Five Strangers Page 19

  ‘Laurence, what the fuck do you want?’ I shout, but a lorry thunders past me, drowning out my cries.

  ‘Just stop it – what the hell is wrong with you?’ I scream with such a force it feels as though my lungs are burning.

  A slow-moving bus interrupts my sight line across the road. By the time the bus clears I half expect Laurence to have disappeared, but he’s still there, haunting me.

  I check the traffic and dodge the cars, running up to the bus stop.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ I shout again. I reach out and tap him on the shoulder, perhaps with a little too much force.

  He spins around. There’s a look of astonishment and fear on the face, a face that doesn’t belong to Laurence.

  ‘What …?’ I say.

  The man steps back, clearly anxious I’m about to do something to him.

  ‘I’m s-sorry,’ I manage to say. ‘I thought – I thought you were someone else.’

  I back away, wanting to turn myself inwards. I’m ashamed by my actions. I actually scared a stranger. A nice, middle-aged man who was minding his own business.

  Now that wasn’t a very nice thing to do.

  Fired up by adrenaline I have a new idea. Perhaps it’s not Laurence sending me the messages? I look up and down the busy road, scanning everyone who has a mobile phone. There’s a young girl with headphones, ready for a jog, no doubt selecting music for her run. Back near the school there is a host of boys all armed with phones, their faces slack, their eyes glazed and empty. Is Steven there? Could it be him? I run back over to the other side of the street and push my way through a mass of bodies.

  And then I see him. Steven. He’s coming out of the gates, talking to a friend, laughing and joking. I spring forward as if I’m an animal and I’ve caught sight of my prey. The sudden movement alerts him. He’s scared and he bolts.

  ‘Steven – wait. Stop!’ I shout. ‘I just want to ask you some questions. Listen—’

  But he runs, as quick as a leopard, down Highgate Road towards Kentish Town. I take off after him, already knowing there’s little hope of catching him. I feel my lungs filling up with pollution and, as I stop to catch my breath, I see him disappear into one of the streets towards Gospel Oak. I fall back against some black railings. I grasp the top of the railings, holding them for support to prevent myself from falling to the ground, my fingers curled around the sharp points.

  Then my phone vibrates once more. My hands are shaking now, from fear, from shock. I bring the phone towards my face, not at all certain I want to read what it says.

  Careful of those railings. We wouldn’t want you to come to any harm.

  Fuck. I’m not sure if I can carry on. It’s – he’s – driving me insane. That’s it. I’ve had enough. I go into the profile page of @WatchingYouJenHunter and click on the icon. My fingers hover over the block option. I press it. It’s done. There won’t be any more messages. I can get on with my life. Why didn’t I do that before? I suppose I believed it might lead to something, some information to help me understand the true motivation behind the murder–suicide on the Heath. I close my eyes, take some deep breaths. It’s over.

  I push myself away from the railings and try to assume the pose of a normal middle-aged woman in north London. I smile to myself – I know it’s forced – but I hope by doing so I can trick myself into thinking that I’m fine.

  My phone pings again. Perhaps it’s Bex, messaging from work to check I’m okay. I freeze when I see the words. It’s from a new Twitter account, @WatchingYouJenHunter2.

  I’m still here.

  50

  BEX

  I am standing in the upstairs of the Bull & Last, a pub opposite William Ellis school, watching Jen have a complete meltdown. It was all so easy to arrange. I knew at some point that Jen would want to speak to Steven Walker. I also knew that although she did not have his home address, she did know where he goes to school. It was only a matter of time before she sought him out. I followed her as she left the flat and made her way up Highgate Road to the school.

  The next piece of the puzzle fell into my lap like a dream. Over the course of the last year I had been dealing with the planning application of the Bull & Last, whose owners wanted to convert the top two floors of the building into space for six guest bedrooms. I was on friendly terms with the architect, and an informal site visit could easily be arranged. I knew too that the scaffolded facade was covered by a layer of plastic sheeting that prevented dust and dirt from spewing out onto the street.

  From one of the rooms on the first floor, overlooking Highgate Road, it’s easy to open the window and make a small tear in the sheeting. I can see out towards the gates of the school, but no one can see me.

  I watch as Jen walks into the frame. She’s looking quite pretty today in a floral print Zara dress, black boots, and a denim jacket. I can tell that she’s on edge. She plays nervously with her hair and she moves as if she’s drunk too much coffee or taken speed. I take out my other phone – the one that Jen knows nothing about – and tap out a message. The anticipation, the thrill of waiting to see how she is going to react, is a delicious sensation, like the best kind of drug. It’s annoying that I’m standing too far away from her to see the expression in her eyes, but I imagine her pupils dilating. I can’t hear her breathing quicken either, but I’m sure that’s exactly what is happening.

  She starts to walk up and down Highgate Road, peering into parked cars. Then she steps out into the road without looking. Fuck! A car nearly hits her. She’s okay, thank God. I wouldn’t want to see her die, because I have plans for her, like a cat has plans for the mouse it has captured.

  I think back to Jen’s cat, Henry, or Henrietta. It was a stupid old thing, but there’s no doubt that she loved it. She’d taken it in as a favour for a neighbour, an old hippy called Lou, who was going travelling in Asia for three months. But Lou had changed her plans – she’d fallen in love with an Australian man and had no intention of coming back to London for at least a year. Would Jen be cool looking after Henry? After all, Lou knew how much Jen liked the old bagpuss. Jen thought she had no choice – what other option did Henry have, apart from confinement in somewhere like Battersea? – and so she agreed. Although Laurence only endured its presence in the house, she was besotted with the creature.

  To begin with Jen thought Henry had gone walkabout. There was nothing unusual in this, as the cat occasionally spent a night away from home. After two days she began to worry, but still tried to convince herself that it was having a nice relaxing mini-break away from her. But then on the morning of the third day, a Saturday, she rang me to tell me she felt sick with anxiety. Laurence was still away on a work trip and Henry had not returned home. I tried my best to convince her everything was okay, but she said she felt something was wrong. I listened to her cry as she told me that she feared that Henry might be dead. I offered to pop over – we could go and ask the neighbours if they’d heard or seen anything – and half an hour later I was there.

  ‘I’m so grateful,’ she said as she kissed me on the cheek and ushered me into the house.

  ‘What else am I going to do with my Saturday morning?’ I said, smiling. ‘Anyway, it’s a good excuse to get out of Pilates.’

  She made me a coffee, after which we searched the length of the expansive garden at the back of the house. We checked the shed once more – no sign – and then went around the neighbours on her side of the street. We checked outbuildings, bike sheds, old lean-tos, and summer houses, but there was no trace. Finally, as she was about to give up, I suggested going to talk to the people who backed onto the garden. Laurence knew them – an elderly couple, Phillip and Harriet – better than her, but she had waved to them on the odd occasion. We walked around the block, located their house, and rang the bell. After a little small talk Jen explained about Henry and wondered if they had seen her in their back garden. No, but we were very welcome to check their old shed. They ushered us in and, with a look of embarrassme
nt, led us through to their rather overgrown garden.

  We pushed past a giant hedge and, under a vine-heavy pergola, and emerged into an expanse of waist-high grass and weeds. At the end of the garden we could see the shed that backed onto the old fence that divided the two properties. As we came closer we saw that the door was hanging off its hinges. Jen started to whistle and call Henry’s name, while I pushed open the door. The first thing I saw was a drop of blood on the floor.

  ‘Let me go and have a look in here,’ I said. ‘You stay back.’

  ‘Why – what have you seen?’ she asked in a panicked voice.

  She followed my gaze to the ground and immediately pushed past me. ‘Henry! Henry – are you there?’

  We were hit by a smell of something rank and rotten. Jen covered her mouth as she tried to make her way into the shed, which was piled high with old boxes and a rusty electric lawn mower.

  ‘Henry … Henry?’ she whispered as she tried to move some of the equipment that blocked her way. She froze when she saw a lifeless lump of fur in the corner. Her arm stretched out to touch it, but shot back when she came in contact with the blood.

  ‘Come away from there,’ I told her. ‘You shouldn’t see that.’

  She tried to get rid of the stain of blood from her fingers by rubbing them repeatedly on her jeans. A line from Macbeth came back to me.

  ‘Oh no, you poor thing,’ I said. ‘Let me deal with it.’

  ‘Do you think there’s any chance?’ she asked in a small and pathetic voice. ‘That – that Henry might still be …?’

  ‘I’ll have a look,’ I told her. ‘You sit here.’

  I used the sleeve of my cardigan in order to pretend to cover my mouth and stepped into the shed. I knew exactly what I would find – an animal that had bled to death – but I had to feign surprise and horror and all those other emotions expected of you in such a situation. I think I even managed a few tears too.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no hope,’ I told her. ‘Henry’s gone.’

  ‘What – what … how did she …?’

  ‘I think it looks like a fox or something.’

  ‘Do you think she …?’

  ‘No, she won’t have suffered.’

  I wasn’t telling the truth. Of course it had suffered. I had put on some heavy duty gardening gloves and held it down as I stabbed it with some kitchen scissors in Jen’s back garden, when she had popped out to get some more wine. It scratched and spat and struggled, but I managed to hold it firm. I let it go when I knew I’d inflicted enough deep wounds that would kill it, and pushed it through a gap in the fence and into the neighbours’ shed, where it died.

  Now, I’m watching Jen suffer. She’s going really mental, walking up to strangers on the street and accosting them. Then she starts bothering the schoolboys outside William Ellis. Really, she should be locked up. She’s a danger to herself and to other people. I see her looking at something, someone. I try to follow her gaze. There’s a sea of teenage faces. Then she calls out, ‘Steven!’ Fuck, so she has found him.

  She tells him she wants him to wait. She has some questions for him. But the guy panics. He splits away from his friends and sprints down the road. Jen chases after him, dodging the children and their parents. I lose sight of her from the window and so I run down the stairs and out onto Highgate Road.

  She must have lost Steven as she’s slumped back against some black railings. She’s messing with her phone and there’s a crazed expression in her eyes. I go to Jen’s Twitter account and discover that she has blocked @WatchingYouJenHunter. So, she’s finally showing a little spirit. Good for her. Actually, I was wondering how long it would be before she did that. But I have it all worked out. I quickly create another account, similar to the last one, and send another message.

  I’m still here.

  And I’m not going anywhere.

  51

  JEN

  I can’t stand this any more. I need to stop it. I tighten my grip around my phone, willing for it to smash in my hand.

  I try to take a deep breath. I have to think. I look around, conscious that someone must be watching my every move.

  I can’t see Laurence anywhere. But could he have employed someone to spy on me and send me those Twitter messages? It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing he would do, but then again none of this – the way he had acted on the Heath, his denial of his whereabouts – sounds like reasonable behaviour. Although I feel like I am going insane, is he the one with the real mental health problems? I think of the day on the Heath again. Flashes of images burn through my mind. The bottle of champagne glinting in the sunlight. The blood streaming from Vicky’s mouth. Her fingers grasping onto the edge of the bench in pain. Jamie pleading with the jogger to stop, but the guy in the hoodie, whose face I can’t see, runs by. Then the horror of what happens next.

  What was Laurence doing there? It seemed too much of a coincidence that he just happened to be on Parliament Hill Fields at the very moment his lover, Vicky, was murdered, and the attack was witnessed by his ex-girlfriend: me. Had Laurence been following her – or me? If Laurence was the one behind the Twitter stalking, then why would he want to alert me to the fact that the murder–suicide wasn’t what it seemed?

  I need some answers. I check my phone: it’s 1:30 p.m. I walk back to the flat and change into some of Bex’s clothes. I open her wardrobe, which is full of sensible, if not downright dull, work suits, skirts, blouses, and fleeces. Whereas, in the past at least, I had the money to shop for designer pieces, jackets and dresses from Chloé, Acne, Prada and Bottega Veneta, Bex buys clothes from the Gap, M&S, Primark, and Uniqlo.

  I think back to the time when we first met, when I was the one that dressed like a country bumpkin and she looked like a cool, urban sophisticate. She had taught me so much. How to shop, what to do with my hair, how to look after my skin, what to eat. However, soon after she got that job at Camden Council, after returning from travelling, she began to dress in a way that made her look as if she didn’t care about her appearance, almost as if she wanted to erase herself. When I dared to try to talk to her about this, hinted that she could make an effort to dress nicely, she closed me down and said that there were more important things in life than clothes and surface appearances. She made me feel shallow and superficial, guilty for caring how I looked. People were starving out there, she said. And I couldn’t argue with that.

  I select a pair of supermarket jeans, a baggy beige blouse, a grey fleece, and an old blue cagoule that’s clearly seen better days. I stand in front of the mirror and catch a glimpse of an odd hybrid, a strange mixture of myself and Bex. The effect is unsettling and I feel as if my perspective is shifting on its axis. Despite my fuller figure and the creases around my mouth and forehead, the image reminds me of how I used to look, before I met Bex. The reflection fills me distaste and I turn away. I suppose I don’t have a choice – it’s a good disguise, one I hope will throw Laurence off my track. I find an old grey woollen hat, put on a pair of my own trainers, and go downstairs and into the outside world.

  I check to see if Laurence is on the street. He’s not. I walk up to Tufnell Park, towards his house, a route I know so well it’s hardwired into my brain. As I do so, I look over my shoulder to see if he’s following me. The thought that he could run up behind me and push me in front of a bus or a lorry fills me with fear. I stop and take a sudden right turning, just in case. I feel my breath quicken. I look around me again, so quickly that my head begins to spin. I grab hold of a nearby wall and steady myself, all the time thinking that he is nearby, watching me. And yet I still can’t see him.

  Outside his house, I call his number. It goes to voicemail. I take a deep breath and knock on his door. No answer. I walk to the Tube and catch the underground north. At Archway I get off, walk down the platform and get back on the same train. When I reach Highgate I get a train south, back down to King’s Cross. I merge into a mass of people. If Laurence has been following me I’m pretty certain I’ve lost
him by now. I cross the busy Euston Road and into the complex of streets leading up to Argyle Square.

  When Laurence and his partners chose this location for their office fifteen years ago many of their clients thought that they were mad. A place for drug addicts, prostitutes, and cheapskate tourists, one of them had said at the time. And although it’s true that some of the buildings look less than salubrious, there’s a sense that the area has changed. The gothic St Pancras station designed by Gilbert Scott is already a five-star hotel, and the brutalist structure that was once Camden Council offices is now being transformed into the London outpost of the swanky Standard hotel chain.

  I check my phone again. No new messages. I look around me. Still no sign of Laurence. I power ahead through the streets until I see the glass-fronted office of Robertson + Galbraith Partners. Without much thought about what I’m going to say I press the intercom on the door and wait to go inside. A second later I’m buzzed in. I approach a young woman on reception, luckily one I’ve never met before, and tell her that I’m here to see Laurence Robertson. She looks at me suspiciously, no doubt because of the way I’m dressed. Do I have an appointment? No I don’t, I tell her. I’m a friend, I say, and give a fictitious name: Gemma. I just hope that my gamble pays off and that Laurence is out of the office. God knows what I would say to him if he actually walked into reception.

  She rings through to someone, most likely Laurence’s secretary. I scan the spiral staircase behind her, hoping none of the staff such as Zoe, Tom or Peter come down and see me.

  ‘I’m sorry, but Laurence isn’t in at the moment,’ she replies, as she places down the phone.

  I can tell by the way she looks at me that she isn’t lying.