“Do you want to go for a drink?” I blurt, and I regret it the moment the words leave my mouth. It’s not the play-it-cool approach that always worked so well for Marcie. Somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, her words echo.It’s the moment you think you’ve got them in the bag you need to be the most careful. They need to continue wanting you. Don’t take the game out of it or they’ll get bored.
I want to tear the words back, even more so when Jack gives me a sad little smile.
“Ah, Iris, you’re killing me. I would have loved that, but unfortunately my increasingly needy mother is calling this evening. She’s obsessed with checking in on me. If I don’t pick up, she’ll get the police and the fire brigade and God knows who else to turn up at the door. But maybe next week?”
His words wind me. I hate rejection, perhaps more so than most. I put up with enough of it as a child. So it is with a slight iciness that I reply, “No worries. Possibly next week. I’ll check my diary.” And just like that, Marcie’s back.
There’s a moment of awkwardness between us before Jack says, “Cool. Look after yourself.” He half raises his hand, then turns toward the door.
I watch him walk out. I wait thirty seconds.
Then I follow him into the night.
Eleven
The verb “tofollow” is strange, isn’t it? It’s taken on a new meaning in this modern world. We follow social media pages, celebrities, colleagues, and fathers’ new wives. All that information at the touch of a button. A socially acceptable form of stalking—to such an extent, we’ve even reclaimed that verb, too. It’s perfectly fine for someone to admit that they have spent long hours stalking an ex’s Instagram, for example.
What I can’t understand, then, is why there is such a stigma attached to following someone in person. It’s less revealing than the crap people put up about themselves on the internet, at any rate. I wouldn’t be able to tell, for instance, from her walk alone, that Rita’s sanity was hanging precariously in the balance, but there we are. That’s the world we find ourselves in.
Jack walks with purpose: quickly, hunched against the cold. I’ve had to lengthen my stride to keep up and am hopping between shadows, hanging back when he seems to be slowing down. This is not my first rodeo. There’s an art to it. You have to be good at deciphering bodylanguage: watching for the slight stiffening of the shoulders that signifies they can sense another body behind them; the dipped head of someone lost in their phone, oblivious to their surroundings; the rummaging in a pocket for keys that suggests they’re not entirely comfortable.
Jack displays none of these traits. He simply…walks. It’s dull. There is something scintillating about knowing your very presence is putting someone on edge. Still, it’s important to employ best practice, so I remain vigilant, though I occasionally dare myself to stray an inch too close. Just to keep the pulse aflutter.
I first learned these vital skills with Dad, after he left us. I’m not entirely sure why I followed him. Possibly out of some misguided sense of loyalty, not that he ever returned the favor. I was clumsier then. I knocked things over, was nearly caught several times. But it was on one of these excursions that I became aware of his new girlfriend, though the word “girlfriend” always seems too young for someone with his portly stature and receding hairline. Mere months after my darling sister had left us, and he’d already moved on. Even by my standards it was callous. By Mum’s, it was an act of savagery that nearly sent her to an ethanol-doused grave.
Jack hangs a left and I pause, light on my feet. Marcie wasn’t the only one who had ballet lessons, and, though I never had her knack for it, it’s provided me with some essential skills. He turns into a smart street lined with Georgian town houses. Plane trees cast sinister shadows on the pavement, like they’re aware of me. Like they’re beckoning me forward, encouraging me on.
This is the sort of postcode that we lowly laypeople would never have cause to set foot in. It all clicks into place as he turns into an absurdly grand house midway along the street. The accent. The clear cut of him. The suits. The tan. It all screamed money from the start, but now it’s confirmed. I always find moments like this jarring. My flat wasnothing to write home about, but it was mine and it meant independence. Then you see something like this, and you realize that whatever fragile delusion you had of success was just that: a delusion.
I watch as he lets himself in at the glossy black door. I didn’t know front doors could be that sleek, that shiny. I think of the peeling paint on Mum’s, the scuff marks on Barry’s. I have, it seems, landed on my feet with Jack.
It was not quite such an instant love affair with Freddie’s dingy flat. I saw it a couple of weeks after we kissed for the first time, and—as I took in the squat, flat-roofed building—I forced myself to take a deep breath and remember that he was worth it. When I saw the living room, I fumbled in my pocket for my sanitizer. The low-slung coffee table bore an ashtray overflowing with joint stubs. A single game controller was cast aside on the cracked faux-leather sofa. A cluster of Chelsea Football Club mugs were balanced precariously on old pizza boxes. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the sleek bachelor pad I’d envisaged. I’m not a snob, so I gritted my teeth and got on with it, but I did start making some grand plans for how I could gently encourage superior hygiene practices in Freddie.
It seems that won’t be necessary with Jack. I can’t believe that a man who lives in such an astonishing placelikesme. Even if he did blow me off to take a call from his mother. I wait a respectable minute or two after the door closes behind him. No slamming here. It glides shut with a click. A light comes on in the downstairs window. Irritatingly, the bottom half is shuttered so I can’t see in, but a low wall is closely wrapped round the house. In seconds, I’m balancing atop it, peering through the window and into Jack’s life. Into the expansive living room.
Jack sits on a huge red sofa just beneath the window. It’s angled so that his back is, thankfully, toward me, which gives me the opportunity to take in the room at large. It’s the most elaborate sitting room I’ve everseen: a dark-paneled room with brooding oil paintings lining the walls and red lampshades that afford the otherwise grand space an impression of coziness.
Football flickers on the flat-screen TV in the corner. A common affliction of the male sex, so I won’t hold it against him. Even Freddie liked football. Freddie loved football, the Chelsea mugs merely the tip of an obsession that ran so deep, I even began to feel a little jealous.
Jack doesn’t appear to be watching, however. His head is bowed so that I can make out the thick set of his neck, the small spring of baby hairs coiling at the base of his head. Over his shoulder, I can see his gaze is directed at the phone in his hand. Just being this close to him is stimulating. The thrill of proximity. Watching him in his natural habitat, unaware that he is being observed. His screen is visible from here. He’s scrolling through social media. I press closer, balancing between the wall and the window, breath fogging the glass, pulse thudding in my ears.
He accepted Sally’s friend request last night. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing he was on his phone, had accepted a middle-aged woman’s request for his friendship, and yet still failed to message me: infinitely younger, and—I like to think—more attractive. Particularly with the hair. Still, it provided me with further insight into his life. Jack’s entire youth was laid before me in pictures. It was all much the same, though I combed through it with surgical precision. Boarding school, clubs, women, bars. In one family shot, posted by his sister, his father has his hand clamped tight over a teenage Jack’s shoulder. Which might explain his strained reaction to my mention of him. Frustratingly, there was no sign of the wife. Clearly the millennial exodus from Facebook happened before they met.
The one interesting nugget of information that I did manage to glean was that Jack is in recovery. Two years ago, he’d posted something about being three years sober. It gained a bit of traction. One of the comments underneath praised him for his commitment to sobriety,and he’d replied,I can’t take all the credit. A has been a huge help.A. Alice, presumably. A veritable Florence Nightingale to get him on the straight and narrow. It’s no easy task, getting an addict to see the error of their ways. I should know.
As I watch, Jack’s phone lights up with a call.Mum.The sting of rejection lessens. At least his excuse was honest. His demeanor changes instantly, even before he’s lifted the phone to his ear. He tenses, a thick ropelike tendon lifting in his neck, a preemptive grimace across his face. Another feeling I can relate to, though not because mine is overbearing.
His head turns slightly as he speaks to her, so that he’s in profile, his face set. His mouth moves so fast I can’t make out the words, but I amuse myself by imagining him telling her about me. About my feminine virtues, my sleek blond hair, the zip of connection that traveled between us in the café and then again tonight. After I’ve exhausted that particular fantasy, it gets a bit boring, like watching a television on mute. I press my ear against the cool glass, but I can’t make out any sound. After ten minutes or so, he gives a few tight nods, swallows, and hangs up.
He slumps back, navigates again to Facebook on his phone, types something in, and pulls up a page. When I see what is on his screen, I realize that I have played my part very well, despite my blunder, my overeagerness in asking him for a drink. Because he is looking atmyprofile—my personal profile. He clicks on my picture: from a couple of years ago now, when the faint lines that have started to appear round my eyes were less pronounced. I’m blond in this one, too. It’s a selfie—no one ever takes photos of me—but I look good. He zooms in, then flicks to the next one. He does like me. So much so, he’s doing exactly what I have spent a disproportionate amount of my own time doing. Stalking me on the internet. It sends a delicious thrill through me.
Once he’s had his fill, he flicks off it. Opens his messages. I’m too faraway to see what he’s typing, but I watch him press send, and then my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Iris, as promised, sending you a message so you know I’m not dead. That would be boring for both of us. It was good to see you tonight. Perhaps we can get a drink after the next one. X
I wait the customary five minutes before I reply. Just to keep him on his toes.I’ll double-check my diary. Hope your mum didn’t send the police over? Xx
Two kisses to make it very clear that I am also interested in him. Jack smiles when he reads my response, then chucks his phone to the side. He’s playing the game, too, I see.
