Baby Reindeer

by Richard Gadd

  Gadd She also had a brilliantly ironic sense of humour. She would tangent wildly about a politician’s backwards thinking only to call them a ‘trapped poof’ two moments later. It would get me every time.

  . . .

  Gadd You know something’s right when you get a tingly feeling behind your eyes when you talk to them? Like somebody is filling up your head with fizzy juice?

  . . .

  Gadd I felt scared by how much I liked her. Terrified, in fact.

  . . .

  Gadd When we started dating, I did everything to keep her hidden. Walks in the countryside. Sopranos on DVD. Anything to stop us being seen in public, by people I might know. I just needed to take things slowly. Figure it out at my own pace. Nothing made sense anymore.

  . . .

  Gadd I didn’t feel this way a year ago.

  . . .

  Gadd I would do my best to intellectualise the shame I felt with her. Come on! Focus! She’s incredible. Clever. Attractive. Funny. Finds me funny. Has a good job. A sexy accent. Beautiful skin. Finds me funny. Great breasts. Incredible figure. Tall but not too tall. Finds. Me. Funny.

  . . .

  Gadd But no matter how hard I tried, it would always came back to same thing, the same issue, juddering against my rationale.

  . . .

  Gadd She had a penis.

  . . .

  Gadd The bar so was heteronormative it killed me. Every day I tried to keep up this pretence of being just like them.

  The drinking. The chauvinism. Stories of threesomes and late-night shags up the top bar. Each shift the pretence became more difficult to keep up.

  . . .

  Gadd Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I something in between? If Teri’s trans what does that make me? That’s the thing when you doubt yourself, you feel like everyone else knows – like they’re waiting to catch you out.

  . . .

  Gadd But when Martha turned up, that insecurity faded. I became known as the guy with the mad doter who sat at the end of the bar. Gossiping to others about how manly I was. How tough I was. How strong and rugged I was. How brave.

  . . .

  Gadd Martha saw me the way I wanted to be seen.

  . . .

  Gadd But Teri saw straight through me the second I flashed her that email –

  . . .

  Teri I just don’t know why you feel the need to flirt with someone who is obviously so. vulnerable?

  Gadd I dunno – she’s lonely – she clearly gets something from being in the pub, around me – an excitement of some kind.

  Teri But, Dicky – it’s leading her on. It’s making her think you care.

  Gadd Oh, come on, Teri, if every ironic comment was a genuine proposition, we’d all be living like the Bonobo Apes. What’s wrong with giving her a little bit of confidence?

  . . .

  Gadd She sits there. Stoic, almost. She doesn’t say anything. She just absorbs my words for now. Then, two days later, she brings me a book to read – Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity – and tells me to read it cover to cover.

  . . .

  Gadd It was a Penguin book written in 1939, amassing 465 pages, and there ain’t a relationship in the world that could make me do that, but I knew how much she wanted me to read it – and so I did what any respectable other half would do and watched the film.

  . . .

  Gadd It tells the story of this lieutenant – who meets a paralysed girl with less than a year to live. To give her hope in the final months of her life, he promises to marry her if she survives. When she does, out of fear of ridicule from his peers he denies the engagement. She ends up taking her own life and he spends the rest of his days overwhelmed by guilt.

  . . .

  Gadd He spends the rest of his days overwhelmed by guilt.

  . . .

  Martha Email We sat isn the bar and you spoke sof curtains and fucking all kinds, you said alot a shit to me, yeah? A lot of shit and you can’t say that’s and no follwi it up yeah? That’s’ whats called toying with people’s smotions. Youc an’t do that. It’s not fair. I’ve gotta go. Sent from my iPhone

  Scene Six

  Martha Pint of Diet Coke.

  . . .

  Gadd Two pounds fifty please.

  . . .

  Martha You never charge me.

  Gadd I have to.

  Martha Can’t afford it.

  Gadd I thought you were a lawyer, no?

  . . .

  Gadd No more games, no more playing. Need to shut this down.

  . . .

  Martha What’s going on with you?

  Gadd Nothing. I’m fine.

  Martha Why don’t you love me anymore?

  Gadd What? I’m not interested, Martha.

  Martha But you said with the curtains comments –

  Gadd I know and it was a joke! I’m a comedian, I make jokes.

  Martha So what’s the past few weeks been then?

  Gadd It’s been banter, harmless flirtation, nothing I wouldn’t say to my – dad – maybe.

  . . .

  Gadd Sometimes, you have exactly what you want to say in your head and then when you get down to it, it totally comes out wrong. I remember breaking up with an ex once – had it all written down, everything I would say – but I left the conversation having agreed to move in with her.

  . . .

  Martha But, Baby Reindeer, you said – you said a lot of stuff to me. A lot of – a lot of ‘things’.

  . . .

  Gadd She was staring right at me, fists clenched, blinking back tears.

  . . .

  Gadd I’ve known you a couple of months and you’re blinking back tears?!

  . . .

  Gadd Look, Martha, don’t cry – I think you’re great – obviously there’s – chemistry – I just – it’s an age thing – I – I only date people my age. I want kids someday. A family.

  . . .

  Gadd She stared down at the floor. In silence. It was rare she didn’t hold my eye, so seeing her look away like that made me question what she was going to do next.

  . . .

  Gadd When – after a few moments – she mumbles to herself.

  . . .

  Martha That bastard age gap.

  . . .

  Gadd And runs out crying.

  Scene Seven

  Martha Email Clots galore! Not menopausal babe, not evn close. Billin’ beetrrot! Yowdy! Grusme amount. I’ve gotta go. Sent from my iPhone

  . . .

  Gadd The following day, I received sixty-three emails from Martha – blood, clots, email after email, reinforcing this image of her fertility.

  . . .

  Gadd She was letting me know that the barrier I had created between us – didn’t exist. ‘That bastard age gap.’

  . . .

  Gadd There is no excuse now. In her eyes – we are becoming a thing.

  . . .

  Gadd I decide to withdraw further. I stop the comments, and the jokes. I start subjecting her to a polite formality whenever she orders at the bar – and in return she doubles down on the pretence.

  . . .

  Gadd The pretence of her being a lawyer, the pretence of us being a couple – and her cold, distant, attempts to make me jealous by chatting to other members of staff. Laughing hysterically. Checking whether I would notice. Whether I would care.

  . . .

  Gadd Then, every night, constant emails like we hadn’t fallen out at all. Random stories – blood and period chat alongside other fantasies. In life she played the game, in private she lost all restraint.

  . . .

  Gadd She starts to bring with her a stack of paper, Bible thick, every time she comes into the pub – and she sits, making notes and annotations on them all day long – eyeing me out the corner of her eye, just eyeing me.

  . . .

  There was always a ticking motion too as she rifled through the documents. Tick. Tick. Ticking. What is she ticking? Do lawyers tick?!

 
. . .

  Gadd She nips to the bathroom, and on the bar, Bible thick, sat her papers. Do lawyers mark papers? I don’t know.

  . . .

  Gadd I lift them up.

  . . .

  Gadd They were blank, the pages, all of them. Blank, white, A4, fresh from the packet, crumpled for effect. Printer paper. She had just gone out and bought printer paper. The notations just ticks and scribbles. On one page she has drawn a little baby reindeer.

  . . .

  Gadd I follow her out the pub and down the road. I expect her to turn right towards Hampstead where her ‘firm’ is, or Belsize Park where her ‘home’ is, but she takes a left and walks down Holloway Road.

  . . .

  Gadd I feel unsettled, as I follow her, but at the same time, I felt – ‘in the moment’ – you know? Like I wasn’t anywhere else.

  . . .

  Gadd About a year prior to this, I was at acting school in Oxford. I would travel down from my flat at weekends to meet a man in the industry and take drugs in industrial quantities in his flat – and isn’t getting groomed magical before you realise you’re actually getting groomed? Until you’re passing out from a combination of GHB, acid, MDMA, and coke, on his living-room floor, as he tears at your trousers with his disgusting hands.

  . . .

  Gadd Being sexually abused threw my life out of joint in so many ways – mainly my ability to think coherently about anything regarding my sexuality.

  . . .

  Gadd I was filled with these punishing thoughts, like did it happen to me because I was giving off a gay vibe I wasn’t aware of? Or did it make me gay?

  . . .

  Gadd I was so sure of who I was before.

  . . .

  Gadd I wore the bar-towel heavy when I was working in that bar. The bleak dead-endedness of it all. There wasn’t a glass-ceiling, just padded doors and it felt like every barman working there did nothing but question how they were ever going to get out.

  . . .

  Gadd I always found working in a bar stifling because, as long as I was working there – he wins. As long as I was working there then maybe I will never pick myself up again? I imagine someone asking him – ‘What ever happened to that Richard Gadd boy you used to run around with?’

  . . .

  Gadd ‘He works in a bar, I think’ – with a self-satisfied grin on his face, knowing fine well I was stuck there in large part because he took my confidence to go out and chase the world away from me – and, now, in my life – on top of everything else – Martha. The mystery of Martha.

  . . .

  Gadd There was something so arresting about her. A feeling she inspired in me that made me focus so singularly when she was around.

  . . .

  Gadd She was flammable, you know? Pure focus.

  . . .

  Gadd I didn’t think of him while she was there.

  . . .

  Gadd We’re outside Islington station about fifteen minutes from the pub when she stops in her tracks. I double-back into a doorway and question whether she’s spotted me.

  . . .

  Gadd Oh please, don’t let her spot me!

  . . .

  Gadd I peek out and she’s facing my way, but she’s staring down into a bin. Then without a single beat of self-consciousness, she starts raking around inside. It was one of those letter-box bins, and whatever she was trying to get out was clearly at a difficult angle because it took her a while to set it free.

  . . .

  Gadd It was a piece of carpet. A rug. She pulls it out, rolls it up, chucks it over one shoulder, and keeps on walking.

  . . .

  Gadd We reach a tower block near Canonbury, where she enters, rug in hand.

  . . .

  Gadd I never believed she was a multi-millionaire lawyer who lived in Belsize Park. But seeing the depths of her lies played out in front of me expelled whatever make-believe I had revelled in, whilst following her.

  . . .

  Gadd Reality set in cold and hard. Who is this woman? And what does she want from me?

  . . .

  Mother Interview I think there’s always been something about you – like a danger, like a – an ability to see nothing but good in people, or to accept people who are a bit unhinged. Maybe it’s because your father has always been a bit mad? I remember, you came home and told me – we were out the back of the house – that this thing happened to you and you were confused about it – and you were crying – and I felt lost for you. Then you told me about this woman and the things she was doing to you – and I couldn’t believe that this was all happening. You’d been in London less than a year – and I thought – What is going on down there? What is happening to my boy?

  Scene Eight

  Martha Email Reams amd reams of blood, fertile ghround, ever bonked on fertile ground? Heavy, reams, need a tub to show the doct or. Sent from my iPhone

  . . .

  Darren That is fucking rank, mate, what the fuck?!

  . . .

  Gadd Darren and I go way back. He is such an unrelenting dickhead. One of those friends who you hate – but underlying that, you love them really. But underlying that, you really do hate them.

  . . .

  Darren Why is she sending you that shit if she wants to get you in bed?

  Gadd No idea.

  Darren You fucked her didn’t you?

  Gadd I never fucked her!

  . . .

  Gadd I hand him my phone and tell him not to rationalise it – just to bask in the glory of reading the emails of someone who escapes reason.

  . . .

  Darren Why does she keep calling you Baby Reindeer?

  Gadd Fuck knows. Wish I knew. Most of her emails are just ranting. Like she just wants someone to talk to. Man, I feel sorry for her.

  . . .

  Gadd Darren locks me with a shit-eating grin.

  . . .

  Darren And do you always beg her for anal sex?

  Gadd What?

  . . .

  Darren Do you always beg her for anal sex?

  Gadd What are you talking about?

  Darren Here.

  . . .

  Gadd Darren, hand me back my phone.

  Darren To me it looks like you’ve been begging her for anal sex.

  . . .

  Gadd Email Anal sex plz. Right. Now!

  . . .

  Gadd You wrote back?! Are you fucking kidding me?!

  . . .

  Gadd Darren looks at me like he expects me to laugh.

  . . .

  Gadd Did you send it?! Shit! You actually sent it! Are you stupid?! Are you a fucking moron?!

  Darren Oh come on, you love the drama!

  Gadd I love it when it’s contained, I – what the fuck are you playing at, you stupid cunt?!

  Darren Oh, chill, she’ll see it as a joke!

  . . .

  Martha Email When? Where?

  Scene Nine

  Gadd Martha’s talking became increasingly obsessive. Complimenting me on my ass. Questioning when I was going to fuck her. Asking how I am going to lick her out once she ‘dries up down there’. Darren’s email was all she needed to let go.

  . . .

  Gadd It became a game of duck and dive every time I pass her in the pub, I wriggle under her wandering arms, sprint past her before she can reach out and pinch me, occasionally hold her wrists and smile and say ‘don’t do that’ as she comes towards me. The obtuse male in me, couldn’t bring myself to say to my manager, ‘I feel weird about all this.’

  . . .

  Gadd I’m coming out the downstairs bathroom one day and she’s waiting outside, stopping me getting past.

  . . .

  Gadd Martha, I’m not messing, get out the fucking way.

  Martha I’m allowed to go to the bathroom.

  Gadd Go to the bathroom then. The door is right there – Martha, stop. What are you doing?

  . . .

  Gadd She gropes me. Righ
t on the crotch. Pitch-perfect precision. I remember freezing and letting it happen. I didn’t know what to do. So – my instinct. Freeze. She cups my balls and does this odd up-and-down motion with her hand, almost like she is weighing my cock – weighing how big it would be – whether it lived up to her fantasises – or whether it was mostly testicle. It didn’t feel human. It never does.

  . . .

  Gadd She weighs it a few times, lets go, and then lays her head on my chest.

  Martha You’re beating.

  Gadd What?

  . . .

  Martha I’m making you beat.

  . . .

  Gadd Later that night, I am in bed struggling to comprehend how to handle this situation now it has seemingly blown out of all proportion, when I decide to Google her name.

  . . .

  Gadd Luckily, the most famous Martha Scott was a 1950s actress, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

  . . .

  Gadd But then – out of intrigue rather than any belief it would yield a result – I type in ‘Martha Scott Stalker’.

  . . .

  Gadd Reams and reams of news articles and stories and all kinds of mad things pop up. I click the first link. ‘Perverse stalker torments barrister’s deaf child’.

  . . .

  Gadd I read through the article – and it tells this story of her becoming gradually obsessed with this family, after the husband fired her from his law firm.

  . . .

  Gadd Hanging about outside their house, interrupting meals out and work occasions, phoning the home phone number. Then, worst of all, falsely reporting them to the police for abusing their deaf child.

  . . .

  Gadd ‘What this woman has done simply defies belief. She is incessant and I don’t think she is ever going to stop. We’ve contacted the police about her numerous times but they are unable to do anything about it. She is clearly disturbed and I genuinely fear for my safety.’

  . . .

  Gadd I sat there, taking this all in, reading the other news articles; one an interview with the husband who talks about the twisted lengths she would go to get at him, waiting for him in the car park outside his work. This one time she attacked his mother in the street. Her one-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.

  . . .

  Gadd It hit me like a ton of bricks. This isn’t a woman with a vague infatuation. This is a woman with a track record of this kind of behaviour before. This is a woman who is stalking me. A repeat offender. A seasoned pro.