He's After Me

Chapter FORTY-THREE



This time he’s written:

Bitches! Whores! The lot of you!

Dad manages to get rid of it by the time Mum gets home from work. It’s not easy. He tries detergent first, then white spirit from the shed. In the end he jumps in the car and comes back with some paintstripper.

When Mum arrives to find the paint stripped from her front door, we usher her straight inside. Dad is really sweet with her. He makes her a cup of tea and sits her down and tells her what’s happened. I’ve read that people go white with shock and I never thought it was true, but Mum’s face drains completely of colour when she hears what he’s written. Dad plays it down.

‘Don’t worry. It’s just stupid, spiteful insults. He can’t do anyone any harm.’

He’s right. To be honest, I’m not scared of Jem. I just feel numb. But I’m so glad my father is here to take charge and I know Mum is too.

And then, as if on cue, his phone rings and it’s Jude on the line, wanting to know where he is.

‘I’m at home,’ he says, adding quickly. ‘At Maggy’s.’

Mum and I can’t help exchanging a wry look. Bit of a Freudian slip that. Dad’s been spending so much time here over the last few weeks, since all this trouble broke, he’s starting to think of it as home again.

‘It’s a bit awkward at the moment …’ he says and though we’re hearing only one side of the conversation it’s obvious she wants him back at the flat. I can hear her voice, high and agitated, though it’s hard to make out what she is saying, and I feel a familiar spasm of irritation.

‘Calm down,’ says Dad. ‘Take a deep breath.’ But she keeps on talking and his expression changes. ‘Are you sure it’s him?’ he says. Then, ‘Have you told the police?’ When he closes his phone his face is fraught with tension.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Now Jem has been charged, Jude decided to look at the CCTV images after all.’ He licks his lips nervously.

‘So?’

‘She recognizes him.’

I stare at him blankly. So they did know each other. I was right after all. ‘How come?’

‘Jude was his defence lawyer. She got him off some charge a year or two ago on a technicality, some petty crime or other. Privately she thought he was lucky to get away with it.’

‘I don’t get it …’

‘His name is Jermaine Smith. It was at her last practice. He’s one of hundreds of young thugs who have passed through her hands. After she got him off, Jermaine made a nuisance of himself. Started ringing her up, demanding to see her. Seemed to think there was some sort of special bond between them because she’d defended him successfully in court. Didn’t seem to understand she was only doing her job.’ He shrugs. ‘It happens. Half the people we represent are unhinged in some way. When she moved down here, it stopped.’

I think back to the time Jem told me about his car-crash of a life. The list of women who had let him down. The most recent was a woman who’d left him for some old guy with more money.

That was Jude. And the ‘old guy’ she’d left him for was Dad.

At least, that’s how he’d perceived it in his twisted mind. He’d thought he had some sort of romantic thing going with her. That she’d got him off because there was something going on between them.

I sit there stunned, trying to take it all in.

It’s sick. What is wrong with him? Couldn’t he see she was just doing her job? She was a lawyer, that’s all, a professional, albeit a very attractive one, who had defended him successfully before she moved on to her next brief. End of story.

But not for Jem.

Jem is the one who’s got to be in control. Why didn’t I listen to you, Zoe? He’d created that entire relationship in his head. Hence the photographs. As far as he was concerned, they loved each other and it was my wicked father who was coming between them.

Poor, deluded Jem.

And then the truth smacks me in the face.

None of this was about me! The only reason he went out with me was to get at Jude! Jem had used me and I’d allowed him to.

I taste the bitter bile of resentment rising in my throat. This is all her fault!

Why didn’t she warn me? Why didn’t she tell me what a weirdo I was going out with? Why did she let me get involved with him in the first place?

But even as I ask the questions, the answer’s obvious.

Because she didn’t know.

James was my boyfriend, I’d boasted to her. Nice, pleasant, well-bred James who was at Oxford, studying Medicine. Pretty common name really. She’d invited us round for dinner, couldn’t wait to meet him, but I’d ignored the invitation. I had to. I was lying through my teeth just to impress her.

It wasn’t Jude’s fault. It was mine.

‘This guy is unpredictable,’ says Dad, getting to his feet. ‘I’m going back to the apartment. Jude’s there on her own.’

‘You don’t think he’d do anything, do you?’ asks Mum, her eyes round with fear.

‘He’s got photographs of her.’ My voice is a whisper, but Mum and Dad stare at me as if I’d shouted it out loud.

‘On his computer.’

Dad looks stricken.

‘Go!’ says Mum.

‘He won’t hurt her!’ I protest but my words sound hollow, even to me. I try to explain. ‘He’s just got this thing about women, that’s all … He thinks we all let him down.’

Dad makes for the door. ‘That,’ he says, ‘is exactly what worries me.’





He wasn’t going to stop there. No way. Anna had it coming to her, the bitch. How could she do this to him? He’d thought she was different, but they were all the same when it came down to it. Bitches! Whores!

That’s what he’d sprayed on the front door. He felt like spraying it over the whole town.

And then the door had opened and Livi had come out.

Little Livi.