into the wall. They were, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

  It occurred to Joey that they could, right now, and with very little risk of being caught, have sex. It could happen. Easily. But then she thoug
ht of Alfie in their bedroom, shower-fresh, waiting for her.

  She was about to pick up her pace, break into the awkward ripeness of the mood with a brisk comment along the lines of how the champagne would be getting warm when Tom suddenly stopped, leaned right into towards her and said, ‘Could you do it?’ His breath was as warm as a summer heatwave in her ear. ‘Could you do it to me now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you did. Before. Outside the pub. Just …’ He took her hand gently and she closed her eyes and knew what was about to happen and wanted to stop it but didn’t want to stop it and then her hand was there, right there, her fingers cupped around him. She heard his groan of satisfaction soft in her hair, felt his hand upon her hip, pulling her towards him, his mouth falling into the soft place in the crook of her neck that made her tense and liquid all at the same time. She let the bag of champagne drop on to the earthy undergrowth and she ran her other hand around the back of his neck and pulled the smell of him deep down inside herself. For a moment they stood like that, like two people melded together into one, a gently writhing mass of urgency and need and breath and lust.

  But then an arc of car lights swung across them and Joey and Tom broke apart. Joey reached down for the bag with the bottle in it and they turned as one, continuing on their way up the hill in complete silence until they got to Joey’s door, when Tom turned, nodded courteously and said, ‘Well, enjoy your champagne.’

  Joey nodded, once, and let herself into the house.

  Joey awoke at seven the next morning and, unable to find her way back to sleep, she pulled on a cardigan and Rebecca’s rubber gardening shoes and took her morning coffee to the bottom of Jack and Rebecca’s garden. Here she stood for a while, staring through the gauzy twilight towards the back of Tom’s house, hoping to find him staring back.

  There was a little gate at the bottom of the garden. She’d never noticed it before. She pushed it open and found herself on a gravelled footpath. On the other side of the footpath was a wooded area. The trees overhead shivered and stirred with small birds. From here she could see that all the houses in Melville Heights had access to the same pathway. Leaving her coffee on the wall, she walked quietly along the path and stopped for just a moment at the back of Tom’s house.