The Watcher (15 page)

‘And how was it with Tara?’ he asked when they had stepped inside. ‘You went to the pub, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I can smell it. You’re back rather early.’

After saying goodbye to John Burton, she had driven to a car park near Becky’s school and waited there for quite a while, so as not to return too soon after leaving. For a moment she had been tempted to drive to London, to Tara’s, to discuss the disturbing news with her, but she had decided that her friend was the wrong person to talk to. In Tara’s eyes there would be no mitigating factor for John Burton. Gillian would not be given any peace until she took Becky out of the club. Tara was a lawyer. The fact that proceedings had been dropped and he had not been charged would not have made any difference to her. She knew only too many cases with a lack of evidence.

When Gillian got too cold in the car park she had started for home, but it was still unusually early for an evening with Tara.

‘Tara had someone else to meet,’ she quickly explained. ‘You know, she never really has time. We just had a quick chat halfway between here and London.’

‘I understand,’ Tom said. He looked at Gillian in the bright light of the hallway. ‘You look tense. Is everything OK?’

‘Of course. Just . . . well, Tara’s work stories can sometimes get on my nerves.’

‘I don’t understand why Tara of all people—’ Tom started to say, but she interrupted him before he could start criticising her friendship with Tara again.

‘Is Becky asleep?’

‘She went to bed twenty minutes ago. I just looked in on her and she’s already asleep. Holding Chuck, of course. She’s always been so easy.’

Of course. There were never any problems between Becky and him. The problems were all kept for Gillian.

‘We ordered pizza,’ Tom carried on. ‘And ate it watching TV. You know how she likes that – eating it right from the box, sitting on the floor.’

‘But I can’t do that every evening,’ said Gillian. ‘She needs to eat healthy food too and use a knife and fork now and then. And I have to send her to bed earlier than you obviously do, otherwise she falls asleep in class!’ She realised she sounded much sharper than she had intended.

‘I wasn’t criticising you, Gillian. Of course this is an exception. But I’m not often here with Becky on my own, and when I am, we can do something special.’

She did not herself know what had got into her. Tom was right. Nor did she in any way begrudge him and Becky a lazy evening with pizza and television. She was a grown woman and it was probably ridiculous for her to feel jealous. It was not fair, and yet it was normal in many families: Tom was the father who rarely had time, but when he did have time, he would turn a blind eye to the usual rules and do something silly with his daughter, which she loved enormously. As the mother, Gillian had to care much more for her daughter and make herself unpopular by putting salad and vegetables on the table, insisting her daughter did her homework and nagging her when her bedroom started to turn into an impenetrable mess. Her daughter was only annoyed with her, while her boundless admiration was reserved for Tom.

‘Maybe I should go to London every day,’ she said out of the blue. ‘And work more. Maybe that would do me good.’

Tom looked at her in surprise. ‘I certainly wouldn’t mind. You are brilliant at your work. It would be great to have you around in the office more. But then Becky—’

‘Becky could do with being alone more. She feels I smother her too much as it is. I should let go a bit. I always blamed my parents for hampering me by being so protective – and maybe I’m making the same mistake as they did.’

‘Becky is only twelve,’ Tom reminded her. ‘Kids that age can overestimate what they can do.’

He went into the living room, stood at the window and looked out into the darkness. What he saw was mainly the reflection of the room. ‘Perhaps we should just give it a go,’ he said.

She took off her boots and followed him in. ‘She wants me to trust her more. And I don’t want to just ignore that.’

He turned towards her. She could see how tired he was, how worn out. At the same time he was full of a thirst for action. No doubt he would have most liked to be on the tennis court, firing shots over the net that his opponent could not return. In the last few years he had found it increasingly difficult to turn his revved-up inner engine off after work. It was as if he was constantly pumped up with adrenalin. Running his own business had triggered this development in him. He had lost control over his r.p.m. He acted as if he were taking stimulants, which was not the case, Gillian knew. He put himself in this state. Gillian regularly asked him to go to a doctor about it. She was afraid that he was heading for a heart attack, because he ticked all the right boxes for one.

‘My heart is fine,’ he would say when she mentioned a doctor.

As if he would know. Since she had known him, he had always gone out of his way to avoid anything resembling a doctor’s surgery.

She went up to him and put her hand gently on his arm. ‘It will all be OK again,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ said Tom.

He did not know exactly what she was talking about, but he had the impression that she was no longer referring to Becky, but to something else. It had something to do with the distance between them and the fact that Gillian’s eyes no longer shone. With the fact that he worked too much and was fanatical about his tennis and did not spend enough time with his wife. Gillian had never criticised his excessive overtime. After all, his company was hers too, and she understood the problems everyone had had since the world plunged into the worst recession since the 1920s. She was not a woman to moan because her husband fought with all his strength to maintain what they had built up. On some level she could even see why he played so much sport, realising that it was a valve to regulate the terrible pressure that he would not otherwise have been able to bear.

But she did not understand why he was no longer really with her. Not even when he lay next to her in bed. And that made her suffer.

He himself did not understand it either. He loved Gillian. He knew exactly when he had realised that he wanted to marry her and that there would never be another woman for him. One autumn weekend during their studies, they had gone hiking in the Highlands. They had a tent and cooking utensils. It had been glorious sunny weather. All around them was the overwhelming solitude and expanse of the high moors. The hills covered in heather had shone a luscious lilac. In the evening they had lit a campfire and later snuggled up together in a sleeping bag and warmed each other when the temperature suddenly dipped. When they crawled out the next morning, the weather had changed. It was so misty they could not even see the tips of their noses. They’d started to walk back. Climbing up a steep rocky slope, Tom had slipped and fallen so badly that – as they later found out – he fractured bones in his foot. Lying on the loose stones in the mist, half unconscious with pain and throwing up, he’d had no idea how they were going to get out of this deserted spot and make their way back to the car park where they had left his old banger. Gillian had been given the fright of her life, but she did not collapse in tears or sink into a horrified helplessness. She made a splint from branches and gauze bandages to stop his ankle from moving. She shouldered the heavy tent and helped Tom to get up. Then she supported him, this man almost six foot three inches tall, as they walked along narrow paths, through valleys where the humidity hovered in the air and over rocky heights where the cold cut through them like a knife. She pepped him up when his pain became unbearable, whispering encouragement, and although a time came when she herself could barely stand up from exhaustion and the weight that she was bearing, she just kept doggedly on, gritting her teeth and not letting anything distract her.

Back then he had thought: I’ll never let her go.

It was not just that she had saved him. She had also revealed her true nature: her strength. Her determination to do the things that had to be done.

They had married while they were both still studying.

His feelings had not changed in all the intervening years, at least not at the deepest level. He knew that. Gillian was still the woman he loved, the woman he trusted absolutely. His anchor, his companion. But to show her, he would have had to pause for a moment, and he could not manage that. He could not stand still, take a breath and be the old Thomas again. Life had made him a driven person. He was unable to slow down. He literally did not know how.

‘I love you, Gillian,’ he said quietly.

The rapt admiration he felt looking at her was almost painful. Was it really such a long time since the phrase had last passed his lips?

‘I love you too,’ she said.

He scrutinised her face. She seemed different to him. Something had happened, happened in her life, and he did not know what it was.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she began out of the blue. ‘Today I . . .’ She hesitated.

Tom looked at her enquiringly. ‘Yes?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Gillian. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

An hour and a half ago, sitting in the car with John Burton, she had not known what to say after hearing his confession. For minutes she had just sat there gobsmacked. John had fished an old crumpled-up receipt from the glove compartment, taken a pencil from his jacket pocket and scribbled a number on the scrap of paper.

‘Here. My mobile number. I won’t bother you, but if you want to talk to me, you can call me any time. I’ve told you what you wanted to know, and maybe you’ll want to find out more or just talk about something else. I don’t mind. Just call me if you feel like it.’

With these words he got out and disappeared into the darkness outside. It was only later that Gillian realised that she now held the reins. She could call him. She could also try to forget the whole incident.

‘Sure?’ asked Tom. ‘Are you sure it doesn’t matter?’

She nodded.

‘Time for bed,’ she said.

‘It won’t be easy to find a buyer for the property,’ explained the estate agent. His name was Luke Palm and in fact he lived in London. Anne had got in touch with him on a friend’s recommendation. He had come to Tunbridge Wells immediately and driven out to the woods. The property market was not exactly booming. As an estate agent, he would take what was going, even if it meant he had to go a good distance.

Now in Anne’s kitchen, looking around, it was obvious how impressed he was. He had probably not expected to find the old house decorated in such a beautiful and cosy way. Anne felt an almost childish pride, a deep joy, as she always did when guests toured her house for the first time and showed their astonishment. She and Sean had achieved a lot. People valued their ideas, the hard work they had put into the house and their dedication. The recognition did her good. She just wished that Sean could have been there to bask in the glory too.

‘But I have to say,’ he continued, ‘you’ve turned it into a gem of a place!’

‘It was my husband’s dream to buy and refurbish the house,’ Anne said. ‘We invested a lot of love and energy in it.’

‘That’s easy to see. And yet . . . the location . . .’

‘I know,’ said Anne. After all, there was a reason why she wanted to relinquish this little piece of paradise. ‘It’s far from everything. That’s why I want to sell. My husband and I planned to spend our old age here, but now I’m alone and . . . I have the feeling that I’m becoming isolated.’ She still felt the need to justify her step, even to this stranger. Although probably she was saying it for her own benefit. She had not wavered since taking her decision the night before last. She was still completely convinced she was doing the right thing. However, there was a world of difference between planning something in theory and actually taking the first steps towards the realisation of the plan.

‘I couldn’t live here on my own either,’ agreed Luke immediately. ‘I think you’re making the right choice. It’s also not necessarily safe to be out here in the wood on your own.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Anne. She had not mentioned anything about the headlight beams in the night, about the car and her feeling of being watched.

‘Well, out here it would take people a while to realise if anything happened to you. You could fall and be lying on the stairs with a broken leg, unable to reach the phone. There are no neighbours to hear you if you shout.’

‘Oh,’ said Anne, relaxing.

‘Apart from the fact that there are enough odd characters wandering around in this world,’ he continued. ‘Out here even I would feel frightened now and again, I expect.’

Anne immediately felt uneasy again. As long as she was still living here, she would have preferred to be told that it was utterly silly to be worried. That the probability that there was a criminal out there, targeting helpless women, was one in a million, and that her hysteria was groundless. There was something unpleasant about the fact that everyone seemed to understand her fear. Even the friend she had called to ask about the estate agent had immediately replied: ‘I’m so relieved, Anne, that you’re no longer going to be out there in the woods on a plate for whoever wants to mug or murder you!’

Thank you, Anne wanted to say. Until I find somewhere else to stay, your words will no doubt ensure I sleep peacefully.

‘This house is right for a large family,’ said Luke Palm. ‘Or for people with lots of pets. Or who want an alternative way of living or so on. It’s a dream for a dropout!’

Walking around, he had made lots of notes and taken some photos. He said he would write up all the details. ‘As soon as interested people get in touch, I’ll let you know. There will of course be some viewings . . .’

‘That’s not a problem,’ said Anne. ‘I tend to be home. Just give me a call first.’

They said goodbye to one another. The estate agent was content and confident. He had feared he would find some godforsaken hole and instead he now had a treasure on his hands. As he stepped outside, snowflakes whirled around in the dark. Evening had come. The wind sighed in the top branches of the trees.