JEN
Bex has gone to bed. I’m on the sofa and can’t sleep. I’m staring at the death certificates of my parents. The truth is here in black and white: my mum, Gillian Hesmondalgh, died on 6 September 1997, from cancer, and my dad, Kenneth Hesmondalgh, died of myocardial infarction, a heart attack, on 3 June 1998. Ironically, seeing the details of their deaths set out so starkly like this makes them feel even more like strangers.
In many ways they became figures of fantasy to me ever since I told that stupid lie about them on that first day of college back in 1995. By creating an alternative history for them, a tragic one that I could tell again and again, I reinvented them in my own mind. Their deaths in that car crash were a bit more exotic than the run-of-the-mill illnesses of old age. Their end was much more dramatic than a slow lingering death from terminal illness or a sudden pain in the chest. A car crash was associated with a dash of danger, glamour even.
At the bottom of each certificate is the date when the copy was requested: 2 July 2018, just before the split from Laurence. I try to think back to that time. I’m convinced that we were fine. Despite five years together, the passion was still there. We got on well, made each other laugh, had fun together.
I wonder what made him suspect that I’d been lying about my parents, that they hadn’t died in a car crash as I said? Had someone tipped him off? But who would that have been? I’d changed my name from Hesmondalgh to Hunter years back. There was no one in my close family still alive.
It feels too late to ask Laurence. He had the opportunity to talk to me about his feelings towards me, no matter how negative they were. But instead he chose to go down a different route: intimidation, stalking, violence. I recall the terror I felt on finding that mask in his bathroom. A cold tendril of fear snakes its way through my body. I look at the door. As Bex said to me tonight, who knows what he might do next?
I still can’t sleep. My stomach burns full of acid. My breathing is shallow. I jump at each bang of the communal door downstairs.
I reach out for my phone. As I register the time – 3.31 a.m. – I see that I’ve got a few notifications from Twitter. My finger hovers over the icon. I tell myself that they’ll be friendly comments from random followers about a few of my past posts, or funny videos about cats with moustaches. I’d muted @WatchingYouJenHunter2, so I’ve nothing to worry about. There’s no way I’m going to go back to sleep and so I open the app.
@ImStillWatchingYouJenHunter Can’t sleep. Poor baby.
I look around me. I push the duvet off the sofa and pace the flat. The screen on my phone flashes. Another message.
@ImStillWatchingYouJenHunter You know I’ll never leave you alone, don’t you?
I rush over to the window, brush aside the curtains and strain my neck to look out down onto the street. There’s a shadow cast by the bin shed. Is that him? Is he outside? I push open the window and lean out, holding onto the ledge. I squint into the darkness, but I can’t see anything.
@ImStillWatchingYouJenHunter Careful now. We wouldn’t want you to fall, would we?
Fuck. I tighten my grip on the ledge and I scan the street for a sign of him. I try to peer inside the cars and the windows of the flats opposite. There are a few lights on, but the curtains and blinds are drawn. A black cab lurches its way up the street, carrying a young couple, but it continues on its almost funereal journey. Then it comes to me. He must be standing right beneath me, hiding in plain sight below the flat. I push myself further out. The cold March wind whips my face. Tears smart in my eyes, blurring my vision. The edge of the window ledge digs into the front of my thighs. I can’t stand much more of this.
‘Laurence?’ I shout. ‘Is that you? What the—’
I feel somebody touch my shoulder. The shock of it forces me forward and I nearly lose my grip. I see the ground spinning below me, a vortex swallowing me up, before a hand wrenches me back.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Jen?’
It’s Bex.
‘I— I—’ The words don’t come out. ‘I got – more messages. From him. From Laurence.’
I pass her my phone. ‘I thought he must be outside, watching me.’
‘Fuck,’ she says as she reads.
She goes to the window and looks out. She stands there for a minute, before slamming the window shut and pulling the curtains.
‘I can’t see him. He must have gone.’ She comes to stand by me. ‘Jen, you’re shaking. And it’s freezing in here. Let’s get you back to bed.’
She leads me to the sofa. I’m too nervous, too afraid, too angry, to sleep. I drape the duvet around my body, while Bex fetches me a glass of rum.
‘Here, drink this,’ she says, pushing a tumbler into my shaking hands.
I know what the next step is, something I hardly dare acknowledge. My fear is so deep it seeps into my marrow. Earlier tonight, Bex asked whether I wanted to go to the police and show them what we’d found. But I dismissed it out of hand. I knew what would happen if I did that: precisely nothing. Perhaps they’d drop by and question Laurence, ask him about the mask and the attack on me on the Heath. But he’d have some clever way of getting out of it. Why had these two women – one of whom was his ex-girlfriend – broken into his house? Had they hidden the so-called evidence in his home? It was clear that I had mental health issues, he’d say, and the police could check with my doctor and therapist. It would be, when it came down to it, a case of my word against his. And his would win. Men like Laurence always came out on top.
Not any more. Not with me.