Page 58 of One Step Behind
Your house is nothing like I imagined. I was expecting an empty flat, a mattress on the floor, empty takeaway cartons, but it’s not like that at all.
Canvas prints hang on the walls. Not personalized ones, but the cheap kind from discount shops – a stretch of exotic beach in the living room, a cafe scene in the kitchen, like you’ve tried to make the place look homely on a budget.
The kitchen is straight ahead at the end of the hall and I head there first. The sides are clear of plates and cups, the black worktop is clean. I stare at a row ofcookbooks and try to imagine you cooking the delicate meals I saw in the photos on your phone.
The living room is at the front of the house and is as tidy as the kitchen. There’s a bookcase, a squishy blue sofa and matching armchair, and a small flat-screen TV that looks too square compared to the huge rectangular one that sits in our living room.
I step over to the bookcase with itsHarry Pottercollection taking pride of place. Below them is a photo in a silver frame. It’s you and Sophie as young teenagers sitting on a park bench either side of a woman with thick auburn hair. The woman’s smile is wide, her mouth open as though the photographer has captured the split second before she started laughing.
‘Oh my God.’ My own voice startles me and I jump, spinning to check behind me. I swallow hard and turn back to the photo and the woman who looks just like me. It’s the shade of her hair, but also the shape of our faces – the angular nose. It’s your mother, isn’t it? I can see the resemblance to Sophie now too. My chest tightens like I’m being squeezed by an invisible force. It’s hard to breathe. Is this the reason for everything you’ve done to me?
I think of the months of stalking and the gifts – burnt dolls wearing miniature versions of my clothes, dead flowers, broken glass. Why would me looking like your mum make you want to do these things to me?
I turn my gaze to Sophie. She looks a little older than you in the photo, with hair the same colour as her mum’s and a smile that matches perfectly. You, on the other hand, are the odd one out. Tall, with gangly limbs protruding from an oversized t-shirt. Greasy dark hair. Eyes staring at the camera, but no smile.
Who are you?
The desire to turn and flee hurtles through me and I move quickly back towards the front door. Only at the last second do I stop and force myself to climb up the narrow staircase, pulse racing harder than before as I imagine all the things I might find.
The walls are spinning by the time I reach the top. I’m desperate to grab the banister for support but I don’t want to leave any fingerprints. There are no pictures on the walls up here, just tired carpet and four doorways.
The first room is a plain white bathroom with a shower over a bath and a shower curtain with dancing penguins in top hats on it. The second room is small and empty, aside from a deflated blow-up mattress and a pillow. Then there’s another bedroom, this one small and filled with boxes of cookery books and college notebooks.
I inch towards the fourth room at the front of the house and kick the door open with my foot. It creaks as it flies open into a room with the curtains drawn. For a moment I just stand and stare, unable to breathe, gasp, move from the sheer horror of what I’m seeing.
Strips of sunlight creep in at the edges of the windows where the curtains don’t reach, casting a dim light across the room. Every inch of wall is covered with photographs. Hundreds of them stuck side by side from the skirting boards all the way to the ceiling.
A nausea twists in my stomach and even though I want to run now, I keep walking further into the room. I step to the wall opposite your bed and stare open-mouthed at the photographs. Some are old, curling at the edges. Others are newer and stuck on top. One photo has at least three more peeking out underneath it.
They are just like the photos on your phone. A collage of nothing in particular and placed in no order, as far as I can tell. There’s a photo of a tree stuck next to one of a car. Then a bin. Then a crowd of shoppers in Westbury. A wilting Christmas tree. The grey cat. And faces. So many people. All of them are looking away from the camera, no doubt unaware they’ve even been captured by you.
I realize how easy it must be for you to take these photos unnoticed. It’s not like you’re standing with an old-fashioned camera and a zoom lens. Nearly everyone walks around with their phones in front of their faces. You can snap away without anyone ever knowing.
There are photos of Sophie spanning across every wall. In some she has black hair, in others red or blonde. Short in some, long in others. Sometimes she’s looking right at the lens and in others she’s on the street, another unwitting face.
I am on this wall too, stuck in among the medley. There’s one of me leaving the hospital. Another with the children walking out of school. There’s half a dozen of our house too. There are close-ups of our doorstep, and the horrible dolls you’ve left for us.
All the photos of me and the children are recent. Taken in the last few months. I look for older photos, ones from when you started last July, but they must be buried beneath the others.
Rachel is on this wall too. There aren’t nearly as many of her as of me, but it’s enough. There’s a side profile of her taken from across the street and she’s smiling at someone out of shot. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a t-shirt. No coat, so it must’ve been taken recently too.
I reach out and pull the photo of Rachel from the wall. It holds fast for a second before I feel the glue give way and then it’s in my hands. I turn it over, but there’s no writing. Just the dried remains of glue, like the white sticks the kids use for their crafts.
I spin around and stare at the walls until they blur before my eyes. Here it is. Conclusive proof of who you are and what you’ve been doing. Why haven’t the police searched your house and found this?
My knees buckle and I double over, swallowing three times in quick succession, holding back the sudden desire to throw up.
I’m moving slowly towards the stairs when the doorbell trills, shattering the quiet of the house.
I freeze.
What if it’s DS Church? How will I explain why I’m here to her? I’m trespassing. And worse than that, I’m interfering in my own harassment case.
I hold my breath, the silence ringing in my ears. They’ll go away in a minute. I just have to wait them out.
The doorbell rings again. It seems louder this time, more impatient.
Then it’s a knock – a tap, tap, tap on the wood, followed by the clatter of metal and the letterbox flapping open.
