Watching You: A Novel

Freddie wrapped the dress from Urban Outfitters in some tissue and slid it into his rucksack.

He’d ironed his school shirt the night before even though it was a non-iron shirt, and he was wearing his best trousers, the ones that didn’t need the hem letting down or have encrusted acrylic paint from art class splattered all over them. As a nod to his new sense of vague rebellion, he wore black trainers instead of his crappy, ugly lace-up things that were so worn out they slipped off his heels when he ran in them. If a teacher picked him up on the breach of uniform policy he would simply say that the other ones were broken, which wasn’t too far from the truth. He touched his fingertip against the rim of his dad’s aftershave bottle and pressed the scent into the dips of his throat. He flossed his teeth. He sprayed on extra deodorant. He used a dab of his mum’s foundation on a spot, realised it drew more attention to the spot than the spot on its own, and wiped it off again.

And then he headed to school, his jaw set with determination, ready to crawl through the eight hours between now and home-time.

It was four fifteen and he was standing outside St Mildred’s School, watching the girls oozing through the gates, a river of royal blue and grey, idly tossed hair and Fjällräven rucksacks, laddered tights, Skinnydip phone cases and loud, loud voices.

Jenna Tripp had told him to write to Romola Brook. She’d told him that that would make it easier for Romola Brook to say no. Which was the exact and precise reason why Freddie was standing outside Romola’s school about to ask her to come to the ball with him, face-to-face.

He straightened up at the sight of one of the bitchy-looking girls he remembered from the night he’d stood outside her house, the one who’d modelled the Urban Outfitters dress on Instagram. Her name was Louisa. And sure enough, following behind was Romola. For a worrying moment he thought maybe they were all going somewhere together and that he’d have to spend an hour standing outside Caffè Nero waiting for them to finish. But to his relief he heard Romola say, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and watched as she peeled off from the bitchy girl and he followed her as far as the end of the road before falling into step with her.

He’d practised this all night lying in bed. He’d run through it a hundred, two hundred times, finessed the timings and the nuances and the precise wording of the thing. And he was feeling cool and he was feeling fine. The very worst thing that could happen would be that she would say no. Rejection was a fact of life. It wasn’t a nice fact of life. But it was a fact. And Freddie was bright enough to know he had to accept that if he ever wanted to get anywhere.

‘Excuse me,’ he opened.

She turned at his approach and he saw her do a double take, probably assessing whether or not she should be scared, then seeing the emblem on his blazer and wondering if maybe she should know him.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘my name’s Freddie. Freddie Fitzwilliam.’ He offered her his hand to shake and she stared at it uncertainly for a moment before turning to see who might be watching, then gave him hers. It was limp and icy cold, bones as thin as kindling. ‘I’m at Poleash Hall,’ he said then, with a flourish, pointing at his blazer, ‘which is clearly totally obvious.’

‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

‘You’ve probably seen me around,’ he said, boldly going off script. ‘But no. You don’t know me. Or at least not yet.’

He smiled and she looked at him pensively as though scared of what he might say next.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘and I have no idea if this is a good idea or a bad idea but I’ve got a ticket for the spring ball tomorrow night and I was going to try and be really cool and just show up by myself like an independent dude. But then I lost my nerve. And I just wondered, I’ve seen you around, and I think you’re remarkably beautiful and I wondered if you might like to come with me?’

‘You mean, as your date?’

‘Yes,’ he said, firmly. ‘As my date.’

He saw her face fall by just a tiny degree and he knew, he just knew she was already mentally flipping through her stock of polite let-downs. ‘Or not,’ he said, quickly. ‘Doesn’t have to be a date. I could just be, you know, your chaperone.’

She smiled at this and he mentally fist-bumped himself for hauling it back so smoothly.

‘That’s a very old-fashioned idea.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s retro. A kind of vintage thing. You know.’

She smiled again and he could feel the weight of the thing tipping back in his favour.

‘Freddie?’ she said.

‘Yes. Freddie. And you are?’

‘Romola,’ she said.

‘Romola,’ he repeated, as though he’d never before heard the name. ‘What a great name.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I was named after an actress.’

‘Called Romola?’

She laughed. ‘Yes!’ she said ‘Called Romola!’

God, he felt ten feet tall, this was going so well. He’d known it would.

‘So,’ he said, letting his hand drop into his pocket and leaning into his heels, ‘what do you think? Would you allow me to chaperone you to the spring ball?’

‘But not a date?’

‘Well, we could play that by ear. Maybe. See how I do. We could always upgrade it to a date? Halfway through.’

He was knocking this one out of the ballpark. Completely.

But then he saw that look pass over her face again, the look that said I am not 100 per cent sure about you.

‘I don’t know,’ she was saying, ‘I’m not really looking for a date. Or a chaperone. I was just going to hang with my friends.’ She looked scared when she said this, as though she thought he might punch her in the face for rejecting him.

He played his last and his best hand. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘No pressure. And I totally understand what you’re saying. I myself have only very recently got into the idea of dating. But, whatever you decide to do, this …’ He unzipped his bag and pulled out the tissue-wrapped dress. ‘Is for you.’

‘Oh my God,’ she said, looking at it with wide eyes. ‘Oh my God. What is it?’

‘It’s a gift. Something I saw and thought of you. Take it.’ He held it out closer to her. ‘If you don’t like it, you could give it to a friend.’

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t take a gift from you. I don’t even know you.’

‘Please. I insist.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

‘Are you worried that if you accept the gift then you’ll feel like you owe me something?’

She nodded.

‘Well, you have my word, Romola Brook, that you can take this gift and walk away and never acknowledge my existence again.’

Her mood changed again. He bridled. ‘How do you know my surname?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yes. Fatal error.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I was trying to be cool and make out like I didn’t know who you were. But I totally know who you are.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. I suppose that was obvious though, as I’d bought you a present.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That makes sense.’

‘So,’ he said. ‘Will you accept it?’

She nodded, awkwardly, and said, ‘Yes. OK.’ Then she looked up at him and fixed him with her grey-blue eyes and said, ‘Did you send me the brown skirt?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘So you know where I live?’

‘Yes,’ he said again.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Right.’

‘I’ve liked you for quite some time,’ he said by way of explanation.

‘That seems clear,’ she replied. And then she softened again, and she looked more gently at him and she said, ‘Freddie, are you an Aspie?’

‘What?’

‘Have you got Asperger’s? Are you on the spectrum?’

‘What? No. No of course I’m not.’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘That’s why I asked you. Because some of the things you say and the way you say them and the way you stand and the way you look and lots of things about you seems like an Aspie.’

‘You’ve got Asperger’s?’ he said.

‘Yes. Mild. But …’

He looked at her in awe and wonder as something rushed up through his core, something buried deep under years of denial. The little prep school in Manchester where they’d taken him out of class one day and he’d been observed by a woman with a clipboard and some weird toys and his parents had been called in and he’d sat in the office outside with the lady who worked at the front desk and he’d eaten an apple and they’d come out and they’d looked worried and they’d taken him out for tea and the atmosphere had been wrong and strange and then his mum had said, Your teacher thinks maybe you have a special brain. And his dad had said, No, Nicola, that’s not what she said. She said your brain works in a special way. And his mum said, That’s the same thing, surely. And he’d said, No, not quite. But here’s the thing. They want to give a name to the special way your brain works. They want to call it something. They want to call it Asperger’s, which is the name of an Austrian doctor who noticed lots of children with the same special way of dealing with the world. But Mummy and I, well, we don’t think you need a name for the way your brain works because your brain is just the most remarkable thing. All brains are remarkable, but yours is more remarkable than most and I think you should just focus on what that brain of yours is capable of and not get hung up on labels and names. So, you may hear people bandying words about over the years. You may see things on the TV about people with Asperger’s and think they’re talking about you and get worried. But you mustn’t worry. Because Mummy and I are not worried. We just love you and think you’re brilliant. And you will always be so much more than a label. OK?

He remembered his dad stroking his hair and his cheek and under his chin and he remembered thinking that clearly names for things were to be avoided when you were clever, as he was. And he’d barely thought of it again. Until now. And now there was a beautiful girl standing in front of him who’d been given a name for the way she was and she was proud to use it.

‘I think I do,’ he found himself saying. ‘I’m fairly sure in fact that I do have Asperger’s. But I don’t really talk about it because it is probably the least interesting thing about me.’

Romola laughed. ‘That’s funny,’ she said, ‘because it’s the most interesting thing about me.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. Definitely.’

‘I’d love to find out more about your Asperger’s.’

‘Would you?’

‘Yes.’

They both fell silent for a moment and then Romola put out her hands for the gift. ‘I’ll take this,’ she said. ‘And I’ll think about the dance. Think about if I want a date or a chaperone. And thank you for the skirt. It really suits me.’

She didn’t wait for him to reply and she didn’t say goodbye. She simply turned and walked away.