by Lisa Jewell
‘I dunno. He started asking me about how I was enjoying my first time out of the country and then we walked past this sofa and we both just sort of sat down. And chatted.’
‘What were you chatting about?’
‘Just stuff. All the countries he’s been to, countries he thought I’d enjoy. He told me about his gap year and going inter-railing with his mates – we should totally do that by the way – and I don’t know, just things like that.’
‘How long were you chatting for? On the landing?’
‘Ten minutes or so. And then he was like, Oh shit, look at the time, we need to get you back to your room before Miss Mangan finds you out of your room.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me last night?’
Bess shrugged. ‘You didn’t ask. You were all just like I’m going to sleep now and huffy.’
‘I was not huffy.’
‘Yeah you were.’
‘I so wasn’t! I was just tired. Been up since bloody five in the morning.’ Jenna glanced at her friend. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit strange?’ she said. ‘Him doing that?’
‘Doing what? Talking to me? Why’s that strange?’
‘I dunno. He’s, like, fifty; you’re fifteen. It was bedtime. He should have just brought you straight back. It’s fucking weird.’
‘Are you a bit jealous by any chance, Jenna Tripp?’
‘Fuck off!’ Jenna picked up a cushion and shoved it at Bess. Bess laughed and bashed it back towards her. Then there was the terrible sound of a smartphone hitting a tiled floor and they both stiffened and looked at each other before peering over the edge of the bed.
Jenna leaned down to pick up her phone and held it to the light to check for damage. ‘Bollocks,’ she said, ‘bollocks.’ There was a chip in the corner of the screen. She fingered the chip gently. She’d only had the phone a few weeks.
Bess looked at her and said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Then Jenna thought of tiny Bess sitting on sofa on a landing with Mr Fitzwilliam chatting about his childhood holidays and she felt a terrible stab of concern. Her beautiful, hopeless, vulnerable friend.
‘That’s OK,’ she said, pulling Bess towards her for a hug, smelling the familiar tang of her scalp through her soft blond hair. ‘It’s only a phone.’
That night after dinner Jenna made sure she stayed close to Bess. Lottie, Ruby and Tiana came to their room and they mucked around on Snapchat and made prank calls to the boys and laughed like they might die of it until 11.15 p.m. when the other three dutifully made their way back to their bedroom on the floor above. Jenna could hear Miss Mangan coming down the corridor, the clicks and whispers of her visits to other rooms. She changed into her pyjamas and brushed her teeth, removed her make-up and squeezed a spot. As Bess slipped into the bathroom after her she heard a gentle rap at the door. She pulled it open expecting to see the pinched, anxious face of Miss Mangan. Instead she was confronted with the looming presence of Mr Fitzwilliam.
She folded her arms across her chest, aware of the fact that she was braless under her vest top. ‘Oh.’
‘Good evening, Jenna. Just thought I’d better check in on Bess. I didn’t find her hiding under any beds on the boys’ floor so I’m just making sure she’s with you?’
‘She is,’ she replied. ‘She’s in the bathroom.’
Mr Fitzwilliam looked at the bathroom door and then back at Jenna. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Totally. She’s getting ready for bed. She’s been in here all night with me.’
‘Bess!’
Jenna jumped slightly at the sound of Mr Fitzwilliam calling over her shoulder.
‘Hm?’ came a muffled reply.
Mr Fitzwilliam smiled down at Jenna as though he had been somehow vindicated. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s very good.’ And then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him just as Bess emerged from the bathroom, her toothbrush clenched between her teeth and a towel wrapped around her body. ‘Washat Mishter Fitshwillum?’ she asked through her toothbrush, her eyes wide.
‘Yeah. Checking up on you. He’s gone now.’
Bess pouted and went back in the bathroom to spit out her toothpaste and returned a moment later, smiling. ‘See,’ she said. ‘Isn’t he just the sweetest, loveliest man in the world. Isn’t he, like, everything?’
23
22 February
Since Monday night Freddie had stopped absorbing information properly. His mind roiled and cycled constantly with theories about his hacker to the point where he’d been told off by Mrs Johnson in Latin for doing the wrong exercise when the right exercise was clearly written on the whiteboard. Freddie did not like being wrong and he certainly did not like being publicly trounced for being wrong and he carried the small humiliation around with him for the rest of the day along with the gnawing mystery of the hacker, so that by the time the bell went at the end of triple science on Wednesday afternoon he was ready to hit something.
But then he thought of Romola Brook and her sparkling eyes and he thought: I would like to see her; it would make me feel better. So he turned left towards St Mildred’s and he loitered on the other side of the street for a few moments waiting to see her emerge. There was no smarmy sixth-former hanging around her this time; she was alone, staring at her phone, oblivious to the boy across the road watching her with thirsty eyes.
‘Mum,’ he heard her say into her phone as she crossed at the zebra, ‘I’m going to be a bit late. I have to go to Ryman’s to get some folders. Can you give me the money? When I get back? Or put it in my account. OK then, see you in about half an hour.’
He picked up his pace to follow her towards the high street. He watched her put earbuds in her ears and select something on her phone to listen to. She stopped for a moment outside Forever 21 and eyed a suede skirt and vest top in the window. He pictured her in it. The cinnamon of the suede would set off her chestnut hair perfectly, he thought, and suddenly he found himself mired in a fantasy scenario in which he entered Forever 21 and bought the suede skirt for Romola Brook and passed it to her on the street with some kind of suave commentary about her hair and her eyes and in this weird fantasy scenario he saw her smile at him and say, Wow, thank you, I love it.
She’d stopped looking in the window of Forever 21 and was now heading towards Ryman’s. Her hair was thick and cut blunt at the ends. Some of it was tied back and the rest was left down and it swung side to side as she walked. She had thin legs, almost too thin, slightly string-like, and her gait was rather odd, as though she had a stone in one of her shoes, but this only added to her appeal, made her less perfect, less out of his reach.
Freddie was about to take out his phone and get some shots of her stringy legs but then she stopped for a moment, just before turning into Ryman’s. Her body stiffened and stilled like a forest animal sensing it is being followed. Freddie turned away briefly and when he turned back Romola had gone into the stationery shop. He crossed the road and watched from the other side of the street. Something strange was happening to him. He’d done this a hundred times: watched people, followed them about, photographed them. But he’d never felt nervous before, never worried about being caught. But something about having his private computer files hacked into had made him feel vulnerable and foolish. Someone had seen the unique mechanics of his own personal world, the world where he was the boss, and he didn’t like the way it made him feel. It made him feel as though he was doing something wrong, as though he himself was in some way wrong.
Freddie did not like feeling wrong. Freddie was never wrong.
He felt a simmering of something deep inside him. He pictured himself walking into Ryman’s and deliberately pushing himself up against Romola Brook, wordlessly pressing her into the filing display; he imagined the sweet sugar of her shocked breath against his cheek, the slight tremor in her skinny legs. He wanted to do it; he wanted to do it really badly. It would purge the voice of the Latin teacher in his head; the thought of someone somewhere, a stranger or maybe even someone he
knew, leafing through his files and photos, not understanding what they were, shaking their head in condemnation.
Instead he waited for her to leave and he got a full-frontal shot of her face. When he got home he locked his bedroom door, drew the curtains, photoshopped Romola’s head on to the body of a naked woman, blew it up to full screen on his laptop and pulled down his trousers. He stared at the image, his hand upon himself, and then he saw something in the eyes of the disembodied head, something that took his breath away. He saw a human being looking at him. He saw a skinny girl in a new town and a new school. A girl who loved a stupid tiny dog and wanted things from Forever 21 that she couldn’t afford. A girl who went into Ryman’s for folders oblivious to the strange boy loitering outside.
He pulled his trousers back up and shut down the image, feeling the shockwaves of something new and extraordinary ricochet around his head.
24
24 February
Tom Fitzwilliam was back. Joey had heard a scooter zipping up the hill, looked from the top-floor window and seen a Deliveroo driver pulling off his helmet and reaching for the zip-up bag from the back of his moped. She’d watched as he’d taken the bag to the Fitzwilliams’ house and then seen Tom appear in a soft grey jumper and jeans, take the delivery from the driver, hand him a tip and close the door again.
Her heart raced and she felt a terrible blend of sickness and excitement. All week she’d felt it like a lump in her gut, the thought of seeing him again. The lump had grown bigger and bigger as the week had gone on. On Wednesday she’d passed his wife in the village. Joey had stared at her as she passed as though she were someone from a dream become real. The wife had seen her staring but not reacted, just mustered a small smile and carried on her way. Tom hadn’t told her about what had happened at the Weaver’s Arms, it was clear. But still the lump was there, the hard knot of horror and anxiety.
His car had remained in the same parking space all week and eventually Joey had come to the conclusion that he must be away somewhere, on business.
And now he was home, just two doors away from her.
She wanted to escape, not to be here. She texted Alfie: Where are you?
Just got to work.
Can you bunk off?
No can do. Short-staffed.
Can I come and sit at the bar?
Sure thing babe.
She threw on a black off-the-shoulder jumper and some huge gold hoop earrings, put on some red lipstick and her red suede boots and walked to the bus stop, her heart hammering under her ribs. As she sat waiting for the bus she gazed up at the painted houses. She saw the mottled kaleidoscopic glow of the stained-glass window in her brother’s house and two doors down she saw the muted gold glow of lights shining in Tom’s house. At the top of Tom’s house, a figure moved across the window. She caught the glint of something in the figure’s hand. For a moment she thought it might be Tom but as the figure came closer to the glass she saw it was someone much smaller, either the wife or the son. Her breath caught. And then she heard a voice coming from behind her, a woman’s voice, saying, ‘I see you. I see you up there!’
Joey jumped and turned. Behind her was a small woman, fine-boned and pretty, early forties or so. Joey turned back to the window and saw the figure at the top of Tom’s house slowly extend their middle finger and leave it there for a moment before walking away from the window again.
‘Did you see him?’ the woman said, sidling up towards Joey. ‘Up there?’
Joey nodded. There was something alarming about the woman, a dark intensity in her eyes, her body language. She was not a person to engage with in the dark.
‘He’s always up there,’ said the woman. ‘Always taking photos and staring through his binoculars. He’s just a child, you know, a teenager. He’s working for his father.’
Joey nodded again, politely, not wanting to add any fuel to this woman’s conviction that she was up for a conversation.
‘Do you know his father?’ the woman said. ‘The head teacher?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’
‘He brought you home in a taxi last week though?’
‘What?’
‘I saw you, last Friday night. He brought you home and took you to your front door.’
Suddenly it hit her. This was the woman; the woman hiding in the trees the other night.
‘He’s been having me followed,’ the woman continued. ‘He’s been getting his son to photograph me. And my daughter.’ The woman put a thin hand to her throat and sighed. ‘He’s the main one. There are at least a dozen of them. But he’s the main one. The first one. It’s because of what we saw. Me and my family. Years ago. We saw a woman attack him and he tried to brush it off, tried to say she was just mad. But you know the saying: no smoke without fire. Why would a woman just randomly attack someone in the middle of the Lake District if they hadn’t done anything wrong? Hm?’
Joey peered desperately up the road, praying silently for the bus to appear and rescue her from this unsettling encounter.
‘Everyone thinks he’s some kind of god. It makes me sick. If people knew, if people knew what he was really like, him and that son of his.’
The figure in the window of the yellow house had gone now and the strange woman began to back away. ‘Just don’t get involved. Keep away from him. Or you’ll end up like me – tortured. Completely tortured.’
25
‘Mum?’ Jenna had heard the front door click.
‘Yes!’
Jenna came halfway down the stairs and peered into the hallway. ‘Mum, where’ve you been?’
‘That boy is up there again. In his window. And he gave me the finger.’
‘I don’t blame him, Mum. He’s probably sick of you staring up there all the time.’
Jenna had been home for two hours and already she was aching nostalgically for the big sunny suite in Seville, the late-night dinners in noisy restaurants, the thrilling conveyor-belt toaster in the breakfast hall, the freedom from being constantly told that she was being watched and played with and persecuted.
‘She was there too. At the bus stop. The woman Tom Fitzwilliam brought home in a taxi last week. I talked to her. She claims not to know anything about him. But I think she was lying.’
‘Oh God, Mum, tell me you haven’t been talking to strangers about all this. Please tell me you haven’t.’ This was a new development. Another step down the road to insanity.
‘Well, I wouldn’t call her a stranger. She’s a local. Locals talk to each other.’
‘And what did she say? This local woman?’
Her mum shrugged. ‘Not much. And then her bus came.’
‘Oh God.’ Jenna sat heavily on the stairs and pulled her hair from her face. ‘Mum. You’ve got to stop going out and doing all this stuff. You’re becoming as bad as these people you claim are stalking you. Just suppose, just suppose for one minute that you’re wrong; that Mr Fitzwilliam is not a bad man, that his son is not taking photos of you, that all of this is in your head – how do you think they’re feeling? Knowing you’re out there, creeping about, talking to their neighbours. You’ll be making them feel as bad as they’re making you feel. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?’
Her mum rolled her eyes. ‘When are you going to wake up, Jenna? Wake up and see the truth? I know it makes no sense. But it’s true and it’s happening. Every minute of every day. And I’m not alone. It’s happening to hundreds of people. Three that I know of just in the Bristol area. All being stalked. All being followed and persecuted. It’s a terrible, terrible scourge, Jenna, but no one wants to talk about it. And men like Tom Fitzwilliam get to swan about in their big shiny cars without a care in the world with everyone thinking the sun shines out of their bloody backsides.’
Jenna inhaled slowly. She thought of Bess sitting on the landing with their head teacher in the middle of the night, the inappropriate, slightly loaded visits to their room, the red and yellow watch strap. ‘Tell me again, Mum,’ she said, ‘about the Lak
e District. Tell me again what actually happened.’
Her mum sat a few stairs below Jenna and held her daughter’s socked toes in her hand, massaging them absent-mindedly. ‘Well, it was our third day, boiling hot, thirty-two degrees or something crazy, too hot for walking or cycling. So we booked ourselves into an air-conditioned coach tour of the Lakes. And there was a family on the tour. Him’ – she gestured broadly in the direction of Melville Heights – ‘and his wife and boy. And I’d noticed them because I thought he seemed a bit high and mighty, you know? As if being on a coach tour was somehow beneath him. And I noticed that the wife and the boy seemed sort of in awe of him, as though he was all that mattered in the world. Every time we got off the coach they would wait for him to lead the way. I just felt, I don’t know, that there was something off with them. And then the first stop after lunch – it was Buttermere, I think – he was just getting back on the coach and this woman appeared from nowhere. A dark-haired woman, about fifty or so. She was wearing a black vest and gold chains and she was quite attractive, quite stylish, but her face was distorted with rage and she kind of threw herself at him, threw him up against the side of the coach and was shouting in his face: You fucking bastard, look at you! Just look at you! How can you live with yourself? How can you live with yourself? And she kept saying something about viva. Do you remember? Viva, this, viva that. I can’t really remember. I just remember her thumping his chest over and over again with her fists. And then another coach went by and blocked our view and by the time the coach was gone, she was gone too and he was straightening himself up and looking really humiliated. He was trying to act like nothing had happened. When we got back on the coach I passed him and I said, Everything OK? And he looked at me as though a human being had never spoken to him before and he nodded, like this’ – she nodded abruptly – ‘and the look he gave me.’ She shuddered. ‘It cut through me like a knife. And that was that. That was the moment. The moment that changed everything. I saw him and he saw me, and for whatever reason he decided to start all this; he decided to make me his victim.’