How to Play Dead

by Jacqueline Ward

  I hug her tightly, like we don’t see each other every day at work. I pour myself a coffee from the machine and go and sit next to her.

  ‘All quiet on the western front. I called in on my way. Knitting, they are.’

  She nods. ‘Yep. So far, so good.’ We check our phones in unison. ‘So. What’s the script then? And don’t say nothing because I’ve seen you. Distracted.’

  I suddenly tense. I wasn’t expecting this. But I will tell her. Part of it, at least. I get out the phone.

  ‘That package the other day.’

  I flick on the screen and show her the videos. She is fuming.

  ‘Jesus. Someone is fucking with you? You?’

  I can’t help but smile. ‘Yeah. And with Danny away I’m …’

  She looks through them again.

  ‘Any ideas?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. Jim?’

  She nods. ‘That’s what I was thinking. Or Frankie. Or Bill Lyness – over Joan. He had it in for you.’

  I take back the phone.

  ‘It could be anyone. But I’ve told Gez and she’ll sort it out if it gets worse.’

  She hugs me tightly.

  ‘I’m here whenever you want a chat. Ignore the fucker. Switch the phone off and have a word with Carole.’

  I know she is right. I’ve been keeping Carole, our friendly police contact, in reserve. Janice hugs me and we link arms. I know I have her support, no matter what. We sit through the training, losing ourselves in other people’s stories, until it is time to leave. Janice chats about her family and Ruff’s exploits on the way back to SafeMe.

  It is only then that Janice touches my arm and looks at me.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Ri. That message shit’s got to you, and it’s not like you. Why don’t you and the kids come and stay at mine? Just till Danny gets back?’

  I smile as brightly as I can. ‘I’m OK. Donelle’s stayed a couple of times. It’s not cos Dan’s away, you know. It’ just …’

  I pause and it’s too late. Sally’s arguing with a woman who has just arrived about the cooking rota and she drops a glass that shatters on a table near the children. Janice runs to fetch a dustpan and brush and we’re in action again, our own souls on hold until later.

  I’ve been ignoring the cheap phone all day but I know this isn’t over at all. As if to confirm it, the phone buzzes. A message appears. It’s a picture and I am almost afraid to look. But I do. It’s Sheila, going into her flat. I look around and she isn’t here. I cast my mind back to earlier on, picturing her waving at me. She was wearing a leopard-print shirt and a black cardy. I bring up the picture again and she is wearing the same. The first thing that runs through my mind is that Frank wouldn’t be pleased if he knew someone was following Sheila. Unless it is Frank. The psychopath landscape suddenly widens. I scroll down.

  YOU’RE A REAL SAINT, ARENT YOU? FOREVER FRIENDS. KEEP HER SAFE.

  I start to delete it, then I don’t. I might need this as evidence. I already know I am going to go to the police: Sheila is a client.

  Tanya

  Diary Entry: Wednesday

  Al’s working late tonight. He picked me up but then went straight out. It happens sometimes in his line of business. So I’m home alone. I thought about making myself some chips and bread, but I’d have to cook the soup as well so Al would think I’d had that. So I’m not bothering. I’ll cook the soup and write my diary in the kitchen where it’s light – I’ve been writing it in my en suite so far.

  I’ve been quite upset all day. Probably because I was writing about my dad yesterday. I’m starting to see why Al didn’t want me to write it. He didn’t want me any more upset. Or unstable, as he put it.

  Anyway, there was more fun and games with Jade in the office. She’s got a little girl, Juliet, aged about seven. She’s single and does this co-parenting thing with her ex-boyfriend Dave. I could see Dave drive into the car park, screeching to a halt. I didn’t see Juliet at first because Dave left her in the car. But as he strode towards the door, red-faced and puffed up, I saw Juliet open the car door and get out.

  Dave was calling Jade a whore, and I slipped out of the open door just as Juliet was making her way across the car park. I took her hand.

  ‘Come on. Let’s take you to Mummy.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s OK. My name’s Tanya. I work with your mummy.’

  She stopped and smiled. ‘Tanya. Crazy lady.’

  I stood beside her as it started to dawn on my why people would look at me strangely. Why they sometimes stared.

  ‘Crazy lady? Why’s that, Juliet?’

  I didn’t look at her. I was too afraid that I would cry.

  ‘Mummy says you are fucking mad and you don’t change your clothes.’

  I gripped Juliet’s hand and led her back inside, where Dave and Jade were still screaming at each other. When they saw Juliet they stopped. Mr Simister intervened.

  ‘OK, folks. Show’s over. Take it outside.’

  Juliet turned around and waved at me.

  ‘Bye, crazy lady.’

  It registered with Jade and she gave me her ‘I’m sorry’ face, the same one she gives me when I have to recalculate her monthly sales figures. But I know full well that Juliet had got those words from her. I felt indignant that she actually thought I don’t change my clothes. Of course I do. But I could see how she had made the mistake.

  Al does not like me to wear certain clothes. He likes me to wear black trousers and a white blouse for work with a black jacket. So I have a rail of them. All the same, so there can be no confusion. When it’s cold, I wear a black anorak too. At weekends it’s jeans and pretty tops. He doesn’t like me wearing skirts because he says he knows men and they will take any opportunity to look up a woman’s skirt. Was that what I wanted? He asked when, one day, I wore one of the dresses I had brought with me.

  He told me I didn’t know men, which is true, I don’t. I only know Al. He lets me order clothes from the catalogue and has them delivered to work. He makes a big deal of me opening them, just like he does on my birthday and at Christmas when he buys me perfume and expensive moisturiser. Make-up is out as he is convinced that lipstick is for the sole purpose of making the lips look like labia and the vagina. Likewise, mascara is just for making eyes look bigger for flirting. Was that what I wanted?

  Whether I wanted it or not, I wasn’t getting it because I had no money and Al didn’t buy it for me. The one thing he is completely extravagant with is jewellery. Right at the start he bought me the engagement and wedding ring set. It would be more convincing, he told me. But since then he has lavished me with a diamond tennis bracelet and a solitaire diamond necklace and earrings. For the past several birthdays and Christmas I have chosen an expensive Pandora charm that has arrived hidden in an expensive bouquet.

  We aren’t married. We could never be because we would need my birth certificate or some other form of ID. But I use Al’s name and he said the wedding rings would make that look real. They are really beautiful. Sometimes, when I am a little bit braver than I am at the moment, I imagine that these will be how I get my train fare to go far away. But then I remember that you need ID to pawn something. I read that in a paper someone left in the ladies’ toilets, and hope faded again.

  I was more shocked that Juliet said I was fucking mad. Shocked, too, that a seven-year-old said ‘fucking’. But I thought about it more and it became clearer and clearer. This was what Al had told Mr and Mrs Simister when I began to work for them all those years ago. I was ill. That I couldn’t handle my own money. Keep an eye on me.

  The more worrying thing was that they believed it.

  Chapter Ten

  Day 20

  I already know, first thing Thursday morning, when I am standing at the desk in the police station, that I am doing the right thing. What if he goes further? Further than messages? I have held it together so far, I’m used to this kind of shit, but it’s getting silly now Sheila is involved. The desk sergeant appears. />
  ‘Hi there. May I speak to Carole Barnes, please? Could you tell her it’s Ria Taylor?’

  He presses buttons on his desk phone and relays the message and, ten minutes later, I’m sitting in an interview room. Carole is everything good about the police, and my main go-to about SafeMe. Except this is about me.

  ‘OK, Ria, how can I help? I haven’t got long but—’

  I blurt it out. ‘It’s about me. This guy is causing me … problems.’

  She nods as I outline the story to her. I finish and she stares at me.

  ‘I’m just asking for advice, really?’

  There is a pause.

  ‘The thing is, as you know, he has to have committed a crime. As you also know only too well, we have to build a case and present it to the CPS. You’ve told me that you don’t know who he is. How did he get your number?’

  I swallow hard. ‘He sent me a phone. To my office. He’s not really threatened me but … in context … And one of the photos is of a client.’

  I pass her the phone and she looks through it. She leans back and sighs.

  ‘God, Ria. I can see why you’re here. From what you’ve said, though, and these messages, I don’t think you would have a stalking case. And there’s no evidence that the flowers and messages are connected. Even with the dick pic. Not these days. We should be able to do something but we can’t. Creepy, yes, but probably some psycho with a grudge who’s too scared to confront you. Come on. You know all this.’

  I nod and look at my hands, clasped together in my lap.

  ‘But the phone?’

  ‘If we did ever find him he’d say it was a present. No law against that either. We could take the phone and get the serial number and track it back to the shop. But even without looking I know it’s a pay-as-you go and he’ll be sending these messages from something similar. Can you think of anyone it could be?’

  ‘Just to do with the women. Their partners.’ Frank. Jim. Bill. It could be fucking anyone. She stares at me.

  ‘That picture of Sheila James? Well, we all know what Frank James is like. I’m not saying it’s him but maybe someone connected? Look, Ria, I’ll be honest with you. There isn’t much chance of us finding him from this phone or some texts or messages. Turn the phone off. If he approaches you, call us out. He’ll soon get the message. Just check every now and again. If he keeps texting and emailing or anything else anonymously, keep everything. He’ll pop up somewhere eventually and you can go down the injunction route, or we’ll get him for harassment if he steps it up. You’ve done right telling me, and I’ll keep a note in case it escalates. I’ll log this on Sheila’s file as well. But keep away from him.’

  I walk out of the police station with a new perspective. She is right. I can either comply or fight. Or I could make sure he stops getting to me. Harden up. And, right there and then, I choose the latter.

  I’ve done the right thing. I’ve told people. I have marked myself out and put myself on the radar without drawing attention to him and making the situation worse. This is something to do with SafeMe, a crazy ex or a former employee with a grudge. I need to treat it as part of the job. Contain it. But it isn’t that easy when it’s me.

  How the fuck has this happened? I am meant to be helping people. I have gone out of my way to do everything I can to make sure these crises-stricken people get the best chances. It has never been just a job, it has been a vocation.

  Nothing is ever completely safe, but I have striven to make the risks here as low as possible. I have fought for funding for panic buttons in every room that activate CCTV and alarms. I have petitioned for a security guard and personally vetted candidates until I found Malc, who is the perfect balance of kind and scary. The last thing we wanted was a bullying aggressor to frighten already terrified women. In many ways this has been my life’s work, second to Danny and my beautiful children.

  Back in my office I sit alone. Talking to Carole has made this person real, somehow. I have always been there for people. I have been to court and stood in front of women while their armed partners flew at them. I have pulled children out of houses where one of their parents was out of control and the other one was too damaged to save them and understood. I have physically restrained one partner from reaching the other in order to kick and punch them while they cowered in a corner.

  The question is now: who will help me? The three people I have confided in so far have not been able to help because no physical violence has happened. So the answer to my question is – right now – no one. It seems like I am in the same situation as everyone else, caught up in a complex web of lies and confusion created by the perpetrator so they can swoop without any pesky interference from the authorities. So no one will help me until the damage is done. Until he makes his next move.

  But one thing this fucked-up piece of shit hasn’t realised is that I know the process. I know what I am feeling is normal. I know that he doesn’t need a reason for what he is doing. He is just a bastard, a sociopath with no regard for someone else’s feelings as long as he is suitably entertained. Just like all the rest of the lowlifes I encounter on a daily basis.

  The phone pings and the expected dread fills me. I am just thinking that I am used to it, that I am cleverer than him, when I am taken by surprise. This video is freestyled. It is me on the bus this morning. On the way to the police station. I can see it is me only from the close up of the back of my head – my bright red overdyed hair. I quickly flicker back to the almost-empty bus. Who was behind me? As I watch, his fingers move to my hair, the loose bits at the back that hang down. Then there’s a snip.

  I feel the back of my head. I unwrap my hair from my trademark scarf and feel the short blunt ends right at the back: a chunk of my hair missing. I play the footage again and again, trying to glean a clue, feeling my hacked hair. How did I not feel it? How did I not see him? Who was on the bus when I got on? Who got off? I rerun it over and over in my mind’s eye. It can’t be someone I know. I would have seen them, recognised them. I turn quickly. This is how it has me now.

  No one is here. Even so, there is a sudden movement behind me and I almost jump out of my skin. I turn quickly but it isn’t him. A policeman appears in the doorway just as I shut down the screen. ‘We’ve had a report of harassment. Sally Lewis called us about her husband Jim hanging about outside. Banging on the doors with an iron bar, or something.’

  I look in the incident log. Jim finally cracked and brought a crowbar. I relax a little. Of course. This has nothing to do with me.

  ‘Yeah. He’s been sitting in the pub across the road every day just staring in. There’s a file on him.’

  I hand him Sally’s file and he reads it while I pretend to tidy some papers.

  ‘Right. We’ll take him in then. But I doubt we’ll be able to charge him.’

  I read the incident report again.

  ‘Coming equipped? He had a crowbar.’

  He smiles a little. ‘Managed to get rid before we got here. But we’ll see. Can’t promise anything. Not this time.’

  I nod. ‘It all adds up.’

  The policeman gets up and leaves.

  It does all add up. I calm a little. It’s often the long game. Wait, wait, wait until the perpetrator gets tired of staring and looking mean – or, in my case, of sending messages – and takes action. Then I’m standing there with the police or an injunction.

  I sigh. Everything here points to me waiting for him to slip up. To do enough for me to make a complaint that the police will take seriously. But even then, he will probably make my life a misery by trying to make out I am a fantasist. It’s standard manipulative behaviour. I know he thinks he is manoeuvring me into a corner, and perhaps he is, for the time being. But eventually he will up the stakes, do something drastic, because for men like him, nothing is ever enough. He will push and push and become crueller until he does something so terrible that he will trip himself up.

  It is my knowledge of this that is the advantage, and my ability to wait wi
thout cracking up or getting hurt in the process. But I will wait. No matter how bad it gets I have all the time in the world.

  Tanya

  Diary Entry: Thursday

  He didn’t come home. He was out all night. I am writing this in the toilet because I heard him come in at about half seven in the morning. I’ve locked myself in and he will think I am in the shower.

  He will think that I didn’t know. That I didn’t hear him coming in. I can hear everything. Over the years I’ve become more alert to all the sounds in the house, how close the noise is and which direction it is coming from. I can picture it. He came in the back door — the shutters are almost silent there when they roll up automatically because he oils them every week. Almost silent. There is a tiny click at the top when it rolls itself into the shiny white holder so it is invisible to the outside world.

  I know he can raise either all the shutters, like he does every morning, or just one at a time, when he wants to go in and out. He had them installed because he heard that someone’s house nearby had been broken into while the occupants were in bed. To keep me safe.

  He closed the shutter again. I heard the dull clunk of it hitting the back doorstep. Then he opened the washing machine door and then closed it again. I could hear him as he walked around, first in his shoes, then without them. He placed them on the rack so I would think they had been there all night. He tiptoed up the stairs and now he is in his bedroom.

  I’d crept downstairs around five o’clock just to make sure. At first I was really angry, but what’s the point? Downstairs at night is totally black. The shutters block all the light. I couldn’t flick on the high-tech lighting system that Al had installed about four years ago because the light is bright white. Stark. I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t see a glint of it. Anyway, I’m used to padding about the house in the dark. I made a map of the creaky floorboards and memorised it.

  Sometimes, when he has been in my room and I’ve had a shower, I sit at the kitchen table in the dark. Just so I don’t have to be in that room with the smell of sweat and sex and my own terror still ringing from the walls. I put the radio on low and listen to people who are out in the world doing things that sound exciting.