Watching You: A Novel

Freddie was sitting at the top of the stairs. The doorbell had just rung and he’d heard a man’s voice he didn’t recognise. He pitched backwards when he saw who it was. For a moment his heart began to race. It was the big guy with the red hair and the tattoos: Red Boots’s husband. What on earth was he doing here? Had he somehow discovered that Freddie had been secretly filming his wife?

But as he listened he could hear that the big guy was being friendly. There was laughter. His mother said, ‘Come in, come in. Can I get you a cup of tea?’ And the big guy said, ‘No, thank you, I’m fine.’ He was wearing nice shoes which he spent an inordinate amount of time wiping back and forth across their tatty doormat, like a tradesman. Freddie tiptoed to the next landing and listened to their voices coming from the kitchen. He caught the gist of the conversation. The big guy was going to be decorating their living rooms and the kitchen. ‘Just normal colours,’ he heard his mother say. ‘Off-whites probably.’

‘Any wallpapering?’

‘Oh no. No. I don’t think so. I like plain walls.’

Freddie went back to his room and waited till he heard the front door opening and closing, his mother saying, ‘Thank you so much! We’ll be in touch!’ before coming downstairs and saying, ‘What was he doing here?’

‘I saw him when I was coming back from my run,’ his mother said. ‘He was in paint-spattered overalls and I just thought, well, we seem to have a decorator on our doorstep and I’d been thinking about finding one because this house …’ She looked around it despairingly. ‘Well, you know, it’s not exactly to our taste, is it?’

Freddie quite liked this house. It had dark blue walls and bits of mahogany panelling, strips of dark floral wallpaper here and there. It was scruffy but it had a bit of character, unlike most of the houses they’d lived in over the years.

‘I don’t want my room doing,’ he said. ‘I like my room.’

‘Yes, well, we can’t agree to anything until I’ve had a quote back from him. And obviously I’ll have to speak to your father.’

Freddie sat down on the settle in the hallway. ‘What was he like?’

‘Who? The painter?’

‘Don’t you even know his name?’

‘I didn’t ask! Hold on …’ She pulled a card from the console table. ‘Here. Alfie Butter. Ha! What a funny name!’ She put the card back on the console. ‘He was very nice. But young. You know? Not much upstairs.’

She glanced at him then as if she’d just remembered something important. ‘Are you hungry?’ she said. ‘What would you like?’

‘What is there?’

It was a trick question. She wouldn’t have been shopping. She only shopped when Dad was home. Dad was her first priority from the moment she woke up to the moment she went to bed.

‘Gosh. Not much. There’s pasta? Or some nice bread. I could do you eggs on toast?’

Eggs on toast was his dad’s favourite dinner. He nodded. There was no point holding out for anything better.

After tea, which he ate on his own while his mum had a shower and got changed, he went back to his room. He’d taken the long route home from school today, past St Mildred’s, the private girls’ school three roads down, to check out Romola Brook, the new girl everyone at his school was talking about.

He’d got some shots of her chatting with a guy from their sixth form. He’d gone in really close, got her pulling her hair from her face, touching her lips every now and then with her fingertips, her eyes staring at the pavement. Then he’d followed her home. She lived in a tiny modern house in a new-build mews just outside the city. It had a Buddha out front and a longhaired chihuahua waiting for her in the front window. He’d photographed her letting herself in and bending down to greet the tiny dog.

Now he loaded the photos and the film footage on to his PC and started to edit them. He pressed save to secure the changes he’d made to the photos and then he went to his security log, as he did every evening, to make sure that nothing had been compromised. His heartbeat staccatoed for a second.

There had been five invalid login attempts.

Breathlessly, he clicked on Quick Access to see if files had been opened and then sat back heavily against the back of his chair, all the air leaving his lungs in one bolt.

JT1.jpg. JT2.jpg. JT3.jpg. JT&BR1.jpg. JT&BR2.jpg. JT4.jpg.

These were his early photos of Jenna Tripp and Bess Ridley. He hadn’t looked at them in ages. He had not opened these files. Someone else had. And Freddie had no idea who it was.