Watching You: A Novel

That morning as Joey sat at the bus stop, she heard a car horn hooting and there was Tom, on the other side of the street, his window wound down, indicating that she should approach.

Her stomach turned into a clenched fist.

She rose slowly to her feet and crossed the street. Staring down through the open window she waited for Tom to talk.

‘Jump in,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you to work.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘Won’t you be late for school?’

‘I may well be late for school,’ he said, ‘but I’m the boss, so who’s going to be asking me questions?’

She slid into the passenger seat. Her breath was caught halfway to her mouth. She couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe. For a moment they drove in silence. Joey tried to think of some arrangement of words to puncture the silence that wouldn’t make things more awkward than they already were, but failed.

And then Tom turned off the radio and said, ‘We should probably talk. About this thing.’

Joey nodded, exhaled, felt relief wash through her. ‘The you-and-me-on-Friday-night thing?’

‘Yes. The you-and-me-on-Friday-night thing. I have to say that I am completely and utterly flummoxed. I mean, this has never happened to me before …’

She nodded again.

‘I’m just not the sort of man … really, I’m not. I need you to know that. It’s very, very important to me that you don’t think I make a habit of sexual impropriety.’

She shook her head, encouragingly.

‘But, I don’t know, there’s something about you. Or more to the point, ever since that night at the pub when you …’

‘Assaulted you?’

He laughed, softening the edges of the conversation. ‘Well, that’s not how I saw it. But yes, since that, I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. And I want to apologise for Friday night. I allowed my instincts to take me over. I saw you in the wine shop and all I could think was wow, wow, wow. But I never for one moment intended for what happened next to happen. That was primal, that was base. And I can only apologise. Profoundly. I’m so sorry.’

‘Tom,’ she said. ‘I don’t need an apology. I really—’

‘You know,’ Tom interjected, ‘I have spent days frantically trying to avoid you, hoping that this feeling would go away, and then I saw you this morning, from my bedroom window, saw you leaving and it was clear that not seeing you hadn’t made any difference at all. In fact, it had made it even worse. So, the question is, what shall we do?’

There was a beat of silence. ‘Do?’ she said.

He looked at her intensely. ‘I think we need to … we need to stop this.’ He paused, briefly. ‘But in order to do so I think we need to get it out of our systems. And I’ve taken the liberty of booking a room. At a hotel. And I thought, maybe, we could meet there, after work. On Friday night.’

Joey inhaled sharply. ‘Friday?’ she said.

‘Yes. If you think that’s a good idea. I mean, God, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a dreadful idea. But I just can’t … I can’t get past this. I can’t get past you.’

‘And then, afterwards, we …?’

‘We stop. Yes.’

‘But what if we don’t want to?’

‘We have to.’

‘But …’ Joey paused. Her head told her that this was an appalling idea. Her gut, the deep ache that she’d carried around inside her for weeks told her that if she didn’t go she might die. ‘I can’t promise, Tom. I can’t promise I’ll want to stop.’

‘I’m not asking you to promise. I’m just asking you to try.’

She nodded.

‘So, you’ll do it?’ he asked. ‘You’ll meet me? About seven p.m.? Friday?’

Joey tried to listen to the voice inside her head that was screaming at her to say no, say no. But the ache symphonised inside her; it grew layers and notes.

‘Yes,’ she found herself saying. ‘Friday. Yes.’

RECORDED INTERVIEW

Date: 25/03/2017

Location: Trinity Road Police Station, Bristol BS2 0NW

Conducted by: Officers from Somerset & Avon Police

POLICE: Ms Mullen, going back to last night. Friday 24 March. You say that in room 121 at the Bristol Harbour Hotel you and Mr Fitzwilliam sat and talked. Could you tell me exactly what you talked about?

JM: Not really.

POLICE: Not really?

JM: I mean, no, we chatted. About lots of things.

POLICE: What sort of things?

JM: I can’t remember.

POLICE: And so he, Mr Fitzwilliam, asked you to meet him in a hotel room on Friday night? In order to …?

JM: He said it was to … he said we needed to get it out of our systems.

POLICE: ‘It’ being …?

JM: Our mutual sexual attraction.

POLICE: So he intended for you to have sex that night?

JM: That’s what I took it to mean, yes.

POLICE: And you intended to have sex that night?

JM: I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t made up my mind.

POLICE: And did you? Did you and Mr Fitzwilliam have sex that night?

JM: I would prefer not to answer the question.