He's After Me (9 page)

‘Why would he?’ said Jem. He was right, of course. We never heard a thing about it.

Jem can be pretty persistent when he wants to be. He’s like a dog with a bone. When he’s got his teeth into something, he won’t give it up. ‘First his flat,’ he says. ‘Then his workplace. Maybe this time he’ll get the message.’

‘No way!’

‘Come on, Anna.’ Jem’s eyes flash with sudden anger. ‘He deserves it. So does she. Look how they treated you girls and your mum. You can’t expect to treat people like shit and get away with it.’

I bite my lip. He had a point. ‘OK. But nothing personal, right?’

‘Right.’

Tonight I stand and watch as he sprays paint in large letters on the front door of Williams & Barnes. I’ve got to admit, he’s got a way with words. I can’t help laughing as the message appears.

Lawyers suck … you dry

I add our tag with a flourish, making the W on JAWS just a tad more vicious-looking than normal.

‘OY! What the hell do you think you are doing?’

A torch beams straight into my eyes and I nearly jump out of my skin. Behind it I can just make out the bald head and bright-green day-glo jacket of a security guard. I stand there trapped in the glare like a rabbit caught in headlights.

From behind me there’s a sudden movement and something shoots straight past me at high speed like a bullet from a gun. The guy roars and falls to his knees, holding his face in his hands. There’s blood everywhere. I scream.

Then Jem grabs my hand and we’re running, running, running. Only this time, nobody’s laughing.

Silly bitch. Screaming enough to waken the dead.

Must’ve thought they’d killed the guy.

You need to toughen up a bit, sunshine.

Get real.

‘N
o! NO! NO! NO!’ We turn the corner before I come to my senses and, using both hands and all my weight, manage to drag Jem to a standstill. ‘Go back! We’ve got to go back!’ I plead with him desperately. ‘You might have killed him!’

His face twists into a delighted grin.

‘It’s not funny!’ I screech at him. ‘What’s wrong with you? He could be bleeding to death!’

‘It’s paint, Anna. I sprayed paint at him.’

I stare at him blankly.

‘What? You think I
shot
him?’

My eyes close and I collapse against him, my face against his chest. His arms go around me briefly, then he says, ‘Come on. We can’t hang around here. There’ll be someone here in a minute. He’ll be on his radio.’

‘Will he be all right?’ I say reluctantly, looking back, and he says, ‘Yes!’ Then there’s the unmistakable wail of a police siren and I am about to make a bolt for it in blind panic when he says, ‘Stop!’ and grabs my beanie from my head so my hair tumbles down to my shoulders. He pulls his off too, stuffing them both into his pocket, and puts his arm around me.

‘Put yours round me too,’ he instructs. ‘And your head on my shoulder. That’s it. Now walk with me slowly,
slowly
… keep your face turned into me …’

To my surprise he turns around and we’re walking back the way we’ve come, a parody of a loving couple strolling into town on an innocent night out, just as a police car tears up behind us. We watch as it screams past round the corner, then he turns around again, grabs my hand and we leg it as fast as we can in the other direction.

I have
never
been so scared in all my life.

On Wednesday evening a security guard was attacked in Broadfield Road.

Peter Jones, aged 46, had paint sprayed in his face when he surprised two youths daubing slogans on the wall of Williams & Barnes solicitors. Jones was later released from hospital and is recovering at home.

Police are investigating the incident.

‘T
hat’s your dad’s place isn’t it? Williams & Barnes?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You never said!’

I shrug. ‘Nothing to say.’

‘What? Your dad’s office gets graffitied and a guy gets attacked and it’s not worth mentioning?’

‘I forgot.’

We’re in the common-room at college, eating lunch. Zoe’s reading the paper. She’s so flipping loud people come over to see what the fuss is about. Great. The next minute there’s a small crowd gathered round reading the article, including Ben and Max.

‘That’s that
Jaws
guy, I bet,’ says know-all Max. ‘You see his stuff everywhere.’

‘It’s Anna’s dad’s office,’ repeats Zoe.

There’s a buzz of excitement. I could kill her.

‘What did he write on it, Anna?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Bet your dad was mad.’

‘Maybe. I don’t talk to my dad if I can help it.’

I can feel Zoe watching me. She knows that is not exactly true.

‘Urban shark, that’s what they call him.’

‘Respect.’

‘Respect?’ says Zoe, on her high horse. ‘I don’t think so. He attacked an innocent man.’

‘It was just paint,’ I say quietly.

‘So?’ She turns on me immediately. ‘Would you like to have paint sprayed in your face? It’s toxic, you know. There’s lead and all sorts in it. He could’ve been blinded.’

‘It’s not toxic.’ This is exactly what I’d said to Jem. He’d told me it wasn’t nowadays. But I’d looked it up online to double-check. ‘They released him as soon as they’d cleaned him up.’

‘How do you know?’ asks Ben.

‘What?’ He’s caught me off guard. ‘It says here.’

‘It says he’s
recovering.
Which means he’s getting better. Which means he must have been in a bad way.’

I feel sick. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Ben’s so nice. I think he’s wrong, I think it’s just a phrase the papers use, but I can’t be sure.

‘This guy is the king,’ insists Max.

‘The king?’ says Zoe.

‘He’s the best, man. You don’t get it, do you?’ Max smiles down at her in that annoyingly superior way he has that she couldn’t see when she was going out with him, even though she has a million more brain cells that he has. I think she sees it now.

‘No,’ she says, her voice ominously quiet. ‘Tell me about it.’

Max rolls his eyes. ‘It’s political, innit?’

‘Political?’

‘Yeah, man. He’s anti all this capitalist rubbish. Bankers and lawyers and that. He’s making a protest.’

‘About what?’

‘You know. Stuff. People who make too much money. Rich people who rip the poor off.’

‘The poor?’

‘Yeah. Ordinary people like you and me.’

‘You? Poor?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You in your designer trainers and designer jeans?’

Everyone laughs. Max goes red. ‘Shut your face! Everyone has this stuff. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t care about it.’

‘Don’t you?’ There’s a gleam in her eyes. She picks up her yoghurt and peels the top off. Oh no. ‘You sure about that?’

‘Yeah.’

With a flick of her wrist, yoghurt shoots out of the pot. Max yelps and jumps backwards, but he’s not quick enough and the yoghurt lands squarely on his crotch and drips down his legs. A cheer goes up around the common-room.

‘Oops, sorry about that,’ she says with a grin. ‘Just think of it as a political protest.’

Max backs away, cursing and swearing, dabbing ineffectually at his jeans as all his mates roll about with laughter. Zoe grins at me cheerfully.

‘He had that coming to him. Waste of good yoghurt though.’

She looks so pleased with herself I can’t help grinning back. ‘Um? Remind me? What’s the difference between throwing paint and throwing yoghurt at someone?’

‘Yoghurt tastes better. I waited a long time for that.’

‘Revenge is sweet.’ We smile at each other in satisfaction. But then, stupidly, I can’t resist adding, ‘You’ve got to admit it though, he’s got a point.’

She shakes her head impatiently. ‘That tosser doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just reciting garbage he’s heard other people saying.’

‘These graffiti artists,’ I persist. ‘This guy, JAWS. He’s making a political statement.’

‘Is he? And there’s me thinking he’s just a sad loner with no one to talk to. So he writes up his thoughts for all the world to see instead. But nobody cares …’

‘
I
care!’ I say, but she rants on regardless.

‘… plus, he’s not quite brave enough to use his own name.’

‘Rubbish!’ I spring automatically to Jem’s defence. ‘He’s amazing! He’s anti-authority. He’s fighting against the establishment … against consumerism. He cares about people … about society. He’s a rebel. An urban terrorist.’

‘Yeah? So why doesn’t he come right out and say who he is then? Put his money where his mouth is. Osama Bin Laden – we all know his name, don’t we?’

I could scream with frustration. Zoe is so hard to beat in an argument.

‘Because he’s
not
an egotist, that’s the point. He doesn’t want to be in the limelight. It’s what he believes in that’s important, not notoriety.’

Where did I pluck that word from? I’m pleased with it though because it shuts Zoe up at last. Then I realize she is staring at me, wide-eyed.

‘You seem to know a lot about him.’

‘So?’ My heart starts to beat rapidly. Me and my big mouth. We’d be in big trouble, if anyone found out. ‘You can’t help knowing about him. He’s everywhere. He’s on my dad’s flat, my dad’s office.’

‘I know.’ Her eyes narrow suspiciously. ‘Why would you stick up for someone who scrawls stuff about your dad?’

‘Because it’s true,’ I say bitterly. ‘Lawyers
do
earn too much, everyone knows that. My dad’s got money coming out of his ears. He’s taking The Bitch to New York, Christmas shopping.’

She looks at me, her face blank.

‘Anyway, it’s not personal,’ I backtrack. ‘This guy doesn’t know my dad. He just hates lawyers in general. I guess.’

Still she says nothing.

‘I don’t know!’ I say wildly. ‘I don’t know the first thing about him, I’m just … speculating! I don’t even know if it
is
a him, come to that. It could be a her. It could be more than one person. It could be anybody!’

Zoe’s eyes look as if they’re about to pop out of her head.

‘Now,’ she says, ‘you are really freaking me out!’

On the whole he was pleased with the way things were going. Couldn’t afford to get complacent though.

You never knew where you were with women.

But he knew how to handle them.

They were putty in his hands.

M
um and Livi think the sun shines out of Jem. It’s quite the norm for me to come home from college to find Jem laid out on the sofa, drinking coffee and chatting away to one or the other. I swear he talks more to them than he does to me! Livi hangs on to his every word and sometimes I think Mum’s just as bad.

Our house has become his second home. Let’s face it, it’s much nicer than his
first
home, the manky staff hotel room he shares with two other guys.

But that’s not technically his first home, is it? When he’s in London he lives in a bedsit. I think. Though even that’s not his real home.

Actually, where does he go when it’s not term-time? Why don’t I know that?

Not for the first time it strikes me how little I actually know about Jem. When we’d talked, that first night on the boat, he’d poured his heart out to me and I’d thought how open and honest he was.

He told me he’d been hurt in the past and that’s why he’d backed off. He was scared to commit again – and I couldn’t blame him. A whole catalogue of women had let him down, starting with his mum and ending with his last girlfriend, who’d gone off with some older guy.

But it was no good. He couldn’t stop thinking about me.

I was so flattered.

But since then, I really haven’t found out that much more about his background. He’s a dark horse, my boyfriend.

Where are you from, Jem? I wonder. Who are you? Where do you call home? So I ask him and he looks surprised, then he does that annoying thing of tapping his nose and winking at me. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he says.

‘Yes. I would, actually.’

‘All in good time,’ he says infuriatingly. So I tickle him and he’s roaring laughing, but he still won’t give. ‘I’m your mystery man,’ he says. ‘It’s part of my charm.’

‘I’ll find out!’ I warn him but he just laughs.

Then he kisses me and I don’t care any more.

On the evenings Jem’s not at work, he eats with us now. He always thanks Mum politely for his meal.