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 embarrassment, 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.