JEN
I step out of Julia’s house and check my phone. The first thing I see is a message.
@WatchingYouJenHunter Nice suit you’re wearing today.
A second later there is another one.
@WatchingYouJenHunter And heels. Sexy.
I feel the light pressure of a stranger’s eyes caressing the back of my neck. Although it is broad daylight, and the area is an affluent one, I still feel scared. I hear the sound of footsteps behind me. I stop and look over my shoulder, feeling my heart pound inside my chest. I freeze to the pavement. Someone is coming closer.
A pretty young mother with an expensive-looking pushchair stops and gives me a concerned glance. I smile apologetically and look down at my phone again.
In my years as a columnist, writing about the most intimate aspects of my life, I’ve encountered my fair share of weirdos. My postbag used to be vetted for me, but latterly, as communication shifted from paper to the digital format, this became harder to do. I mostly tried to ignore it, believing that a certain level of abuse was part and parcel of the job. But occasionally people could be cruel, hitting you exactly where it hurt. After doing a column about my bulimia, a female reader wrote to me to say that it’s likely I had been sexually abused as a child. And God, the level of bile that came my way when I dared say that I’d had not one but two abortions.
Of course, sometimes the readers made valid points. Did I not see that there was a link between my column and my less than perfect life? Perhaps if I gave up writing about myself altogether then I might find that I’d be happier? And no wonder I didn’t have any friends – that was another perennial observation. I could have told the readers about my close friendship with Bex, and how much she’d helped me over the years, but after an incident at my student newspaper when, in a panic, I’d mentioned her in a piece and she had gone absolutely mental, I vowed never to write about her again.
A text comes through from her asking to meet for lunch. I say I can’t and leave it at that without going into detail. I don’t want to tell her about Julia Jones and my subsequent meeting with Jamie Blackwood in case she gets worried.
I push the creepy tweets out of my mind and plot my route to Jamie’s house. There is no point getting the Northern Line because I would have to get off at Camden and catch another branch, and so I decide to walk. I have time. And the exercise will do me good. I cross Highgate Road and make my way down Gordon House Road, but just as I am passing Gospel Park overground I see a figure on the pavement in front of me that stops me in my tracks. A man – tall, dark hair, handsome. Oh fuck. It’s Laurence. Part of me wants to rush up to him. I feel like blurting out everything I’ve been unable to tell him. I could thank him for the sweet email he sent and apologise for the fact that I had to cancel our lunch.
Just as I make a dash to go and talk to him an image of his face – dark, cruel eyes, a vein throbbing with anger in his temple – flashes into my mind. He is telling me that he never wants to see me again. That what I did was unforgivable. That I am a monster. And he had meant every word. This was from the man who had told me that he would never let anything or anyone harm me. A man whose strong arms had enveloped me, whispering to me that he would never let me go. At one point, we’d been as close as two people could get. Now, we are like strangers, or worse. I slip into a doorway and watch him melt away into the crowd.