Page 34 of Watching You
‘All right,’ Salter said. ‘We’ll get you your food, I’ll talk to the off-licence and see if we can get the charges dropped. You should see a doctor while you’re here, too. Anything else we can do?’
‘Na, s’awright. Just the food. But I could do with a new pair of socks if you’ve got any. Some bastard nicked mine.’
Salter and Connie made their way back upstairs.
‘Well that was a waste of time,’ Salter said. ‘I thought we might finally get a break.’
‘It might not have been a break, but it definitely wasn’t a waste of time. We know Archie wasn’t killed in some random drunken fight, we know the assailant was a lone operator, we know the stabbing was planned and calculated, we know it wasn’t done by some kid trying to prove how hard they are. That’s quite a lot of extra knowledge. Can I just ask, what on earth is a deep-fried Mars bar?’
‘Imagine a visual representation of every possible lifestyle cause of a heart attack,’ Salter said. ‘It looks and tastes exactly like that.’
Chapter 26
Eighteen Months Earlier
The painkillers were all she could think about taking for breakfast. She didn’t even want to wash them down with her usual cup of peppermint tea or a glass of orange juice. Just two extra-strong headache tablets and mouth under the tap for water. Molly didn’t even know why she was taking them. She didn’t have any identifiable pain that needed relieving. They just made her feel more in control, somehow.
They gave her chronic stomachache as well, but that was fine because she got rid of that with … well, more pills. The woman in her local chemist had started giving her funny looks and suggesting she should visit her doctor if she couldn’t get her pain under control, so the supermarket had become her go-to for the tablets now. Never the same till two days in a row.
The plus side was that she’d lost her appetite completely, so she was saving money on food as well as losing weight. It was every twenty-something’s dream. More cash in her pocket, less weight on her hips. Not that she’d had any excess in the first place.
Mol stared at the canvas, half-finished, in front of her. She could barely remember starting it. Insomnia had claimed her nighttime hours so she’d begun a fresh painting to get through the small hours and here, now, was a dead rabbit in a tiny coffin, attended by a procession of teary-eyed woodland creatures. There was plenty left to do, but it had taken shape as if a demon had possessed her paintbrush. The thought of it made her laugh. There were no demons inside her studio, but there might very well be one outside, watching the door to spy on her comings and goings, leaving little things to rip her heart out and violate her peace.
The police had been keen at first, taking statements, making sure she felt heard. But Karl Smith was a common name. All the social media posts disappeared as soon as she’d seen them. The email addresses he’d used were a pathway to nothing. And the gifts weren’t harassment if she couldn’t prove they were all from the same person. The rotting fruit might have been a simple mistake. The dead rabbit on her car windscreen might have been dropped there by a bird of prey. The silent calls to her work phone were all from different numbers so no pattern could be established. And she’d never actually been threatened, had she? He’d never approached her in person. She wasn’t afraid for her life.
Mol lost count of the times she heard an apology followed by the words, ‘but there’s really nothing we can do at this time. Call us if things develop.’
‘Develop,’ she mumbled to the sad animals in glorious oils. ‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’
There was a whole website dedicated to explaining all the reasons why her work was substandard with a domain name hosted on a Russian server, no traceable owner, and in any event, that apparently was the exercise of free speech.
Everywhere else her work could be reviewed, it had been, the negative pile-on losing her the few regular clients she had left, and reducing the value of her work to nothing more than hospital corridor prints.
He stalked her in a million tiny ways that couldn’t be caught on camera or forensically proven. The online world, Mol discovered, was as toxic and mad as a bag of vipers, but removing yourself from it brought soul-destroying isolation.
Seeing her mother so worried about her didn’t help. The constant glances across the table at mealtimes to see if she was eating enough. The messages, hourly, if she wasn’t in surgery. Did she need anything? Want anything? Had there been any more ‘events’, as they’d come to call them? Was she sleeping? Should they move house? There were cameras everywhere, at home and at work, that should have made Molly feel safer but that only ever succeeded in reminding her that she was being watched.
In a moment of crazed fury, she’d signed up for internet dating – daring him, almost wanting him, to find her and ask her out so she could look in his eyes and spit her grief at him for destroying her life. Instead, she’d made contact with a nice man, good-looking but not showy, who taught English literature to children who’d rather be playing football or watching TikTok videos. They’d spoken on the phone then agreed to go on a date and, while she was genuinely terrified and wanted to do nothing but hide, she’d gone out of sheer bloody-mindedness, promising herself that it would be the dawn of a brave new era, where she would reinvent herself and start living again.
Her date had turned up but found it hard to look her in the eyes, been polite but formal, and when she suggested they move on from the bar to the restaurant they’d agreed on, he coughed a few times and found a reason to speak to her while looking exclusively at the floor.
‘I’m very sorry about this,’ he’d said. ‘Really, I am, because you seem lovely. But the thing is, I did a quick search for you online. I know that’s shallow but when I found out you were an artist I wanted to look at your work. I wasn’t looking for personal details, I promise.’ He cleared his throat another dozen times. ‘Um, so there were some videos. Private things that I’m sure at the time you hadn’t dreamed would be made public.’
‘Oh,’ Mol said. ‘Oh no. They’re deep fakes and I thought they’d all been taken down. I would never … I mean, I have never—’
‘And the problem with that is,’ he continued as if she hadn’t said a word. It was the only way, Mol thought, that he could get through the speech he’d clearly prepared earlier – ever the teacher – and escape. ‘I’m a teacher at a private school. That’s no excuse and it sounds all wrong. But I can’t be in a relationship with someone who has that sort of online presence. It wouldn’t be tolerated. The parents, you see.’ As if that was a complete sentence.
Mol’s stomach had sunk so low that she thought it might be in her shoes. There was nothing left to say. No point explaining or defending herself to the very nice man who was shrinking away from her as if the mess of her life might be catching.
She picked up her handbag, pushed her chair back without it scraping the floor and making a noise, took out £5 and laid it on the table to repay him for the drink he’d bought her because at least he’d had the decency to show up and explain things to her face, then left without a word. As she walked past the window she could see him in the bar, staring sadly at the banknote.
And that was that.
Her mobile rang twice then stopped, then four knocks were hammered out on the door to her studio, one-two pause three-four. It was her mother.
Beth Waterfall put on her best happy face as she held up a bag of baguettes and lemonade.
‘Surprise!’ she sang.
