Watching You Read online

  ‘So, the landlord didn’t mind you having the place redecorated then?’ Joey asked.

  ‘No. She was delighted. We went halves on it. But I just couldn’t live with it another second; it was yellow in here. Yellow walls! Can you imagine?’

  Joey shrugged and smiled. She wasn’t a fan of yellow walls but at least they might have injected some warmth and sunshine into this drab room.

  ‘And I’m so glad that Alfie’s getting some more work. It’s hard to get anyone decent, in cities. Much easier in the sticks.’

  ‘So you used to live in the countryside?’

  ‘We’ve lived virtually everywhere. Even east London for a while. Now that was hair-raising.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘God, yes. Ninety per cent Bengali intake at Tom’s school. Luckily, we lived a bit further out, in a more gentrified area. But really, it was like Calcutta!’

  ‘Wow,’ said Joey. She turned so that Nicola couldn’t see her face. ‘Wow,’ she said under her breath. So, she thought, Tom’s wife is an ignorant, small-town racist. Yet married to a man who dedicates his life to underprivileged children, to improving their prospects, a benevolent man with charisma to spare. How did that work?

  ‘Do you think you’ll stay here?’ she asked. ‘In Bristol?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Nicola. ‘Tom likes to conquer, triumph, consolidate and move on. Shame. I like it here.’

  ‘Where are you from originally?’

  ‘Originally from Derby. Grew up mainly in Burton-on-Trent.’

  ‘And where is Tom from?’

  ‘Tunbridge Wells. He’s a fancy southerner. Went to boarding school. Mother was an honourable something. Way posher than me. Anyway,’ she said. ‘Are you done?’ Her mood had turned. She seemed keen to get rid of Joey now. And Joey was happy to leave. She didn’t like this house. And she didn’t like Nicola.

  ‘Yes!’ she said brightly. ‘I am pretty much done. There’s just the landing to do. If I can? I’ll be really super quick.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Nicola, turning out the lights before Joey was even out of the room.

  The stairs were carpeted in baggy grey carpet that looked like a health-and-safety hazard and she watched her step carefully as she ascended. There were three doors on the landing: one to a bathroom, one to what looked like a small bedroom and another to what looked like a bigger bedroom. She heard floorboards creaking above with careful footsteps and realised that the son was lurking about, eavesdropping.

  She took the photos as fast as she could, but halfway down the stairs she stopped on the half-turn and peered through the long window that looked out over the back gardens and the ‘secret’ woodland beyond. From here she could clearly see the gate at the foot of Tom’s garden where she’d peered through the gaps in the fence on Saturday morning. She touched the glass briefly with her fingertip, before completing her descent.

  ‘Well,’ said Nicola, waiting for her by the front door. ‘It’s been lovely to meet you. Please do send Alfie my love.’

  ‘Yes. Yes I will. And send mine to Tom.’ Her voice caught on the last consonant of his name. She had no idea if Tom had mentioned their neighbourly encounters or not.

  But Nicola looked unfazed and smiled and said, ‘Yes. I certainly will. If he ever gets home, of course. The hours he works are extraordinary.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joey. ‘I can imagine.’

  She looked upwards at the attic bedroom window as she left Tom’s house and saw the shadow of his son move quickly out of sight.

  46

  22 March

  Bess did not come into school on Wednesday, nor did she reply to any messages on her phone. After school, Jenna headed directly to Bess’s house.

  Bess, like her, lived alone with her mother. Unlike Jenna she didn’t have a brother or a father living elsewhere. Her father was not known to Bess or to her mother, but was probably called Patrick. Her mother was only eighteen when she had her and she and Bess were a very tight little unit. Very bonded. Jenna had envied their bond over the years as her relationship with her mother had slid slowly downhill alongside her mum’s mental health.

  Bess’s mother was a beautician and worked at a big salon in the city. Their flat was owned by a charitable co-op, and they paid hardly anything to live there. It was small but beautiful: gilt mirrors and fluffy cushions, fairy lights and scented candles. Her mum had even painted their kitchen units baby pink. It wasn’t the sort of flat where a girl who got pregnant by her head teacher at fifteen would live; Bess’s mother wasn’t the sort of mother whose daughter would get pregnant by her head teacher at fifteen; and Bess wasn’t the sort of fifteen-year-old girl who would get pregnant by anyone, let alone her head teacher.

  Her mum’s little car was where it always was, parked in the tiny car park behind the block, but the lights were off in their flat on the first floor. Jenna rang the intercom and waited a moment before ringing it again. Her mum was probably still at work. She pulled out her phone and called Bess. It went straight through to voicemail. She opened Snap Maps but Bess wasn’t logged into it. She messaged Ruby: Any idea where Bess is?

  Ruby said, No, ask Tiana.

  Tiana didn’t know.

  Jenna looked at the time; it was nearly five.

  She opened Snap Maps again. This time she noticed that Ruby was at the same place she’d been last week, the house in Lissenden. Jed’s house.

  She turned and headed for the bus stop.

  Jed’s house was a grey, pebble-dashed post-war box on an estate of similar houses. There was a blue van parked out the front and an old green Mazda MX5. She could hear, even from down here, the sound of youthful hilarity coming from a room upstairs. She rang on the doorbell and a woman with long, hennaed hair and a nose ring answered.

  ‘Hi,’ Jenna said. ‘Is Bess here?’

  ‘Bess? Is she the little blonde one?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  She shook her head. ‘She was here a while back. But she left about half an hour ago.’

  ‘Any idea where she went?’

  ‘I have no clue.’

  ‘Did she – did she look OK?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘I suppose. She called out goodbye. I came to the door and let her out. She seemed OK. Are you one of Ruby’s friends? From the Academy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jenna.

  ‘Ruby’s here.’ She tipped her chin to indicate the stairs behind her. ‘Why don’t you go up and ask her?’

  She thought of Ruby’s assertion that she hadn’t seen Bess. She heard another blast of adolescent mirth coming from upstairs. She smiled and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Don’t worry. It’s fine. I’m sure I’ll find her.’

  ‘I think her dad picked her up,’ said the woman.

  ‘She hasn’t got a dad,’ Jenna said, startled.

  ‘Well, someone picked her up. Looked like a man but I wasn’t really paying attention. Maybe it was a taxi.’

  ‘What sort of car was it?’

  ‘A big one,’ she said. ‘Black.’

  ‘Was it a BMW?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It might have been. That kind of thing anyway.’ She paused and looked at Jenna, maternal concern blooming over her features. ‘Is everything OK?’ she said. ‘Is Bess in trouble?’

  Jenna shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I just needed to talk to her. That’s all.’

  RECORDED INTERVIEW

  Date: 25/03/2017

  Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

  Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

  POLICE: This interview is being tape-recorded. I am Detective Inspector Rose Pelham and I am based at Trinity Road Police Station. I work with the serious crime team. If you could just give us your full name?

  FT: Frances Ann Tripp. My professional name is Frankie Miller.

  POLICE: Professional?

  FT: I used to do some modelling and, more recently, some small acting roles.

  POL
ICE: I see. And can you tell us your address please?

  FT: Yes. Number 8, Bellevue Lane, Lower Melville, Bristol BS12 6YH.

  POLICE: Thank you, Mrs Tripp. And can you tell us where you were between the hours of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. last night?

  FT: Yes. I was outside Tom Fitzwilliam’s house.

  POLICE: Outside?

  FT: Yes. There’s a small wooded area opposite the houses. I had a fold-up chair and a camera.

  POLICE: Right. And could you explain exactly why you were sitting in the woods outside the victim’s house with a fold-up chair and a camera?

  FT: Yes. Happily. It’s a relief to finally be taken seriously about all of this. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been trying to get you lot to take my concerns about this man seriously? And I’ve just been ignored and ridiculed.

  POLICE: Mrs Tripp, if you could just return to the original question. What were you doing outside the Fitzwilliams’ house?

  FT: I had a tip-off. On one of my chat rooms.

  POLICE: Your chat rooms?

  FT: Yes. I’m being gang-stalked. Thousands of us are. And no one will talk about it. It’s a global disgrace.

  POLICE: Mrs Tripp? The chat rooms?

  FT: Yes. Someone on one of my local chat rooms, a woman from Mold, I don’t know her name. Tom was the head at her local school a couple of years ago. She knows what I’m dealing with. Anyway, she sent me a message at about 6 p.m. last night saying that she had it on good authority that there was going to be a big meeting at Tom’s house that evening, of all the members of his stalking cooperative. That I should go and watch and take photos so I’d have proof of what’s going on. The full extent of it. So I did.

  POLICE: And could you please describe to us exactly what you saw, Mrs Tripp, starting from the time you arrived.

  FT: It would be my pleasure.

  47

  22 March

  Freddie had got back from school an hour ago to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table, her hair pushed back into a bunch, wearing a hoodie and pyjama bottoms, knitting the never-ending baby blanket.

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing proper clothes?’ he’d asked.

  ‘I’ve been in bed all day,’ she’d said, putting the knitting down on the table and yawning. ‘I just got up.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Are you sick?’

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said, staring wanly at him. ‘I think I have the flu.’

  He’d looked at her. ‘Does Dad know?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. It came on after he left.’

  ‘Do you want some pills?’

  ‘I’ve taken some.’

  Freddie had felt irrationally cross. His mum did not have flu. She was lying. It was impossible to concentrate on something like knitting when you had the flu. Freddie had had flu when he was eleven and he hadn’t even been able to sit up, let alone knit. She just wanted a proper reason to stay at home all day being miserable and weird. She wanted everyone to feel sorry for her. Which was stupid because he’d feel much sorrier for her if she told him the truth about the marks on her neck. He took a pile of buttered crumpets and a mug of camomile tea to his room and closed the door behind him.

  Now, changed down to his underwear and wearing a fleecy dressing gown he’d been given by his grandmother for Christmas, he ate his crumpets and drank his tea while flicking through pictures of Romola on his phone.

  Behind him, his new suit hung from the top of his wardrobe, still in its plastic packaging. His mum had got it for him at the weekend from Debenhams. Beneath it sat a pair of shiny black shoes, also from Debenhams, the arrangement looking somewhat like a hanging man. He hadn’t asked Romola to be his date yet. He kept getting close to it each time he followed behind her, then losing his nerve at the very last moment and slowing down, cursing to himself under his breath. The ball was two days away. It was now or never.

  He went to his window and focused his binoculars on to Jenna Tripp’s road. She would know, he thought. Jenna Tripp would know how he should ask a girl to a ball. She must get asked to balls literally all the time. He decided that the next morning he would ensure that his path crossed with hers on the walk to school and he would ask Jenna Tripp what to do.

  As he thought this, his eye was taken by two women talking animatedly at the bus stop. One was Jenna Tripp’s mum. She was wearing an oversized parka with a purple fur trim and smoking an e-cigarette. He could see the huge cloud of vapour clearly from here. And when the cloud cleared he zoomed in on to the face of the woman talking to her. Youngish. Brown hair. A big black coat. A bit fat. He saw her take a piece of paper from her coat pocket and he saw her writing things down on it, things that Jenna’s mum seemed to be telling her to write down. Then they said goodbye, Jenna’s mum turning towards her road, the fat lady turning in the other direction. Freddie instinctively snapped a photo of the encounter and for a moment he thought of logging it in The Melville Papers.

  But then he thought, No, I am no longer interested in what the boring old people in this village are doing. I am only interested in Romola Brook.

  48

  That morning as Joey sat at the bus stop, she heard a car horn hooting and there was Tom, on the other side of the street, his window wound down, indicating that she should approach.

  Her stomach turned into a clenched fist.

  She rose slowly to her feet and crossed the street. Staring down through the open window she waited for Tom to talk.

  ‘Jump in,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you to work.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘Won’t you be late for school?’

  ‘I may well be late for school,’ he said, ‘but I’m the boss, so who’s going to be asking me questions?’

  She slid into the passenger seat. Her breath was caught halfway to her mouth. She couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe. For a moment they drove in silence. Joey tried to think of some arrangement of words to puncture the silence that wouldn’t make things more awkward than they already were, but failed.

  And then Tom turned off the radio and said, ‘We should probably talk. About this thing.’

  Joey nodded, exhaled, felt relief wash through her. ‘The you-and-me-on-Friday-night thing?’

  ‘Yes. The you-and-me-on-Friday-night thing. I have to say that I am completely and utterly flummoxed. I mean, this has never happened to me before …’

  She nodded again.

  ‘I’m just not the sort of man … really, I’m not. I need you to know that. It’s very, very important to me that you don’t think I make a habit of sexual impropriety.’

  She shook her head, encouragingly.

  ‘But, I don’t know, there’s something about you. Or more to the point, ever since that night at the pub when you …’

  ‘Assaulted you?’

  He laughed, softening the edges of the conversation. ‘Well, that’s not how I saw it. But yes, since that, I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. And I want to apologise for Friday night. I allowed my instincts to take me over. I saw you in the wine shop and all I could think was wow, wow, wow. But I never for one moment intended for what happened next to happen. That was primal, that was base. And I can only apologise. Profoundly. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Tom,’ she said. ‘I don’t need an apology. I really—’

  ‘You know,’ Tom interjected, ‘I have spent days frantically trying to avoid you, hoping that this feeling would go away, and then I saw you this morning, from my bedroom window, saw you leaving and it was clear that not seeing you hadn’t made any difference at all. In fact, it had made it even worse. So, the question is, what shall we do?’

  There was a beat of silence. ‘Do?’ she said.

  He looked at her intensely. ‘I think we need to … we need to stop this.’ He paused, briefly. ‘But in order to do so I think we need to get it out of our systems. And I’ve taken the liberty of booking a room. At a hotel. And I thought, maybe, we could meet there, after work. On Friday night.’

  Joey inhal
ed sharply. ‘Friday?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. If you think that’s a good idea. I mean, God, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a dreadful idea. But I just can’t … I can’t get past this. I can’t get past you.’

  ‘And then, afterwards, we …?’

  ‘We stop. Yes.’

  ‘But what if we don’t want to?’

  ‘We have to.’

  ‘But …’ Joey paused. Her head told her that this was an appalling idea. Her gut, the deep ache that she’d carried around inside her for weeks told her that if she didn’t go she might die. ‘I can’t promise, Tom. I can’t promise I’ll want to stop.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to promise. I’m just asking you to try.’

  She nodded.

  ‘So, you’ll do it?’ he asked. ‘You’ll meet me? About seven p.m.? Friday?’

  Joey tried to listen to the voice inside her head that was screaming at her to say no, say no. But the ache symphonised inside her; it grew layers and notes.

  ‘Yes,’ she found herself saying. ‘Friday. Yes.’

  RECORDED INTERVIEW

  Date: 25/03/2017

  Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

  Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

  POLICE: Ms Mullen, going back to last night. Friday 24 March. You say that in room 121 at the Bristol Harbour Hotel you and Mr Fitzwilliam sat and talked. Could you tell me exactly what you talked about?

  JM: Not really.

  POLICE: Not really?

  JM: I mean, no, we chatted. About lots of things.

  POLICE: What sort of things?

  JM: I can’t remember.

  POLICE: And so he, Mr Fitzwilliam, asked you to meet him in a hotel room on Friday night? In order to …?

  JM: He said it was to … he said we needed to get it out of our systems.