Watching You: A Novel

Joey ignored the insistent beeping of the car horn, at first. Either it was someone hooting at her from a white van in which case she had no interest in looking up and having to deal with some moron and his mate with their tongues hanging out. Or it was someone hooting at someone else entirely and then she’d look like a sad loser who’d been secretly hoping it was two morons in a white van.

But then she heard a male voice calling out ‘Josephine!’ and she turned to see Tom Fitzwilliam leaning from the passenger window of his car and signalling for her to approach. ‘Can I give you a lift? I’m heading into town.’

He pulled his car into a space alongside her and she looked at him, then up towards the city. She’d been on her way to the bus stop.

‘Er, yes. Thank you. If you’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure! Jump in.’

She slid in next to him and reached for the seat belt. ‘This is very kind of you,’ she said.

‘Not at all. I see you at the bus stop a lot but I’m usually heading the wrong way for you.’ He turned to her and smiled and Joey thought: I am in a car with Tom Fitzwilliam. I am in Tom Fitzwilliam’s car. Here I am. I am here. It is happening. Right now. She clicked her seat belt into place and returned his smile. ‘Well, thank you,’ she said. And then, ‘Where are you off to? Not going into school today?’

‘No,’ he said, peering into his wing mirror ready to pull back into the morning traffic. ‘Today I have a big meeting at the town hall with the LEA. I’d love to tell you all about it, but then I’d have to kill you.’

He smiled again and there was something wicked in it, something that made her feel like maybe he actually would.

‘So, you’re still at the soft play centre?’ he said, eyeing the logo on her polo shirt.

‘Unfortunately, yes,’ she said. ‘Although it is growing on me. Nice people.’

‘People are everything,’ he said. ‘That’s one thing I’ve learned. If you’re with the right people then you’re generally in the right place.’

‘Unless it’s a prison.’ She laughed. And then immediately hated herself for the sound of her laughter, so harsh and fake.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s a prison. Seriously! Or at least, if you are in prison because you’ve done a bad thing and not because of a terrible miscarriage of justice.’

She ran her hands down the leather sides of her seat. How many times had she stared into the passenger side of Tom’s car when it was parked outside her house, imagining herself sitting right here? And now it was actually happening and Joey’s head could barely process anything. She pulled herself straight and shook her head slightly.

‘So, you’re not still planning on leaving the country, then?’ he asked with a small smile.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No. I’m over that.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s good.’

The traffic out of Melville was heavy and there was a chance, without the expediency of bus lanes, that she might arrive late to work. She did not care. She breathed in the smell of Tom Fitzwilliam’s car: worn leather and showered man. She stared at his hands where they gripped the steering wheel. Such good hands. She could not look at them without imagining them on her face, inside her clothes, pulling at her. She felt her need for him bubbling up inside her, so fast and so red hot that she was convinced he must be able to tell what she was thinking.

As they approached the turning to the Academy she watched the sea of grey blazers pouring from all directions. It was incredible, she thought, that the mild-mannered man sitting next to her was responsible for each and every one of these half-formed people every single day.

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Do you think you’ll stay in Melville for much longer?’

‘Well, we’ve only been here a year,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see through two years minimum. That’s when you know that all the huge changes you made when you arrived have rooted themselves. It’s like snagging, you know. You want to be around just to tidy up all the bits you missed when you were doing the big job.’

‘Have you ever failed?’ she asked.

He glanced at her quickly before returning his gaze to the windscreen. ‘Failed?’

‘Yes. At one of your schools? Have you ever been brought in to fix a school you couldn’t fix?’

He smiled. ‘No,’ he said, ‘or at least, not yet.’

‘What would you do? If you couldn’t fix it?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve genuinely never thought about it.’

They fell silent for a moment. The traffic barely moved, and Tom pointed over Joey’s shoulder. ‘Oh, look,’ he said, ‘there’s the bus you would have been on if I hadn’t picked you up.’ They watched its wide rear-end pass them by in a wreath of grey fumes. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You’d have been there earlier if I’d left you.’

‘I forgive you,’ she said.

He turned and smiled. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’

‘So,’ she said a moment later. ‘How long have you and Nicola been together?

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘God. I’m not sure. Twenty years, I guess. Something like that.’

‘And is your son – is he yours? Or both of yours?’

He laughed. ‘You’re very full of blunt questions.’

‘Sorry. It’s just Nicola looks so young to be his mum. I thought maybe she was a second wife?’

‘No. Very much a first wife.’

Joey nodded, running some vague arithmetic through her head. If Nicola was the age she looked – roughly the same age as Jack and Rebecca, then she and Tom must have got together when she was … No. She must be older than she looked.

‘Where did you meet?’

‘We met, as unromantic as it sounds, on a bus in Burton-on-Trent. She came up to me and told me that I’d been a teacher at her school.’

‘She was a schoolgirl?’

Tom laughed. ‘No! Not then. She was nineteen, twenty, something like that. She remembered me, but I didn’t remember her. I didn’t actually teach her. She was in a lower set.’

‘Well, phew, thank goodness for that because that would have been a bit cringey.’

‘Would it? Why?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Teachers. Students. It’s all a bit murky, isn’t it?’

He turned to her and for a moment she thought he was going to shout at her, tell her she was wrong. But then his face softened and he smiled and said, ‘I suppose it could be. But in this case, it was murk free, I promise.’

Joey smiled tightly and changed the subject. ‘So, does your son go to your school? To the Academy?’

‘No. No. Most definitely not. Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with my school. Clearly my school is brilliant! But it’s easier, when you move around a lot, to go private, otherwise you’re farting about with catchment areas and waiting lists and criteria. Private you just show up with your chequebook and your child’s last report card and you’re away.’

‘Jack tells me your son’s a genius?’

‘Yes. He is a bit. Very high IQ. Brilliant at languages and technology. Regional chess champion a couple of times. And he’s already done three GCSEs and he’s only in year ten. So yes. Very bright. But he’s a funny little guy.’

‘Is he?’

‘Yeah. He is a bit. I think he’s just starting to notice girls as well. Which should be interesting. Not sure his basic skill set really extends to charming the ladies. But we’ll see, I suppose.’

Tom looked at her. His eyes, she noticed for the very first time, were, like her own, green. Only 3 per cent of the population of the world has green eyes. Her mother had always told her that in an effort to make her feel special. Jack’s eyes were blue. Blue was very common, apparently. Her mother had been aware of how inferior she felt to her brilliant brother and was always keen to give Joey a little boost where she could.

‘You’ve got green eyes,’ she found herself saying.

‘Have I?’ he said.

‘Yes!’ She laughed. ‘Surely you know what colour your eyes are?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I think I thought they were a kind of murky blue. I’ve never really thought about it.’

Joey narrowed her eyes at him. Was he being disingenuous?

‘Well, they’re green. Officially. And I should know because mine are green too.’

He turned briefly to look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So they are. You have very beautiful eyes. If that’s an OK thing to say?’

‘It depends on the context,’ she replied.

‘And is this the right context to tell you that you have beautiful eyes?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think so.’

‘Phew,’ he said. ‘That’s a relief.’

They’d arrived in the city now. The early morning streets of Bristol thronged with people heading to work. An awkward silence descended.

‘You know,’ said Tom, peering at the traffic stretching towards the next junction, ‘it would probably be quicker for you to walk from here.’

‘Yes,’ Joey agreed quickly. ‘Yes. It probably would be.’

‘Next time the lights go red, you can jump out.’

‘Yes. OK.’

She unclipped her seat belt. A sensor began to ping. She waited for Tom to slow the car to standing and then she said, ‘Thank you for the lift,’ and he said, ‘You are most welcome,’ and she searched his face for something, some other meaning, some sense that he didn’t want her to go, that he was fighting a terrible urge to pull her back, to grab her, to push his mouth on to her mouth and make the cars behind hoot their horns with frustration at being kept waiting. She searched for a full five seconds until Tom looked ahead and then back at her and said, ‘Quick, they’re changing to green again.’

She got out of the car and dashed to the pavement. The lights changed, and she watched Tom’s car pull slowly forwards and away from her.

She shivered – a nauseating combination of embarrassment and lust – then turned and headed to work.

RECORDED INTERVIEW

Date: 25/03/2017

Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

POLICE: How long would you say your infatuation with Mr Fitzwilliam has been growing?

JM: I wouldn’t call it an infatuation. Just a mutual attraction.

POLICE: Well, in that case, how long would you say it has been since you discovered your mutual attraction?

JM: I really don’t know. I suppose since the first time I saw him.

POLICE: Which was?

JM: Early this year? January?

POLICE: And this mutual attraction – how did it manifest itself?

JM: I don’t know what you mean?

POLICE: I mean, were there clandestine meetings? Lingering looks?

JM: There were looks, I suppose. I don’t know if they were lingering.

POLICE: For the purpose of the recording I am showing Ms Mullen a series of photographs. Numbers 2866 to 2872. Could you describe these photographs to me, if you would?

JM: They’re photographs of me.

POLICE: And what are you doing in these photographs?

JM: I’m looking at Tom Fitzwilliam’s house.

POLICE: And can you tell me where these photographs were taken?

JM: They were taken on the path around the back of the houses.

POLICE: So you are familiar with the back exits to the houses on Melville Heights?

JM: Yes. Yes I am.

POLICE: And these, Ms Mullen – for the sake of the recording, I am showing Ms Mullen another set of photographs, these numbered 2873 to 2877 – could you describe these photographs, please?

JM: They’re photos of Tom Fitzwilliam’s house.

POLICE: Or, more specifically, of the inside of Tom Fitzwilliam’s house?

JM: Yes. It looks like it.

POLICE: These are photographs we took off your phone just now, Ms Mullen. Could you explain what photographs of the interior of Mr Fitzwilliam’s house were doing on your phone?

JM: Yes. I can totally explain it. My husband did a decorating job for them. I said I’d take some pictures for him, so he could show them to other clients.

POLICE: And this one, in particular. Could you describe this photograph, for the recording?

JM: Yes. It’s a photograph of the conservatory thing at the back of Tom’s house.

POLICE: Clearly showing, I think you’ll agree, a broken window.

JM: What?

POLICE: I am showing Ms Mullen a detail on photograph number 2876. Could you describe what you are looking at?

JM: It’s one of the windows. Next to the back door. It’s tied together with string.

POLICE: Thank you, Ms Mullen.

JM: But I didn’t even notice it. I didn’t even know—

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