Watching You: A Novel

‘Hi, Mum!’ Joey pulled a cloth from her coat pocket and used it to clear away the winter dust that had collected on her mother’s gravestone. The flowers she’d left on the second day of the year were still there as well as another small posy; 50p-a-bunch daffodils from Asda that her dad would have brought.

Joey hadn’t realised that her dad visited so frequently. Her dad was not one for grand gestures or shows of emotion. He’d maintained a cool detachment in the days and months after Mum had died. They’d been talking about splitting up for a year or so before the accident. Neither of them had been happy. But on the day of the accident they’d been in a good place. They’d been up to see Jack and Rebecca’s house renovations. Afterwards Jack had taken them for lunch at the Melville. They’d had wine; Mum and Dad had shared a sticky toffee pudding. It had been a good day. Jack had said he thought maybe they wouldn’t split up after all. And then later that day Mum had been halfway to the shops at the bottom of the road to buy a lottery ticket when a ninety-year-old man called Roger Davies mounted the kerb in his Ford Fiesta and pinned her to a letter box. She’d died ten days later.

Dad didn’t talk about it much. Jack had tried to set him up with a grief therapist. He’d gone to one appointment and never returned. He’d cleared Mum’s stuff out within a week of her death, rearranged things over the hollows so you’d never know it had been there. And, to the absolute horror of both Joey and Jack, he already had a girlfriend. Her name was Sue and Jack was convinced that she had been in the picture long before their mother’s death. The day their father had told them about Sue had been one of the worst that she could remember and neither she nor Jack had seen their father since.

But here, with these cheap but carefully placed daffodils, was proof that he hadn’t moved on entirely. Joey tried to picture her father here. She tried to imagine what he did, if he talked to her, how long he stayed. She wondered if he cried. She hoped that he did.

‘So. Lots has happened since I last saw you. I’ve got a job. It’s a bit of a classic Joey job. As in, you know, crap. But at least I’m earning some money. Alfie’s still at the bar in town but he’s trying to get some more work as a painter and decorator. So, we’re kind of getting there. But …’ She paused and looked briefly over her shoulder, as though someone she knew might be hanging around in a cemetery on a Monday afternoon. ‘I’ve done something really bad. Like, really, really, really bad. Worse than anything I’ve done before and I know I’ve done a lot of bad things. I’m not even sure I can tell you what it was because you’ll disown me. Actually, I’m not going to tell you, because even thinking about it makes me want to throw up.’ She sighed and looked down at her fingernails, pulled at a loose tag of skin. ‘I really thought that I was growing up at last, Mum. I really thought that getting married and moving back to Bristol was going to be the start of the big new grown-up me. But if anything, I’m regressing. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it, that’s what I’m starting to realise. I’m still me, Mum, wherever I go in the world, I’m still just me. Joey the fuck-up. Joey the pain. And I wish you were here because I know that was always enough for you. And I’m not sure it’s enough for anyone else.

‘Anyway.’ She pulled herself to standing. ‘I’m sorry to come here and just be all me me me. Nothing new there though, I suppose. I love you, Mum. I love you so much. I’ll come again soon and hopefully by then I’ll have sorted out my life. Bye, Mum. Sleep tight.’

Joey turned at the sound of Alfie bursting into the bedroom.

‘I’ve got a painting job!’

‘Huh?’

‘Just now. Like, literally! The woman two doors down. She saw me in my overalls and she asked if I was a decorator and I said yes and she said can you decorate my living room and my kitchen.’

‘What woman two doors down?’

‘Here.’ He felt in the pockets of his overall and pulled out a card. ‘“Nicola Fitzwilliam”,’ he read. ‘She lives there.’ He pointed. ‘In the yellow house.’

The very sound of the word Fitzwilliam on Alfie’s tongue made her shiver.

‘Did you go in?’

‘No. We just chatted on the street.’

‘And literally, she just literally asked you to paint her house? Just like that?’

‘Yeah! It was so cool! I’m going over later to cost the job for her.’

‘You’re going to her house?’

‘Yeah! Gonna jump in the shower and head over. Wanna come with?’

All the blood in Joey’s body rushed to her head. She pictured Tom’s face when he saw her standing in his hallway. For a moment she found it hard to breathe properly. ‘No.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘You OK? I thought you’d be really happy.’

She cupped her hand over her temple. ‘Sorry. I’m just a bit headachy. Long day. Kids. You know.’ She wanted to jump to her feet, to throw herself at big, handsome Alfie and hug him and tell him she was proud and delighted. But fear kept her anchored to the spot. She glanced at him and said, ‘I am really happy, Alf. I really am. It’s brilliant.’

This seemed to satisfy him and he beamed at her. ‘I’m getting there at last,’ he said. ‘Finally getting there. Before too long we’ll have a place of our own. And then …’ His smile faded and he didn’t finish the sentence. She knew exactly what he’d been about to say.

She watched him peeling off his clothes, leaving them snaking across the floorboards in his wake. She let her eyes linger on his buttocks for a brief moment before he disappeared into the en suite. Such remarkable buttocks. Why would a woman with access to such a pair of buttocks ever wish to place their hands upon any other? Why would a woman married to the nicest man in Bristol want to waste even a moment thinking about Tom Fitzwilliam? What was the matter with her?

Shouldn’t the memory of the look of utter dismay on Tom Fitzwilliam’s face as he pulled her hands away from his body outside the Weaver’s Arms have been enough to kill off her fixation?

Shouldn’t the thought of him struggling to find the words to express his shock and displeasure – Christ, God, no! I mean, no! You’re gorgeous! You’re really gorgeous! But you’re married! I’m married. And I would never. I would just never. God! – have stopped her in her tracks?

Technically speaking, Joey had assaulted him. If he’d wanted to report her to the police, he would have been completely within his rights.

But there’d been a moment, when her hand had first gone between his legs: his whole body had lurched towards hers; he’d tipped his head back at the feel of her fingers going to the back of his neck, he’d groaned and for a short moment his lips had met hers. That had happened. As drunk as she’d been, as pumped full of adrenaline and hormones and lust, she knew that had definitely happened. And it was that, that single, gossamer-thin element of time, that stopped her from wanting to kill herself out of pure humiliation.

She heard the shower start running, the shower door open and then close. She looked at Alfie’s clothes on the floor: the paint-splattered overalls, the ripped T-shirt, the old boxers, the small rumpled socks. In the corner of the mirror she could just make out the blurred pinkness of Alfie’s naked body in the shower.

Her gut ached with guilt and self-hatred.

‘You sure you don’t want to come with me?’ he asked a moment later, towel-drying his hair. ‘Keep me company?’

He was feeling shy, Joey realised, self-conscious about going into a posh lady’s house on his own to discuss business.

‘I’m not your mum, Alfie,’ she said, somewhat harshly. ‘You don’t need me to hold your hand.’

She winced when she saw the flash of hurt pass across his face. ‘Yeah,’ he said, rallying. ‘Fair enough.’ He pulled on clean jeans and a button-down shirt. Then he rifled around the shelves beside the bed looking for a notepad. Joey found him a pencil while he tied his shoelaces. She tucked it into the top pocket of his shirt and she straightened his collar. ‘You look very nice,’ she said. ‘Don’t undersell yourself. Remember: this is Melville Heights. People expect to pay through the nose for things. So if you quote anything less than through the nose she’ll definitely go for it.’

He checked his phone for the photos he’d taken of his mum’s kitchen and the ones of her neighbour’s home office that he was currently working on. ‘I should get a better camera,’ he said. ‘These look shit.’

‘They look fine,’ Joey said. ‘They show what a good job you can do and that’s all that matters.’

She waited a moment after he left the room and then went to the landing where she watched through the window as he walked towards the Fitzwilliams’ house. Tom’s car was parked outside. He must be at home. She felt a wave of nausea rising through her at the thought of Tom and Alfie coming face-to-face.

And then she jumped away from the window as she saw down below, in the undergrowth across the road, a pair of eyes. She approached the window again. Yes, there was someone down there. Crouched down and staring at the front door of Tom’s house. It was a woman, hard to make out her age in the dark. Blondish hair. Small build. Joey saw her take a mobile phone from her bag and take pictures with it.

‘Jack!’ she called over the banister. ‘Jack! Are you there?’

Her brother appeared in the hallway a floor down. He had a mouth full of food and frowned at her. ‘What?’ he mumbled though his dinner.

‘Look outside. Quickly. Across the street. Look – behind the red car.’

He frowned again, opened the front door and then looked back at her.

‘Just look!’ she said. ‘There’s someone there! Crouching!’

He sighed and disappeared through the front door. Joey watched from the landing window. At the sound of his footsteps the woman in the undergrowth started slightly and hid herself further behind the red car. Joey knocked on the glass. The woman looked up and for a moment their eyes met. She was in her forties, Joey could see now, and pretty in the way of a fading film star. Joey recognised her from somewhere; she had definitely seen her before.

‘There’s nothing there,’ her brother called up the stairs.

She heard the front door close again and then she saw the small blonde woman run.

‘She’s gone,’ she said, walking down the stairs towards Jack. ‘She ran away when she heard you.’

She sat herself on the bottom step and cupped her face in her hands. She looked up at Jack. ‘She was a blonde woman,’ she said. ‘Middle-aged. She was watching Alfie. Taking pictures of Tom Fitzwilliam’s house.’

Jack yawned and sat down next to her. ‘Ah, yeah. I think I know the one you mean. She lives in the village. She’s a bit odd. I’ve seen her down there, staring at people, making notes in a book, tiny little marks. Mental health issues, I’d say.’

‘I wonder what she’s doing up here then,’ Joey said. ‘I wonder what she wants with Tom Fitzwilliam.’

‘Ah,’ said Jack, getting to his feet and stretching his body. ‘Everyone wants a bit of Tom Fitzwilliam.’

She looked up at him, wide-eyed. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing much. Just, he’s one of those guys, isn’t he? Women want him. Men want to be him.’ He said this in the style of an American voiceover.

‘Do you want to be him?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Not really. But I can see why he might send some more, you know, vulnerable people a bit over the edge. He’s very charismatic. Very attractive. And he has this charm about him. Dashing, almost. As if he could save you from yourself.’

He walked backwards away from her, towards the kitchen door. ‘Going to finish my dinner,’ he said. ‘Fancy joining me?’

‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I’m going to head upstairs.’

‘Sure?’

She nodded and smiled and sat on the step for a moment longer while her brother’s words echoed in her head.

Vulnerable people.

She thought of the woman in the undergrowth. Then she thought of her own pathetic infatuation and it occurred to her that maybe they were not so different after all.

RECORDED INTERVIEW

Date: 25/03/2017

Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

POLICE: Your full name please, for the recording.

DP: Dawn Michelle Pettifer.

POLICE: Thank you. And your full address.

DP: 21 Bath Place, Bristol BS11.

POLICE: Thank you. And can you tell me what you told our officer earlier today.

DP: Yes. But can I first say that I think Joey Mullen is an incredible human being. I’m massively fond of her. She works really hard and she’s great with the kids, and yeah. Just an awesome person.

POLICE: Thank you, Ms Pettifer.

DP: It’s just – and maybe it’s nothing, you know, completely a red herring, but a couple of weeks ago I went out for a beer with Joey after work and she told me she was obsessed with Tom Fitzwilliam. She said … her obsession was driving her insane.

POLICE: She used that word? Insane?

DP: Yes. She did. She said that her obsession was killing her.

POLICE: Great. Thank you. And yesterday? At work? How did Joey seem?

DP: Edgy.

POLICE: Edgy?

DP: Yes. Edgy. Not herself. When she left I was worried about her.

POLICE: And why were you worried about her?

DP: I don’t know. She looked scared. She looked … agitated.

POLICE: In your opinion, Ms Pettifer, did Joey Mullen’s demeanour on Friday evening seem ‘agitated’ enough for her to be capable of an act of gruesome violence?

DP: Well, you know, anyone can be capable of anything, can’t they, under the right circumstances. You read about it all the time. So yeah, maybe she was.