Five Strangers Page 16
She looks at me and smiles. There’s something calculating about the smile, though. Like a cat that has a mouse in its sights. She’s coming back to me.
‘That’s my girl,’ I say.
41
JEN
I don’t want to tell my therapist, Annabelle, everything I’m thinking, everything I’m feeling, but I do talk about what it was like to witness the murder of Victoria Da Silva and the suicide of Daniel Oliver. I take her through it, the whole ghastly business. As I relate what I saw I can tell she is shocked and appalled, not just about what happened – the murder of a young woman, the suicide of her boyfriend – but its implications for me.
‘I’m worried that this will bring up all sorts of issues for you,’ says Annabelle. ‘It could well trigger some unpleasant memories, causing you to relive some trauma from your past.’
I don’t say anything. The silence lingers, heavy in the bland, characterless room at the back of an Edwardian house between Archway and Highgate. I’m comfortable with the silence, though, and I let it embrace me like a shroud.
Annabelle has talked to me in the past about the roots of what she calls my compulsion for over-sharing. She has been keen for me to explore what she regards as the split between myself as subject and myself as object. It sounds like jargon, but she says I created a false self – myself as object – through which I could channel all sorts of emotions, feelings, fears, and desires. It is this object self, which I gave an alternative name, that of Hunter, that I’ve used over the years as a basis for my confessional journalism. I had to feed it like a ravenous dog. It was insatiable, as was my readers’ fascination with it. I became addicted to giving it more material – titbits from my life – knowing that to keep my readers’ attention I had to supply a steady stream of confessions, the more sensational and extreme the better.
The relationship between my readers and myself fit into a classic co-dependent model, she said. Those anonymous people out there, who gobbled up my column, acted as enablers, encouraging me to continue a dysfunctional existence. And it was hardly a surprise that I had turned to fictionalising my own experience. It was, said Annabelle, the logical conclusion in a cycle of abuse. On a positive light, she assured me, my lies resulted in the loss of that column, which in turn functioned as an escape from the damaging situation. I may be out of a job, but at least I’m still alive. If I had carried on writing about myself in this way there was every chance I would have taken up other forms of addictive behaviour: greater dependence on alcohol (my intake was already highly dangerous, said Annabelle), the use of other drugs, or a descent into paranoid or schizoid behaviour, possibly even self-harm, and ultimately suicide.
‘By bringing about the loss of your column you effectively killed off your false self of Jen Hunter,’ said Annabelle. ‘Your unconscious protected you by highlighting the fiction of yourself. You should thank it – it saved you. And perhaps you should start to think about using your real name again, Jennifer Hesmondalgh.’
The sound of my old name, with its ugly, clumsy mouthful of consonants, disturbs me. It reminds me of everything I tried to escape from.
We lapse into silence before Annabelle asks me if there’s anything else I want to share with her. I decide not to tell her anything of Laurence and his role in all of this, about his presence on the Heath and why he chose to lie about it. I do, however, talk to Annabelle about my arguments with Bex and Penelope. Initially, she does not interpret my actions, choosing to let herself serve as a sounding board for my experiences. I can feel her eyes on me, however, and as I speak I can sense a heightened level of concern.
Finally, she takes a sip of water and says, ‘So you’re intending to write about … about the incident?’
‘Oh yes,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve written a news story already and think that a larger piece might work well. It could also help me get out of the work rut I’ve been in.’
‘So you’re reporting on an event that you witnessed?’
‘Yes, and there might even be a book in it,’ I reply. I tell her about the weird messages from @WatchingYouJenHunter, and the claim that another person could be involved. ‘So you see it may not be a straightforward case of Daniel Oliver killing his girlfriend. Victoria Da Silva was pregnant when she was killed, probably by another man.’ Again, I say nothing about Laurence. ‘I’m going to interview the other witnesses again and follow up … some other leads.’
‘Do you think that’s wise?’ she asks. ‘I mean, Jen, you really do need to think about this. You know you haven’t been well. Witnessing a murder and then a suicide is bad enough. But reporting on it is another thing entirely. I would have thought you’d need some sense of objectivity, and even then, doing such a thing could have serious consequences for your mental health.’ She pauses. ‘You know I don’t make a habit of telling you what to do, but on this occasion I must advise you that I think you should stop, and stop right away.’
I want to ask her how else does she expect me to pay for these fucking therapy sessions, but I rephrase it as, ‘But what do you expect me to do? I need to earn a living.’
‘Have you thought about getting another kind of job, one that’s nothing to do with journalism? After all, you told me yourself that journalism, or print journalism at least, is on the way out. You said there’s no future in it.’
‘I’m not fit for anything else,’ I say. ‘Really, I don’t know what else to do.’
‘You’ve got a good degree. Lots of experience. You’re personable, you get on with people. You could retrain as …’
‘As what?’ The words come out rather more sharply than I want. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve thought about it, and nothing suggests itself to me as a natural way forward. I can’t think of a way out.’ I tell her about the horrible vision of myself I had, living alone in a strange town, without friends, surviving on benefits, dying without being found, a bloated corpse on a dirty mattress. By the end of it I have tears streaming down my face.
‘It’s a very powerful symbol of all your fears,’ she says, softly, passing me a tissue. ‘But that’s all it is. It’s not your reality. And it won’t become your reality. It needn’t be your future. You’re a strong woman, Jen. A survivor. And you’ll survive this – as long as you don’t continue down the route of reporting on this crime. You know we talked about the false self? Well, I think this could bring about the resurgence of that artificial identity.’
She doesn’t say the words, but I know what she’s thinking: that way madness lies.
42
BEX
I don’t trust Penelope. In fact, I’ve never trusted her, ever since before I first set eyes on her. All that crap she spouted about journalism being the first draft of history. She’s nothing but a parasite, feeding off the misery of others.
I’m pleased that Jen has fallen out with her, but I’m still worried that the old bitch may have some hold over my friend. I can’t be too careful. That’s why I’m standing outside her house in Hampstead, waiting for her to go out. The joy of it is I don’t need to break in. I’m holding the key that Jen took with her when she moved out, which I found inside her bag.
I’ve been waiting just over half an hour, but I don’t mind standing here, on the same side of the deserted street as her house so she can’t see me from her windows. And to anyone else, the occasional passer-by, I’m just a normal-looking woman in her early forties. What could be threatening about that?
Finally, just after noon, a car pulls up outside. I step behind a tall yew hedge and watch as the driver makes a call, presumably to tell her that he is outside. A few minutes later, Penelope appears at her door, carrying a laptop bag. Today, she is dressed in a black suit and high heels. She locks the door and totters down the pathway to the car. There is a brief interchange about where she is going – yes, that’s right, she says, to the RAC on Pall Mall. She’s the guest of honour at a lunch. The driver says she must be famous and she laughs in a sickeningly affected manner. Then the door is closed, she
puts on her seat belt, and they drive away.
I give it a few minutes before I take the key out of my pocket and walk up to the house. I don’t check to see whether anyone is looking because this will only make me appear suspicious. So I open the door in a slightly bored manner, as if I’ve done this a thousand times before. And I step inside.
The air carries a trace of Penelope’s perfume – I can smell rose, jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood. Is it Chanel No. 5? I walk through to the kitchen. There is a pile of newspapers on the table and a dirty coffee cup, its rim stained with Penelope’s pink lipstick.
Even though I’ve been to the house a few times I’m still astounded by how much space there is – and all for one person. I think about some of the men and women I’ve met at the food bank and how little room they have, not only for themselves but for their children too. Penelope is a symbol of everything that is wrong in Britain today: rich, privileged, entitled, blinkered, narrow-minded, and self-serving. A bubble of anger and hatred for her seeps up from deep within me. Instead of swallowing it down I give vent to my feelings. ‘Fuck you, Penelope,’ I say. ‘Fuck you and everything you stand for.’
I climb the flight of stone stairs to the first storey and go into what was Jen’s room. I sit on the bed and touch her pillow. There’s a long, blonde hair, one of hers. She’s at her therapy session now, no doubt talking of the trauma of witnessing the murder–suicide on Kite Hill. When she gets back she’ll probably be feeling a bit low. I’ll make sure to try to cheer her up somehow. But I won’t tell her about my little visit to Penelope’s.
I make my way up the stairs again to the very top of the house and into Penelope’s large study, carpeted in jute matting. There’s an enormous mahogany desk that sits by a window overlooking the garden. The room is full of shelves of books. In the corner of the room there’s a filing cabinet. I pull it open and search through files: bank statements, insurance certificates, old papers relating to mortgage payments. There are letters from readers, fans, former colleagues, postcards from friends sent from various destinations around the world. Yet, no matter how hard I look, I can’t find anything relating to either the murder–suicide or to Jen herself. Perhaps Penelope was carrying the material in her laptop bag.
I walk back over to the desk. It’s free of papers, apart from a letter asking her to renew her membership of the Conservative Party. There’s nothing here of use to me, but then I spot something that is in plain sight: a large rectangular pad of blotting paper, an antique affair edged in a brass frame. There’s something written in ink in one corner, but it’s in reverse. I look around the room for a mirror, but there isn’t one. I take the blotting pad into Penelope’s bedroom. It’s a vision – or rather, a nightmare – in pink, as if she’s taken interior design inspiration from the colour of her lipstick. I move over to her dressing table and see myself reflected in the triptych of mirrors.
I lift the blotting paper up to the mirror. The reverse image, a quick squiggle of ink written using a fountain pen, comes to life. Bex, full name: Rebecca Shaw.
And next to this there’s a question mark.
43
JEN
I go through the motions of setting up and carrying out interviews, even though all I can think about is Laurence and what he’s done. Bex accompanies me as I travel around London, waiting for me while I go and see Julia Jones again, who is nice enough but who doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. I do notice, however, that during our early evening meeting one Friday night, she knocks back the best part of two bottles of white wine, while to my amazement I only have one glass.
With bloodshot eyes she talks about the stress of Brexit and the tortuous progress of the Withdrawal Bill through Parliament. She likens Brexit to a cancer eating up the country from the inside, a festering mass of tumours that will ultimately end up destroying the body politic. By the end of our time together she is slurring her words as she talks about her dead son, Harry. She’s never talked about him in public before – luckily the papers here never reported news about his death – and asks that what she says remains confidential. She tells me how, late at night, she locks herself in her study and looks at old photos of him. Sometimes she still can’t believe he’s gone. It will be his birthday in a couple of weeks’ time, she says, a day she always dreads. She imagines what his life would be like had he not died: he was always looking out for the underdog even as a young boy, she says, and it’s likely that he would have gone on to work for a charity, or perhaps in development in Africa or South America. He’d be married by now, too, with a growing family; he told her he always wanted children. She wipes her tears away, apologises for being sentimental, but I tell her I understand.
‘It’s strange how the grief has got so much worse since … since I saw what happened on the Heath,’ she says, as she stands up to show me to the door. ‘I can’t explain it. It’s like what I saw is somehow pulling me back into the past. God, listen to me going on about myself!’ she says, as she wipes another tear from her cheek and tries to smile. ‘I should be worrying about the family of that poor girl, instead of thinking about my own problems.’
I’m tempted to tell her something about my difficulties, but Julia’s daughter Louisa comes bounding down the stairs on the way to the kitchen and the moment is lost.
‘Darling – you remember Jen-Jennifer Hunter, don’t you? Let me introduce you again.’ As she says this she stretches out her arm to gesture for her daughter to come to us, but the movement unsteadies her. ‘Oops, nearly.’
‘Mum – how much have you had to drink?’ asks Louisa.
‘Only a couple of glasses.’
‘Sorry,’ mouths Louisa to me, and then whispers something sharp to her mother.
‘I’d better be off,’ I say. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
I don’t take any pleasure in noticing the signs of alcohol dependency, but as someone who has an ongoing battle with drink I can certainly empathise with what Julia is going through.
Just as I’m walking down the steps from the house I hear the door open. It’s Louisa.
‘God, I’m sorry,’ she says again.
‘It’s been a difficult time – for all of us, since the incident on the Heath. I guess it’s her way of coping.’
‘Listen – I know you’re a journalist. But you won’t write about any of this? About Mum’s … problems, will you?’
Oh God, she thinks I’m that kind of journalist. ‘Don’t worry. I give you my word.’ I feel what I’m saying sounds hollow, empty. I think back to the promise I made to Mr and Mrs Da Silva. Even though it wasn’t me who leaked the story of Vicky’s pregnancy, I still feel guilty. ‘It must be difficult for her. What with the pressures of her job and the stuff going on in Parliament. And now all of this.’
‘It does seem to have hit her hard,’ says Louisa. ‘I wonder how it has affected you – and the other witnesses?’
I’m not sure where to start. ‘It’s an interesting question, but I suppose it’s making its presence felt in different ways – for all of us, I mean.’
‘The thing is with Mum, she seems like a tough old bird. You know the kind of woman to give the PM a good blasting when she feels he needs it. A veneer as hard as stone and all that. But underneath she’s, well, she’s vulnerable and insecure. Anyway, thanks for being so understanding. I’d hate it if anything came out to make the situation even more difficult for her.’ She smiles and says goodbye.
On the way to meet Bex I mull over the brief conversation I had with Louisa about the effect of the murder–suicide on the those who had witnessed it. I’m convinced that this should be the real focus of the feature. I take out my phone and write myself a short note as a reminder. As I finish, an email from Ayesha Ahmed drops into my inbox. The junior doctor who tried to save the lives of Victoria Da Silva and Daniel Oliver says that she will see me – she’s free the next day – but on condition that I don’t use her name or report anything that she says. She doesn’t want to get into trouble
with the health trust.
We arrange to meet outside Tate Modern, and again I travel with Bex, who blends into the crowd.
I spot Ayesha sitting on a bench, a small and lonely figure surrounded by swarms of tourists and middle-class Londoners with their children. There’s a frightened quality to her and she winces and starts at every noise or sudden movement near her. She smiles shyly when she sees me and I go over and sit by her.
‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ I say.
‘I wonder whether I’ll ever be able to sit on another bench again … without thinking about what happened that day,’ she replies, as she nervously runs her tiny hands over her well-cut navy blue trousers.
She asks me again about what I hope to gain by seeing her. She has nothing to say. She insists again that I can’t use her name. I tell her that I’m hoping to understand the motivation and background to the crime. She starts to talk about how tired she had felt that day, how she had been up all night. If only she hadn’t had her eyes closed or her headphones on she might have been able to intervene sooner, she might have been able to save Victoria’s life. I tell her she did everything to help. She should be commended for her bravery and her sense of public duty. I get out my phone and play the video that Alex sent me.
‘Do you recognise this man? The jogger?’
She shakes her head.
‘He was there, that day on the Heath,’ I tell her. ‘He ran past the scene of the crime, but didn’t stop, even though people asked him to, even though it could have made a difference.’
Ayesha looks at me with her scared rabbit eyes again.
‘Are you sure you didn’t see him that day?’
‘No, why – is this important?’
‘It could be,’ I say. ‘And what about the name Steven Walker – does that mean anything to you?’
‘No,’ she replies. ‘Who is he?’
‘He’s the teenager who was there, who ran away, just as the police were approaching.’