Watching You: A Novel

‘Mum!’

Jenna peered behind her mum’s bedroom door. She wasn’t there. She went to her own room and knelt on her bed so that she could look down into the back garden. Before she’d started using e-cigarettes, her mum had spent hours out in the garden, smoking. Her smoking table was still there: the sad chair by the sad table, the sad ashtray full of damp, mulchy old butts. Now she rarely went out there. It was a slight improvement, but not much.

There was no sign of her mum in the garden so Jenna pulled her trainers back on and then her hoodie, and headed out into the early evening gloom towards the bus stop outside the Melville. This was her mum’s favourite vantage point for watching Tom Fitzwilliam and his family. Her mother was not there. She crossed the road and went to the bottom of the escarpment, peering up the road to check that her mother wasn’t hiding in the undergrowth near his house again, and as she stood there, her hands knitted together, unsure what to do, she became aware of a brilliant blue light ricocheting off windows and cars. She followed the source of the light to a silently approaching police car. The car slowed as it made its way down the high street and then pulled up opposite Jenna, right next to the Melville. Two policemen exited the car, adjusted their uniforms, one said something into a walkie-talkie and then they entered the hotel.

Jenna felt her heart contract and then thump. She crossed back towards the hotel and peered through the window into the bar. There she saw exactly what she had expected to see. Her mother sitting at a table by the bar being spoken to by one police officer while on the other side of the bar a worried-looking couple and the manager talked to the other police officer.

‘Fuck,’ she said, under her breath. ‘Fuck.’

She pulled in her breath and walked into the bar.

‘Ah!’ she heard her mother say. ‘Here’s my daughter. She’ll tell you. She’ll tell you everything. Jen. Come over here.’

The bar fell silent; all eyes were on her and her mother.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked the police officer.

‘Could you confirm your name? And your relationship to Mrs Tripp?’

‘I’m Jenna Tripp. I’m her daughter.’

‘And how old are you, Jenna?’

‘I’m fifteen. Nearly sixteen.’

The police officer turned to the bar manager and said, ‘Is this OK? She’s under age.’

The manager nodded and the police officer said, ‘I’m PC Drax and we’ve been asked to come and talk to your mother about some alleged threatening remarks made to some other patrons. Apparently she was refusing to leave.’

Her mum tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘They were not threatening remarks, officer. For God’s sake. We were having a conversation!’

Jenna turned to look at the couple sitting across the room who could barely make eye contact with her. She had no idea who they were.

‘That’s the thing,’ her mother continued. ‘No one will talk about this stuff. No one will admit that it’s happening. We sit in our little cotton-wool cocoons pretending that the world is all soft and safe and lovely because we can’t face the truth. They’re all in it. Him up there’ – she pointed towards Melville Heights – ‘half the village, probably. And this isn’t just about me. I’m not that stupid as to think that I’m the only one who gets all this … all this shit. It’s happening on a global level. And there are other people like him’ – she pointed upwards again – ‘powerful people. All over the world. And if we don’t talk about it, it will keep on happening. And I heard these nice people just now, while I was standing outside, I heard them talking about him and saying what a great job he’s doing and all I said was you don’t know the half of it, but nobody wants to hear it, nobody wants to bloody hear it.’

Her mother kept talking and Jenna stared at her and thought, This has suddenly become something much bigger than me.

‘Is there anyone you can call?’ PC Drax asked her. ‘An adult?’

Jenna looked at her phone clutched inside her hand and thought that she should phone her dad. Then she thought that if Dad came he’d make her go back and stay with him. And if she went to stay with him then she would end up living with him and she didn’t want to live with him because her life was here. And then she thought of Bess, who had once again not waited for her this morning or after school this evening, and she looked at her mother who was very close to as far as she could go in life without some serious help from the outside world, and she wondered if the life she had here was worth as much as she’d always thought it was.

‘My dad lives in Weston-super-Mare,’ she said. ‘I could call him?’

‘Yes,’ said the police officer, ‘maybe you could.’

She typed in her dad’s number and watched the couple across the way talking to the other PC. They were shaking their heads and saying, ‘No, no, it’s fine.’

‘And you know,’ her mother was saying, ‘in actual fact it should have been me calling the police. To report an assault. This gentleman’ – she pointed at the manager – ‘was really quite physical with me.’

The manager rolled his eyes. ‘I barely touched her,’ he said. ‘Literally, just put my hand on her elbow trying to encourage her to leave. But she refused.’

Her father’s phone rang and rang and rang. Jenna pressed end call and looked at PC Drax. ‘No reply,’ she said, a whisper of relief in her tone.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Just around the corner. Literally one minute away.’

‘Do you think you could get your mum to come home with you? Now? There’s no charges to be brought here. I think it’s best if we can just end this nice and quietly. What do you think?’

‘Yes,’ Jenna said brightly. ‘Yes. I can get her home. Mum?’ She went to her mum’s side and touched her shoulder.

Her mother clasped her hand over hers. ‘My daughter knows what I’ve been through. She can tell you. She can tell you everything. Maybe then someone will listen.’

‘Mum, we’re going home now.’ Jenna gently pulled her mum to her feet and started to lead her towards the door.

‘I’ve written to the chief superintendent three times in the last six months. I’ve written to my councillor and my MP. Nobody wants to know. I get fobbed off with these meaningless stock replies. Maybe now, maybe someone will actually listen. And you two!’ Her mother turned suddenly as they neared the front door and pointed at the embarrassed-looking couple. ‘I’m sorry I had to approach you both so heavy-handedly. I can see that wasn’t ideal. But as long as decent people like you keep believing what you’re told about people like him, nothing will ever change.’

‘Come on, Mum.’ Jenna kept her moving. The police officer held open the door and finally her mum was out of the hotel bar, on the pavement. People stopped and watched. Traffic slowed as it passed.

The two police officers escorted Jenna and her mum back to their house and stayed for half an hour, asking Jenna lots of questions, the answers to which she knew would be going straight to social services. No, she said, her mother had never approached strangers before as far as she was aware. Most of the time, she said, her mother sat at her computer. Most of the time she said her mother was perfectly normal. And, well, yes, maybe she had noticed a slight increase in her mother’s paranoia over the past week or so. Her mother had always been up and down, yes, possibly she had a slightly bipolar aspect, but no, it had never caused any problems for her, no. Life was fine. Her mum was fine. On the whole, yes, it was all good.

Her phone rang about two minutes after the police finally left.

‘Jen, love, it’s Dad. Is everything OK? I’m really sorry I missed your call; I was in my t’ai chi class.’

Jenna let a moment of silence fall as she wondered, briefly, if now was the time finally to offload her fucked-up life on to someone else. But then she sighed, and made herself smile and said, ‘Everything’s fine, Dad. Honestly. I just wondered if I was going to see you over the Easter holidays. That’s all.’