Watching You: A Novel

Joey had seen it all. It had just begun to kick off as she got off the bus that night on the other side of the street. She’d stood and watched it unfold: the shouting woman, the blue lights, the police escort.

She hadn’t been the only one watching. There’d been a little bank of spectators. Nothing exciting ever happened in Melville – crazy people being escorted out of bars was the sort of thing that happened in the city, not here in this cosseted backwater – so when it did it couldn’t be ignored.

When she returned the house was in full darkness and it was quiet enough to hear the sound of the tap dripping into the kitchen sink, the gurgle and buzz of the refrigerator. She wondered if she was alone. She went to Rebecca’s study at the top of the landing and knocked quietly on her door.

‘Yes.’

‘Ah,’ she said, pushing open the door, ‘you are at home.’ She saw the screen on one of Rebecca’s monitors switch quickly from some kind of image to a sheet of data.

‘Yes.’ Rebecca stared at her. ‘Hi.’

She looked chalky white in the glow of her computer screens. Her eyes were fixed wide, as though she’d been staring without blinking for hours. The window was slightly open and the room was cold, yet Rebecca sat in a thin blouse and bare feet.

‘God, it’s freezing in here! Aren’t you cold?’

Joey walked to the window to shut it, her eyes quickly searching the dark reflections of Tom Fitzwilliam’s bedroom window for a glimpse of his wife. But the room was empty, the lights were off. She peered down into the village. Between two passing cars she saw what looked suspiciously like Tom Fitzwilliam and his son entering the bar entrance at the Melville.

Her heart quickened and, almost breathlessly, she said to Rebecca, ‘Fancy going down to the Melville for an early supper? On me?’

They walked into the bar half an hour later. Joey had showered, brushed her teeth and put on tight jeans and earrings with small diamanté drops that she knew would glitter in candlelight. At first she didn’t see Tom. She thought with a heavy heart that she must have missed him. But as she stood at the bar she turned slightly and saw him tucked away in the corner with his son at a tiny table for two. He looked up just as she looked at him and she saw it, immediately, bright and unmistakeable: a look of excitement.

She returned his diamond smile and mouthed a hi.

She and Rebecca took a table slightly out of sight of Tom’s table; it was the only one free on a Friday night.

‘Thank you,’ Rebecca said, touching her Virgin Mary to the side of Joey’s Bloody Mary, ‘this was a good idea. Sometimes I really do need to be reminded about the big world out there, I become so …’ She trailed off suddenly and her gaze left Joey’s face and drifted to someone approaching behind. Joey could feel him before she saw him. Her heart lifted and her blood ran quicker. She looked up and smiled.

‘Hi, Tom,’ she said. ‘I would have come over but I didn’t want to disturb you and your boy having special quality time.’

‘Bless you,’ he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek, which, because it was Tom Fitzwilliam, felt like an appallingly erotic and complicated manoeuvre that could go wrong in so many unthinkable ways that she could barely breathe. She rose slightly from her seat to meet him halfway and the kiss passed without incident and Joey managed to pull herself together sufficiently to say, ‘You know my sister-in-law, Rebecca, I suppose?’

‘Yes!’ Tom replied brightly. ‘Yes, I do. Lovely to see you again. It’s been ages. I’ve barely seen you since you moved in.’

‘No,’ Rebecca replied drily. ‘I keep myself to myself.’

‘And I see you and Jack have been busy.’ He nodded towards Rebecca’s stomach and there was a moment of slightly painful silence prompting Tom to say, ‘Oh, God. Tell me it is a baby. It is a baby? Yes?’

Joey waited for Rebecca to reassure Tom that, yes, of course it was a baby, but she didn’t, she merely stared at him with her mouth slightly agape leaving Joey to say, ‘Yes. It’s a baby. My niece. Due in approximately two months.’

‘Lovely,’ said Tom. ‘Congratulations. How’s Jack?’

‘Jack’s fine,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Thank you.’ A crisp afterthought.

‘Good,’ said Tom, throwing Joey a sideways look so loaded with intimacy that it made her feel light-headed. He turned back to his table where his son was staring intently at his smartphone, casting his eye across the room every couple of seconds, ‘I should get back to Freddie. In fact, I should get him home. No doubt he’s got a ton of homework to do. Lovely to see you, Rebecca. And lovely to see you again, Josephine.’

‘Josephine?’ Rebecca hissed at her as Tom sauntered back to his table. ‘Why does he call you Josephine?’

She shrugged. ‘I must have told him that’s what I was called. That night when he had to bring me home. And now it’s sort of stuck.’

‘Why would you tell him your name was Josephine?’

‘Because it is.’

‘But no one calls you that.’

‘Oh, God. I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to impress him or something. Maybe I thought it made me sound better than I am.’

Rebecca blinked at her. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘Because …’ Joey pushed her celery stick around the edges of her glass. ‘I don’t know. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘I might. Try me.’

‘Well, imagine,’ she said, ‘just imagine spending your whole entire life in the shadow of a guy like Jack. Imagine cocking everything up, literally everything you do, and every time you look up from your own mess for even a minute there’s Jack, right there, doing literally everything right. And not just that, but being so fucking lovely about it. And I’m just, you know, stupid, chaotic Joey. And then I find myself talking to another incredible properly grown-up human being who does everything right and solves everybody’s problems and maybe I just wanted him to think that I was a smart, together Josephine. Not a stupid Joey. You know?’

‘I get that,’ said Rebecca. ‘I do. I feel that way too, sometimes.’

‘About Jack?’

‘Yes. About Jack. About people I work with. Most people really.’ She shrugged. ‘You know, when I first met you I was terrified of you. I still am.’

‘What!’

‘Yes. Jack always talked about you like you were some kind of cowgirl, out there in Ibiza, wrangling the rowdy stags, up all night, unstoppable, fearless. And then I met you and you were just so young and so cool, you give off this vibe like you could, you know, ride wild horses, shoot tin cans off walls. You seem so spontaneous, so free. While Jack is, yes, very successful but also so very measured and careful. Everything planned and thought through. No room for surprises. And I’m the same, so I guess in a way I find that side of you inspiring. But also scary.’

‘Well,’ said Joey, ‘please do not feel scared of me for another moment. I can assure you that I cannot ride wild horses and I have zero spontaneity and I am absolutely just a sad, sad loser.’

‘Stop it, Joey. Please. Just stop it. Because the thing is, the longer you tell yourself you’re a loser, the more likely it is that that’s what people will see you as. And you’re not. You’re superb. And you know …’ She plucked at the cuffs of her thin blouse. ‘I knew someone very like you, once upon a time. She was amazing and vital and beautiful and cool and she never believed in herself and she thought everyone was better than her and that everyone else knew what they were doing apart from her and then, one day when she was fourteen years old …’ She paused, her gaze fixed upon her hands. Then she looked up at Joey and continued: ‘She killed herself.’

Joey gulped and stared at Rebecca. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘who was it?’

Rebecca pulled her cuffs down over the heels of her hands. She looked up at Joey again and said, ‘She was my baby sister.’

RECORDED INTERVIEW

Date: 25/03/2017

Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

POLICE: Please could you give your full name, for the recording.

AB: Alfie James Butter.

POLICE: And your address?

AB: Fourteen Melville Heights.

POLICE: Thank you. Just a couple of very simple questions for you, Mr Butter.

AB: Please call me Alfie.

POLICE: Certainly. Of course, Alfie. Where were you on Friday night, 24 March?

AB: I was at my mum’s until about seven o’clock. And then I headed home.

POLICE: And where does your mum live?

AB: She lives in Frenchay.

POLICE: Thank you. And how did you get home?

AB: I got the bus. I haven’t got a car right now. I’m saving for a van. For my painting job.

POLICE: So you got the number …?

AB: The 218, from the city.

POLICE: And you got back to Melville at?

AB: At about seven forty I suppose.

POLICE: And can you talk us through what happened after you got back to the village?

AB: Yeah. Sure. I stopped in at the corner shop and bought a couple of bottles of beer. I’d just texted Joey …

POLICE: That’s Ms Mullen?

AB: Yeah, that’s right. And she’d said she was staying in town shopping and wouldn’t be back for a while. And I needed a drink. You know. Friday night and all that. Then I walked up the hill to the house.

POLICE: And did you see anyone as you walked up the hill?

AB: No. I didn’t see anyone.

POLICE: And you live with Ms Mullen’s older brother and his wife. Is that correct?

AB: Yes. That’s spot on.

POLICE: And were either of them at home when you returned?

AB: No idea. I didn’t see either of them. It’s not my place so I try to just keep my head down as much as I can. Don’t want to get in their way. So I wasn’t going to go seeking them out. You know? So, yeah, I just took my beers and went straight up to our room to wait for Joey.

POLICE: And what time did Joey get home? From the shops?

AB: It must have been, I dunno, about eight fifteen. Eight thirty?

POLICE: Can you be more specific?

AB: Yeah. No. I dunno. Roughly that.

POLICE: And did she come straight up? As far as you’re aware?

AB: I had music playing so I wouldn’t have heard the front door going. But, yeah. I reckon she’d come straight up. She was still in her coat and her hands were cold. And her cheeks. Like she’d just come in from outside. Why?

POLICE: And how did she appear to you? Did she appear anxious? Or breathless in any way?

AB: No. She seemed … well, a bit, I don’t know – she said she’d had a stressful day. That the shops were rammed. She was tired. All that. So she wasn’t exactly jumping with joy or anything. But she was all right.

POLICE: All right?

AB: Yeah, she was fine.

POLICE: And what did she do, when she came upstairs?

AB: I don’t really know. We chatted for a bit. And then she took a shower.

POLICE: And what did she buy? At the shops? Did she tell you?

AB: A new bra. Apparently.

POLICE: Did she show you the bra?

AB: Yes. She was wearing it. What’s the deal here? You don’t think Joey had anything to do with this? Do you?

POLICE: Thank you, Alfie. That’s it for now.