He's After Me

Chapter FORTY



By the time I get home, Dad has left and Mum and Livi are curled up together watching telly.

‘Do the police want to see me?’ I ask Mum bleakly.

‘Not yet. Tomorrow, I would think.’ She grabs my hand. ‘You look exhausted.’

‘I am.’

‘Don’t blame yourself for any of this, Anna. You weren’t to know what Jem was like.’

I shake her hand away. ‘I’m going to bed.’

I stand in the shower under fierce blasts of freezing water, trying to process the implications of what I had seen in that folder marked Jude. By the time I come out I am shaking with cold. It’s like I want to punish myself. I choose the roughest, hardest towel I can find and rub my skin till it feels raw, then I crawl into bed and curl up into the foetal position. There’s a knock and Livi’s face peers around the door.

‘You OK?’

‘No,’ I say in a low voice.

‘Budge up!’ She lifts the covers and climbs into bed. ‘You’re freezing!’ she squeals, snuggling down beside me and hugging me round the waist. There is something incredibly comforting having my own human hot-water bottle curled around me. I can feel my heart rate slowing down, as I match my breath with hers.

‘I hate Dad,’ she says.

‘No you don’t.’

‘Yes I do!’ Her voice is fierce.

‘Why?’

‘Because he believes the evil Jude, not Jem. So does Mum.’

I’m silent for a moment. Then I whisper, ‘Perhaps she’s not evil.’

‘What?’

‘Maybe she’s telling the truth.’

Livi shoots up to sitting position. ‘No way! She said things were taken from the flat and they weren’t. She put the blame on to Jem. Of course she’s evil!’

‘Maybe it wasn’t like that,’ I say, rolling over and sitting up, my arms around my knees. ‘Maybe Jem did steal those things after all.’

‘Anna?’ She stares at me aghast. ‘I can’t believe you said that!’

‘How do you know he didn’t?’

‘Because he said!’

I give a short bitter laugh, like a yelp.

‘Jem said lots of things.’

‘He told me he didn’t pinch anything.’

‘He was lying.’

‘No, he wasn’t!’

‘He took Dad’s watch, Livi. I know he did.’

Her face is livid. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re making it up so that you don’t get into trouble.’

‘What?’

‘It was you! You’re the thieving scav, not Jem!’ She springs out of bed and flings open my wardrobe door, pulling things at random till she finds what she’s looking for. ‘See!’ she says triumphantly, brandishing Jude’s top. She flings it on the bed, followed by the incriminating knickers. ‘I knew they were there all the time. I wasn’t going to say anything till you started blaming it all on Jem.’

I groan. My loyal little sister! ‘Don’t be daft. You’re too flaming nosy for your own good. I only borrowed those. I was going to put them back.’

‘Yeah, and Jem told me he was going to put back the money he borrowed. Only he never had time.’

Her pretty, open face is distorted with outrage. Poor Livi. I’d believed that too. Till tonight.

‘If he’s a thief, so are you!’ she persists, her logic irrefutable.

‘Look, Livi, there’s stuff you don’t know about …’ I say, but she spits back, ‘Yeah, well, there’s stuff you don’t know about too!’ and marches out of the bedroom. I sink back against my pillows, thinking when the hell has Jem been filling her head with all this garbage?

But at the moment I’ve got more pressing questions to worry about. Tonight I viewed hundreds and hundreds of pictures of Jude on Jem’s computer. They have totally freaked me out. I’ve seen:

Jude leaving home, briefcase in hand.

Jude hailing a taxi, getting into a taxi.

Jude entering the office.

Jude leaving the office.

Jude shopping, clutching bags from designer stores.

Jude going into a bar, coming out of a bar.

Jude letting herself into Wharfside.

Jude arm-in-arm with Dad.

Jude talking to me on the street. (I remember that day!)

Jude on her mobile.

Jude with a girlfriend, laughing, carefree.

Jude at a supermarket checkout.

Jude walking through the park.

Jude at a cash-machine.

Jude (long-distance but definitely her) standing at the window of the apartment, looking out over the harbour.

Jude laughing, serious, thoughtful, sad.

Jude with a different hairstyle. A slightly younger version of herself. Where did that one come from … ? These two know each other. What the hell is going on?

A crazy, paranoid fear had consumed me. The two of them were in league. It was a set-up. Jude took my dad to New York so Jem could fake a break-in and steal from him! And I was the gullible idiot who made it all possible.

Now, thinking it through logically, I dismiss that idea. More of her stuff was taken than Dad’s. Though she might have done that deliberately, for the insurance, like I suspected.

But a wave of common sense washes over me. Come on! For five grand and a few pieces of flash jewellery?

Peanuts to someone earning as much as Jude. She’s a successful lawyer, on her way up. Why would she want to risk everything for a few thousand quid? She can earn that in a month.

For Jem?

Jem is a very powerful person. Jem has a way of making you do what he wants. He did it to me.

Zoe was right, he controlled me, like I was his puppet and he was pulling the strings. He cut me off from her. He made me give up on my dreams of a degree in a subject I loved, that I had worked towards all my life. He made me into someone who defaces other people’s property, who leaves restaurants without paying, who attacks security guards and runs away, who breaks into her father’s apartment and has sex in his bed. And I let him!

He made me fall in love with him. And I thought he loved me too.

I lie there in tears, tormenting myself with images of Jude and him together, laughing at me. Mentally, I scroll through those photographs of Jude again. There were so many of them, loads more than he had ever taken of me. How he must have worshipped her to take all those pictures. And all the time, I was totally devoted to him.

The bastard!

Then, as I peel away the last thin membrane of adoration that has masked my eyes since the day I first met Jem, I see things suddenly in focus so clear and sharp it is painful.

Those pictures. They all had one thing in common.

In every single one of them, Jude was totally oblivious to the fact that her photograph was being taken.

And understanding finally hits me like a two-ton truck.

Jude would never, ever, in a million years have had anything to do with the likes of Jem.





He knew who’d shopped him straight away.

The whore. Discovered at last he’d borrowed her credit card. Well, she obviously didn’t need it; it had taken her long enough to find out he’d been milking her account.

Couldn’t prove a thing, he’d said, but they’d still arrested him. Laughed in his face, the bastards. Her word against his, and she was the big-shot lawyer.

Yeah, well, they had nothing on him. His Anna would stick up for him. His Anna would get him off.