Watching You Read online

  RECORDED INTERVIEW

  Date: 25/03/2017

  Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

  Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

  POLICE: Ms Mullen. Could you tell us what you were wearing last night?

  JM: Yes. I was wearing a blue jersey dress from Primark.

  POLICE: And what sort of shoes?

  JM: Boots. Red suede boots.

  POLICE: Did they have a tassel?

  JM: Yes. I think so. Yes. They do have tassels.

  POLICE: Thank you. And were you wearing these clothes when Tom Fitzwilliam met you at the hotel?

  JM: Yes.

  POLICE: So, can you give us the approximate timings of this liaison at the Bristol Harbour Hotel?

  JM: Yes. I got there at about seven o’clock, just after, and checked in using my own card. Then Tom arrived about half an hour later.

  POLICE: And what happened then?

  JM: Nothing. We just talked.

  POLICE: In a £180-a-night hotel room?

  JM: Yes.

  POLICE: And then what?

  JM: Tom left.

  POLICE: And this was at what time?

  JM: I suppose it was about seven forty-five.

  POLICE: And after Tom Fitzwilliam left?

  JM: I stayed in the room.

  POLICE: And why did you stay in the room?

  JM: Because … I don’t know. Just to get my head together. I stayed for another ten minutes or so and then I left. I got a taxi home.

  POLICE: And then what did you do?

  JM: Nothing. Just watched TV with my husband. Went to bed.

  POLICE: So you didn’t knock at Tom’s door at eight fifteen?

  JM: [Silence.]

  POLICE: Well, did you or didn’t you?

  JM: No. I didn’t. I nearly did. I thought about it. But I changed my mind. I went home.

  POLICE: Thank you, Ms Mullen. That will do for now.

  12

  17 February

  At the end of the week, after a particularly rough day at work, Joey’s manager Dawn said, ‘Let’s go to the pub.’

  Joey almost said no, she was skint and smelly and wanted to lie in the bath for two hours drinking Baileys and staring at the ceiling. But then she thought about Alfie and the way he kept looking at her as though he was wondering what she was thinking and remembered that he wasn’t working at the bar tonight and she decided that drinks with someone she barely knew and who, as far as she knew, had no interest in having a baby with her would be preferable.

  They took along a boy from the Whackadoo café called Krstyan, who sat with his thumbs on his phone, taking rhythmic mouthfuls from a pint of lager and barely registering their existence. A few moments later Dawn’s wife Sam arrived with a friend of hers from work and then that friend’s friend joined them and chairs were procured from other tables and added to the small table where they’d started and soon there was quite a group of them, all pretty much strangers but all the better for it. Joey dealt with the strangeness of it by necking two vodka and tonics, and then a pint that someone bought for her without asking. The music in the background was loud and metal-based, the clientele mostly students and ageing rockers. The bar and the floorboards were painted lead black and a band was setting up in the back room where two lurchers sat with their heads on their paws looking as though they’d seen it all before and just wanted to go home.

  ‘I’m going to order some food at the bar,’ Dawn shouted over the music. ‘Do you want anything?’

  Joey shook her head. ‘No thanks, I’m good.’ She was enjoying the sensation of alcohol hitting the empty pit of her stomach, the soft swirl of it, the redistribution of her psyche into more manageable chunks. She didn’t want to mop it up. Sam turned to Joey as Dawn made her way to the bar. She was a sweet-faced girl with pink-tipped hair and a pink stud in her nose who looked not much older than eighteen.

  ‘How are you getting on in the seventh circle of hell?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joey. ‘Whackadoo?’

  Sam blinked. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It’s pretty grim,’ she said. ‘But Dawn’s a great boss. And sometimes it’s even a bit fun. How long have you two been married?’

  ‘Just over a year,’ said Sam. ‘And don’t worry. I’m older than I look. I’m actually twenty-seven. In case you thought I was some kind of child bride. How about you? Are you married?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, still finding the concept strangely unlikely. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Oh, just a few months, actually.’

  ‘Oh, bless. Have you known each other long?’

  ‘Ha! No. Also just a few months. It was a bit of a whirlwind.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Sam, ‘I wish you luck!’

  And it was as she said this that Joey cast her gaze around the bar and her eye caught upon the back of the head of a man standing at the bar. A tall, well-built man with short dark hair, silver at the temples, wearing a rumpled work shirt with the sleeves pushed up. He turned, his large hands forming a triangle around three pints of beer, his mouth turned up into a wry smile and Joey froze.

  It was Tom Fitzwilliam.

  He carried the three pint glasses towards the room at the back of the pub and he rested them on a table in front of two men with beards and waistcoats, the ones with the lurchers. He pulled a chair across and joined them, his long legs slung effortlessly in front of him. His hand reached down briefly to touch the head of the dog nearest him. The younger of the two men said something and Tom Fitzwilliam tipped back his head and laughed.

  Joey’s phone fizzed on the table in front of her and she pulled her gaze from Tom Fitzwilliam to her screen. It was a text from Alfie: When you coming home?

  She started to compose a reply but could think of nothing to say so turned off her phone. When she glanced up again Tom Fitzwilliam was looking in her direction. Her heart pulsed hard for a second and her breath caught in her throat until she realised that he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking towards the door of the pub where two more men with beards had just arrived. All three men in the other room got to their feet to greet the new arrivals and more pints were bought and chairs moved about and dogs petted and hands shaken.

  Dawn brought drinks back from the bar – a vodka and tonic for Joey. ‘It’s a double,’ she said with a wink. ‘You look like someone who wants to get blotto.’

  Joey grinned and said, ‘You’re very observant.’

  She drank it in the space of three minutes, during which Tom Fitzwilliam’s beardy friends had necked their own drinks and headed towards the stage where they started to pick up musical instruments and twang on guitar strings. The one in the beanie hat sat astride a squat stool behind the drum kit and rubbed a pair of drumsticks together. Tom Fitzwilliam’s friends were the band. The band, according to the decal on the bass drum, was called Lupine. How on earth, Joey wondered, did Tom Fitzwilliam, government-feted superhead, middle-aged dad, consummate suit-wearer, know a hairy rock band called Lupine?

  ‘Oh God,’ said Sam. She tipped her head in the direction of the back room. ‘Not this lot again.’

  Joey looked at her curiously.

  ‘They were on last week as well. Bloody racket.’

  Dawn looked up from her chicken pie and groaned. ‘Oh God, yeah. I remember them. Cats being tortured.’

  ‘Donkeys being murdered,’ agreed Sam.

  ‘With chainsaws,’ added Dawn.

  ‘Do you know them?’ Joey asked.

  ‘The band?’ said Dawn. ‘God no. But apparently two of them are teachers at the local comp. Geography teachers playing rock stars on their night off.’ She laughed. ‘Bit tragic really.’

  Joey went to the ladies’ toilet. Like everything else in the pub, it was painted matt black and smelled of stale beer and old mops. Through the thin wall she could hear the rat-a-tat of snare drums, an isolated thwang of bass guitar. She took in her reflection in the mirror. She looked terrible.
She searched her handbag frantically for lipstick, for a hairbrush, for a stub of black eyeliner. She fixed herself, fluffed out the dry bleached ends of her ponytail, studied herself again. She would do. She would have to.

  Tom Fitzwilliam turned the corner towards the toilet just as she turned it going the other way. The narrow space was immediately filled with him, with the solidity of his existence. Joey’s first instinct was to squeeze herself small against the wall and give him space in which to pass. But his eyes were already on her and he was half smiling and he said, ‘Oh. I know you. I think … do I?’

  She could have said, No, I think you are mistaken, grabbed her coat from her chair, said goodbye to everyone and left. But she did not. She stood straight and she returned his half-smile and she said, ‘I have a funny feeling we might be neighbours. I think I’ve seen you in the bar at the Melville.’

  He folded his arms across his stomach and he made a show of appraising her and then he said; ‘Yes. I think that’s it. I remember you. You knocked over the leaflets.’

  She smiled and her stomach roiled. He’d seen her. He’d noticed her. This big, important, handsome man. ‘That sounds like me,’ she said.

  ‘And if I’m not mistaken,’ he continued, ‘I’ve seen you in Melville Heights. Coming out of Jack and Rebecca Mullen’s place.’

  ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Jack’s my brother.’

  ‘Wow. I had no idea! Not that I know Jack all that well. I’ve only spoken to him a handful of times.’

  ‘He’s great, isn’t he?’ she said. She often did this subconsciously, pre-empted the Jack-love.

  ‘He seems like a great guy, yes.’ But the way his eyes searched hers told her that he was more interested in talking about her than her perfect brother. ‘Are you here with friends?’

  ‘Yes. Well, sort of. I’m here with my boss and her wife and some other randoms.’ Joey paused. ‘Who are you here with?’

  ‘Ah, well, rather bizarrely I’m here with the band.’ He gestured behind them with his head. ‘I’m a teacher,’ he said, ‘over at the Melville Academy—’

  Joey nodded, disingenuously, as though she had absolutely no idea who he was.

  ‘—and a couple of the teachers are in the band and they asked me along. So here I am. Not where you’d normally find me on a Friday night. But it seemed churlish to say no just because I’m old and I’d rather be at home watching Narcos.’

  They both turned then as two women walked into the corridor and they held themselves tight against the wall to make room for them to pass. Tom’s hand pressed briefly against Joey’s leg and she thought, I knew this was going to happen.

  They turned to each other and smiled.

  ‘Well,’ said Joey. ‘It was nice to—’ at the exact same moment that Tom said, ‘Are you going to watch the band?’

  She paused to manage her response. There was intent there in those innocuous words. There was an invitation. An invitation she should ignore.

  ‘My friend says they sound like donkeys being murdered with chainsaws.’

  Tom laughed. ‘Oh dear,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘I did have my suspicions.’ He smiled. ‘Well, unlike me, you’re free to leave. But if you do stay, come and say hello after and I’ll introduce you to the band.’

  She smiled and nodded.

  ‘I’m Tom, by the way.’ He offered her his hand.

  ‘Hi Tom. I’m J—’ She stopped, for a split second. ‘Josephine.’

  ‘Josephine,’ he said. ‘What a beautiful name.’

  Joey thought, I knew you’d like it. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Lovely talking to you,’ he said.

  Joey took her seat next to Sam and pretended to be listening to their conversation while keeping half an eye on the toilets. When Tom reappeared, he caught her eye and smiled. She pulled her phone from her bag and she replied to Alfie’s text.

  Watching a band in town with Dawn and some friends. Be home in a couple of hours.

  13

  Freddie’s mother was knitting something. He had never seen her kitting before.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a blanket,’ she said. ‘For the lady in the blue house. The pregnant lady. She’s having a girl in May.’

  Freddie could see now that the design on a computer printout on the table in front of his mother involved ducklings and bunny rabbits.

  ‘Why would you knit something for someone you barely know?’

  ‘Because …’ She pulled at the cream yarn and grimaced. ‘I have no idea. Just because.’

  His mum was always trying new things. It was part of her psyche. If it wasn’t growing vegetables it was t’ai chi and if it wasn’t t’ai chi it was learning to play the piano. She said she had a low boredom threshold. She said it was because she was never in one place long enough to get a job and that she hadn’t been put on this earth to be a housewife and needed a focus. She’d been running a lot lately, two or three hours a day, but clearly that was no longer enough to keep her mind in one place. So, now it was knitting. She would have made a special trip today to a special shop to buy everything she needed. She would have watched a tutorial on YouTube. She would have made a project of it.

  He stared at the top of her head, the high shine of her light brown hair, combed through with an expensive oil and something approaching anger every morning in the mirror in her bedroom. She spent an hour at that mirror every day. She fussed her skin with giant pads of cotton wool and lotions and potions that cost fifty pounds a vial. She blended colours on to her eyelids that were the same colour as her skin so you couldn’t see they were there. She wanted to look ‘natural’, she said, casting subtle aspersions against women who preferred to look fake. She took pride in her tiny frame, dressed it in tiny clothes, often from children’s clothes shops. Her appearance was extraordinarily important to her; her image was her obsession. But even Freddie could see she had no idea what she was doing.

  She wore the wrong sorts of heels with the wrong sorts of jeans and then she would get chatting to a woman somewhere – the school gates, the martial arts’ centre, the wool shop – and Freddie would see it; he’d see her carefully applied veneer start to crackle and peel, watch his mother’s eyes roaming over the woman in question, over her shoes, her skin, her fingernails, forensically taking in every iota of her sartorial presentation. And then the wrong heels would be replaced by trendy trainers. The red nails with short unpolished nails. The neat padded gilet with a loose-fitting parka. But they’d be the wrong trendy trainers. His mother would still be all wrong. And then they’d move to a new town and a new set of rules would apply according to the type of area and his mother would have to start trying to fit in all over again.

  Not that she ever did. His mum, like him, had no friends. It was as if they could tell, he thought, they could tell she wasn’t ever going to be one of them. She was always going to be trying, never just being.

  Freddie sighed. ‘When’s Dad back?’

  ‘Any time, I suppose. Depends how soon he can politely get away.’

  Freddie couldn’t get his head round the idea of his dad in the Weaver’s Arms watching a rock band. It was too bizarre to process. His dad was just so … well, boring.

  At ten o’clock he yawned and got to his feet.

  ‘You off to bed, darling?’ his mum said absent-mindedly, her thin hands still worrying at the knitting needles, the blanket still no more than a thin strip of cream wool.

  ‘Yes. I am.’ He looked at her for a moment. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said brightly. ‘Of course!’

  He wanted to say something else but he couldn’t find the words. He wanted to ask if she was happy. If she and Dad were OK. If they were always going to stay married. If she was glad she’d married Dad. If she was glad she’d had Freddie. If the noises he sometimes heard from their room at night were anything to be worried about.

  Instead he dropped a kiss on to the top of her head. Being able to
drop kisses on to the top of his mum’s head was one of the best things about his recent growth spurt, finally over five foot three at which height he’d feared he might stick, and now approaching five foot seven. He would never be as tall as his dad, but at least he was taller than his mum.

  Through his bedroom window he watched the good people of Lower Melville comporting themselves on a Friday night. The trendy Thai restaurant was heaving as was the trendy pizza place. He watched people going in and out of the bar at the Melville. He trained his binoculars on to the bathroom window of Bess’s flat and saw nothing; then he moved on to Jenna’s road where all was quiet and still. He was about to draw the curtain and go back to his desk when he saw the headlights of a car bulging over the top of Melville Heights. As the lights reached the crown of the escarpment the car stopped and Freddie watched as first his father and then Red Boots stepped out of a taxi.

  At first, he thought he must be mistaken. Why on earth would his father be in a taxi with Red Boots? Then as he watched he saw Red Boots push her face into his father’s back and his father turn and put his arms around her shoulders and Red Boots looked like she was trying to kiss his father and then his father was pulling back and she was pushing forward and it was a strange dance that they were performing until finally his father put his arms around her waist and walked her firmly to the front door of the blue house.

  Freddie opened his window a crack to let some sound in and just about heard the words sorry, pub, few too many, no problem and sleep tight.

  Then he saw his father stand, for a moment or even longer, on the street outside the blue house, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his eyes on Red Boots’s front door, before turning slowly and heading back towards his house.

  14

  18 February

  ‘What was going on last night?’ Freddie asked his dad the next morning.

  His dad grimaced at him. He was wearing his dressing gown and he smelled odd, that sugary-yeasty smell of middle-aged man pickled in clammy bedsheets.